We primarily chose this 28 night cruise because it was a non-flying winter sunshine holiday. We are seasoned cruisers of 20+ cruisers but this was our first with P&O. We have priority boarding with some cruise lines and we were surprised how swift and painless our boarding was being P&O first timers. Less than 1 hour from arriving at the terminal we were in our cabin unpacking.

Let’s get the seriously bad bit out of the way first. Food. It was poor. Every cooked meal we had in either the Saffron or the Waterside was tepid, overcooked, undercooked, congealed sauces, low graded ingredients, beans and peas served as the vegetables every day, bland, tasteless, sometimes nothing more than a soggy mess around a piece of meat all grossly over salted (to the point that when we left the restaurants we had to drink lots of liquid to quench our thirst).

Send the food back I hear you cry! We did and it was no better. Meatballs which would not take a fork, pork chop that had to be sawn with a steak knife, Grouse that a knife left no impression upon. Change knife same result. The one food positive was that all the salads were nice. Read more