We flew from Manchester on Friday Feb 3rd on a First Choice plane. We had pre booked our seats and also as it was a special anniversary cruise we had booked the Executive Lounge at the airport. This was a great relaxing start to our cruise. The flight went very smoothly with a short delay to de- ice the plane. Leaving the UK on this very cold and frosty morning we landed at Barbados airport in glorious hot sunshine at about 3:30pm local time and were on board ship by 4:30pm. The only slight hiccup on the way was the coach from the airport to the port had a burst tyre. It was so loud it sounded like someone was shooting at us. The driver stopped inspected the damage shrugged his shoulders and then just carried on. The chorus on the bus was "3 wheels on my wagon. "

We were on C deck in a balcony cabin on starboard. We had stayed in a similar cabin last cruise on Azura so knew what to expect. For those who havn't cruised on Azura c deck have the large balconys which are 1/2 in the sade and 1/2 in the open. It did not disappoint and the sun was on our balcony as we arrived. We met our friends who had flown in from Gatwick and went to reacquaint ourselves with the ship and book the speciality restaurants. Christine in Sindhu greeted us like old friends. We checked the menus for our wedding anniversary, and Valentine's Day and plumped for Sindhu for both but booked 17 for another evening. We then went to the Spa to sort out hair appointments.

Day 1- Barbados, We woke to a clear sky and hot sunshine and after breakfast took a taxi to Payne's Bay (Blue Monkey Beach)to swim out to see the turtles and sample the excellent Banks beer and rum punch. The sea was quite choppy by the beach but calm once out. We did get battered and bruised getting out of the sea because of the waves but the turtles were out in force and it was so worth it. It was the muster that evening for both Friday & Saturday passengers. We had thought that it may have been much more 'high key' because of the Costa Concordia disaster but it was much the same as usual. Dinner was put back by ' hour as there was a delayed plane. We had emailed the restaurant manager in advance as we prefer to eat in the mid ships restaurant and Friday pax are usually allocated the aft restaurant. This meant that on the first night we ate in the aft restaurant and on the 2nd night we ate in the mid ships restaurant but on open sitting. We had hoped to be able to sit on our allocated table choice of 87 but as the restaurant was not busy they only opened half of it. Read more