Having been on Britannia before we were very happy to travel on her again, not that we planned to it was just the cruise destinations we wanted were included in her itinery. I will talk about the ship first then the destinations.

Well Britannia, what can I say, so elegant, so smooth when sailing and so cheap compared to many other cruise lines, no tips and prices are in pounds. A lot of regular P&O cruisers were saying that the Azura was better but I could not compare. I know a lot of people complain that you cannot walk straight across the ship and had to come up or down to go from the front to the back but that was not a big deal. The ship itself is very elegant, not in your face and I am glad to say they have got rid of the awful what I can only explain as pensioner's sail away parties. They used to give you union jack flags and sing songs like my old man's a dustman, get the picture. Well now they are helping the environment by not having the flags and they only do a few sail away parties and these include much more modern songs to suit all ages. The entertainment on the ship is good or at least it suits us with a resident group in the club and a typical british style pub where you can sit and chat or take part in karaoke or race nights and quizzes. There is also a pool table. The theatre is Headliners and most of the shows are done by the very talented entertainments team onboard. We only picked which ones we wanted to see and never really felt the need to go to every show. They also had tribute acts onboard such as Jess Glynne and Adele who were both excellent. The food on the ship is excellent whether you go to the Horizon buffet or the main dining rooms. There are also other restaurants where you can pay extra for an exceptional meal. Sindhu is an indian restaurant by Atul Kochhar which is very popular and is so good we went again. We booked the Epicurean afternoon tea this time whereas we had booked the Epicurean evening meal last time and we were a bit disappointed and wished we had booked the meal instead. There were too many sweets and not enough sandwiches/savouries. In fact it won't surprise me if the afternoon tea doesn't get shelved. We had ours postponed because not many people had booked on our day but on the day we did actually go there weren't many then either. The Glasshouse is phenomenal, you pay £6.95 for three starters or three desserts and then the mains prices vary based on what you want but they are not expensive. We went for lunch and had the three starters each(you don't need to book for this) then we went again for Dinner one night but booked this one. A lot of people said the Beach house was fabulous but it was in an extension of the Buffet restaurant so we gave it a miss. We did not do the Limelight club on either cruise because there were no acts we wanted to see, in fact these acts need changing they have been on for several years some of them. Apparently Gary Barlow is now P&O patron for entertainment so hopefully he will make the Limelight club more exciting but we shall see. The ship was full for the whole of the fourteen days and if you did not get a bed early on sea days it was a struggle, I think because everyone has the same coloured towel and P&O just replace them in your room without you having to provide any details of where your old ones went. I think if they opted for a procedure whereby you signed them in and out this may stop people doing this. If you smoke as I do then this ship is a bit different to others in that they do not have a smoking area at the side of the pool. There are three areas, one at the back of the ship outside the Horizon Buffet restaurant, one outside the Live lounge club and one outside Costa on Deck seven. To be fair I had no problem with this as they were positioned ideally if you were eating, sunbathing or being entertained. A tip too if you want to buy tobacco products wait a couple of days in because they do buy three get one free offers and also have discounts on alcohol and other gifts such as Sunglasses, Pandora, etc. P&O offer a drinks package of £39.95 per person per day but you have to have it for everyone in your cabin and you have to take it for the duration of the cruise apart from the first day and the day you depart(it includes bottled water, orange juice speciality coffees and all alcohol apart from expensive ones. . Drinks are not a bad price with a bottle of wine for approx £16-25, beer £4.30 pint and Vodka and coke around £4.40. Cocktails are also reasonable and Prosecco is £20.95 per bottle. Note you can put your bottle away and they give you a ticket for when you next go to the dining room. We drank quite considerably and never thought twice to order anything we wanted right down to Brandies after dinner and we still spent £800 less than it would have cost us for the drinks package. (Two of us)

The highlight of sailing of sailing with P&O is the cabin, we booked a balcony and were upgraded to a cabin with a sofa. The shower has a proper door not a curtain as you would expect these days but don't always get. The main thing though, the bed, oh what a glorious sleep. We are investing in a P&O mattress. Read more