Chose this cruise for the interesting ports of call and it certainly delivered on that front ! Visby and Klapeida were our favourites and of course St Petersburg continues to fascinate and amaze us. We loved all the ports and enjoyed all our excursions except Gydnia which is a lovely place but the excursion we did was very rushed. We think the P and O excursions are actually good value, especially with loyalty discounts.

The Captain Neil Turnbull was great and kept us up to date every day with weather and funny little comments. He was seen around the ship and was always very friendly. The staff at all levels were exceptional and they made up for the minor irritants we experienced. The cabin was kept spotless by Mariam and thank you for her hard work and endless cheerfulness.

Now the food and entertainment this is where it all goes a bit downhill....Food on formal nights is just laughable really...I am not going to don my dressing up gear for 3rd rate so called Gala dinners, Marco Pierre White, did you really come up with that weird menu !? What has happened to yummy things like lobster ( not that dried up little morsel we get now ) and fillet steak, we ate at the supplementary restaurants on every formal night as there was nothing to tempt us on those 4 nights on the MDR menu. Main dining room breakfast is still awesome and delish. Lunch in MDR boring, boring, boring, we only went once but looked at the menu every day, no inspiration there. The other nights in MDR were passable, all the food was tasty enough ( soups always nice ) but nothing to write home about and reminded me of hotels trying to be posh in the 1970's akthough I must say the desserts were always very good. Buffet was okay the few times we used it for quick lunch but what has happened to pizza at the Lido ? We were looking forward to a slice of pizza for lunch some days and now you can only get pizza from room service ( extra charge surprise, surprise). Beach house we ate there 3 times and all meals were nice and worth the bit extra ( fajitas too spicy for me and it was not explained on menu that they were spicy hot so maybe that could be added P and O ?) Sindhu, we got a deal on second night for £11 extra per person and the service and food were pretty good. Glasshouse was a letdown on first try, we had fillet steaks and they were chewy..when we told waiter they just kind of shrugged it off...no offer of free dessert or anything to make up for it. We tried again, second time round we had the Neptunes feast...if you are hungry don't bother with this, we had literally 6 prawns, 6 scallops and a tiny crab to share ! This cost £16 extra...I don't mind a bit extra but come on P and O this was a rip off.(see picture) Read more