A tradition I’m proudly continuing right now is to get a summary post of a recent trip away down as quickly as possible after returning home in order that the feelings of the break from work are all fresh, and that the number of things I might not remember in however many years time it is that I write the full accounts is marginally lower. Did we have a good time? Did we have any issues on this trip? Is my body still processing alcohol?
So, we have returned from our first trip away of the year, that being a long weekend to Rotterdam. As you can already tell from the post’s title, this was aboard the cruise ship Aurora, owned and operated by P&O Cruises.
Rotterdam, we’d visited before – and, indeed, have only just finished publishing content on that city from our first time there back in 2022 (see: Rotterdam) – and, of course, P&O Cruises are familiar to us too with this making our tenth time cruising with the British cruise line, but Aurora was the new element for this escape from the UK.
Let’s start with aspects relating to this cruise, then give an overview of what we got up to in Rotterdam, before some final thoughts.
Cruise Parking
P&O Cruises have two types of fare, and the more expensive one of those comes with a big benefit we like – we can choose our cabin – and, for longer cruises, free parking. This wasn’t a long enough cruise so free parking wasn’t an option and, seriously, the price of parking at the cruise port in Southampton is just now ridiculously expensive. I know that in the grand scheme of how much we’re paying for the cruise it’s just a drop in the ocean (cruise-related idioms free all this month) but those little costs have a way of mounting up. We’re still mobile enough and tight enough to instead park in the multi-storey at Westquay in the city and walk our luggage to the port so we did. It was about half an hour’s walk to the berth and cost us just six pounds a day with fresh air and free exercise thrown in, and even if we’d used a taxi to and from there it still would have worked out far less than paying for port parking.
Aurora Embarkation And Disembarkation
We had a late embarkation slot and turned up just after that anyway. We were in no rush to drink because we hadn’t bought a drinks package so that insane urge to get aboard as quickly as possible – even if it means waiting in long queues at the port, even if it means having to take your carry-on luggage everywhere with you because your room’s not ready, even if it means that ordering a drink comes with a minimum half hour wait to receive it because it’s all so chaotic around the bars – wasn’t there. The terminal was practically empty and it couldn’t have taken us more than five minutes to step into it before we were aboard, checked into our muster station, and had started unpacking in the room. We liked that a lot. It makes for a good start to a holiday.
Disembarkation was similarly super simple. Because it was a short cruise and because we’d decided that we weren’t going to bother with the Dress To Impress night recommendation that would’ve meant lugging a heavy Tuxedo and fancy dress aboard, we took just our small cases so opted to disembark ourselves. There was no queue waiting when we wanted to get off so five minutes to get off the ship and through the port, then that half hour walk back to the car was all it took. All good.
Food And Drinks On Aurora
You can book the only speciality restaurant on Aurora, Sindhu, a couple of weeks ahead of departure so we did, and booked it for the first night aboard. This is Indian cuisine for the most part, which is not something we ever eat but which we did once before when we were on Iona, finding it mostly mediocre. We wanted to give it a second chance. We’re still not fans of the food but it was a better experience with some arguably actual tasty bits and not all of it was the same shade of brown. Furthermore, importantly, we could actually tell what the foodstuff under the sauce was in most cases, which was new. A nice benefit of booking online and possibly for that first night was that there was a twenty percent discount on the food too.
We went to the Glass House for the Dress To Impress night. The food was good but we did have some issues with joining the queue for the venue. The web-based booking system said it was full and the man at the entrance to the Glass House told us we’d have to wait over an hour if we wanted to eat there. We pointed out that yes, we were happy to wait, we understood that this was how queues work in principle, and we’re aware that people eating takes a while, but he still couldn’t add us to the queue and told us to just come back. I pushed back on this because it left us in limbo and got him to eventually add our names and cabin number to a piece of paper in front of him – and he did the same for others standing behind us by now – and we sat down to drink and wait, and chat to the others in the same situation as us. It’s utterly ridiculous that you need to be pushy enough to be added to a queue on a piece of paper to be added to a queue in the electronic queueing system because P&O have a very limited idea about what a queue actually is. A British company not understanding a queue?
On the last night we gave the Main Dining Room a chance, choosing to go late because we tend to eat late normally and it tends to be quieter and therefore easier to get a table.
“Are you happy to share?”
“If it’s a small table, yes.”
“A table for eight?”
“That’s not a small table.”
