It was awful, awfully good to use a double negative. It was so good that me and my wife are already booked on the same ship for the Oct 15th trip to the Canary Islands.
Due to several circumstances, 3 elderly parents frailty, illness and eventual sad passing plus other problems we have not had a holiday together for over 15 years. My wife had always fancied a cruise but I thought it was not for me. All day long, eating and drinking with nothing else to do, how wrong could I have been.
We drove down overnight from near Manchester and stayed near Newbury overnight. An unhurried breakfast and an hours drive saw us arrive in Southampton at around 11.30 AM. From dropping of the cases, parking the car and taking our first steps on deck took less than 30 minutes. An exercise in precise logistics, apart from the guy asking cajoling us to have our picture taken it was a breeze. I don't need to spend to much time talking about the ship in general, several people have already tried. To be perfectly honest it is impossible to do it justice, you really have to see it and feel it to appreciate just how spectacular it is.