We were handed a buzzer and dismissed with nothing else said. Pretty poor attitude shown there. When we did get to eat we found the food to be okay but the service inattentive. Our tumblers of water stood empty on our table from after the starters to the end of the meal.
The quality of food in the buffet for breakfast was actually pretty good (although quite what their heat lamps do to toast to make it that impossible to slice is something physicists need to investigate). Butter portions were inadequate (I never thought I’d write that on the internet) and because they were rock hard there was almost nothing you could do with them on whatever you wanted to butter without first destroying the bread or croissant involved. The range of food was good too, but only if it was all out, and it never was so we didn’t manage a single morning’s breakfast with all the things we’d have wanted to eat. Tweaking of the tray-replenishment levels during busy periods is needed here because we stood in an unmoving queue for several minutes while it grew and grew behind us just because there were no sausages and the people at the front wanted sausages. P&O have got to know when it will be likely busy, and they’ve got to keep a better watch on what’s getting low.
We didn’t eat at the pool grill area but the burgers looked good. The pizza, though, looked rank.
Drinks on P&O Cruises ships are, for us, not brilliant. We’ve been spoilt by just the ridiculously huge variety of cocktails in particular on Princess Cruises, so the microscopic range that P&O generously offer doesn’t wow us in the slightest. Factor in the smaller number included in any drinks packages, plus the rules on how much you have to pay for drinks not in that range (it’s not price-based which makes it worse), then the shortness of this cruise and overnight stay in Rotterdam as part of it, and finally the on board spend we had as part of the cruise price, and no, there was no way we were getting a package. We paid our own way, not limiting ourselves by range, and spent well under half what we would have otherwise.
Whether you should buy a drinks package or not on a P&O cruise should always take into account the number of sea days, your drinking habits, and the psychic foreknowledge of what drinks will be included or not in the package you choose by the time you set sail (unless you spend the first day gathering all the menus together and plugging the numbers into a spreadsheet). Do not ask anyone else whether you should get a drinks package. We’re all different people, except for my clone.
But, as we’ve said before, we like the prices of the wine and the general beer range is good too. We just can’t drink enough glasses of each to warrant a drinks package once those cocktails tempt us, and they’re not even good cocktails on P&O. And they’re shockingly small too.
P&O Aurora Cruise Cabin C127
The general layout of cruise ship cabins doesn’t vary much, and even on this slightly older ship it was instantly familiar. Wardrobe space to one side on entering; bathroom opposite it; bed; a small seating area; balcony.
The age meant it was a little dated in places. Black marks around the doors, in the shower unit. Rust on metal on the balcony. It’s a metal ship at sea. Expect rust. The bathroom was a light pink colour, but fine. The bed was too soft for us, but that’s personal taste. The small sofa had a dip in the centre so you’d better like the person you’re sitting next to. It simply faced the vanity mirror and the TV didn’t extend from the wall and rotate (well, it might have, but I didn’t want to rip it from the mounting, and gentle pulling did nothing (no sniggering)). I don’t get the point of a sofa that doesn’t face a TV. Ah, a place to sit in your cabin when you want to just look at your own reflection from the other side of the room. Stupid, and it’s something we still see being put in newer ships now.
Speaking of the TV: no movies or on demand programmes. It’s an older ship so it might not have a media server, but that was a little jarring and disappointing. We quite like taking a bottle and snacks to the room to watch a film on formal nights, and that just wasn’t an option for us. Not major, but something we’d not enjoy on a longer cruise on Aurora.
Other than the excessively noisy balcony door locking mechanism (sorry cruise cabin neighbours), nothing else bothered us about the room we’d picked. We found it amusing just how much storage space there was, though. You can almost find a shelf behind every wood or glass surface in the cabin.
Aurora Cruise Experience
Generally absolutely fine. This was an adults only cruise, and the adults ranged from their early twenties to their eighties and possibly beyond. The atmosphere aboard was good. There were a few hen parties we spotted early on with their matching outfits and sashes and tiaras and the like, which we thought wasn’t allowed, but they didn’t cause any issues.
Entertainment was decent enough, and we won enough trivia quizzes between us to take home a P&O leather-effect notebook to add to the cruise memento stash.
Time Ashore In Rotterdam
We had a full Sunday and until one in the afternoon on a Monday to spend off the cruise ship and ashore in Rotterdam if we wished. We had some possible activities lined up and the best way to get to them all was by public transport so we bought a day’s tourist ticket from the metro station on Sunday, and a two-hour ticket on the Monday, and made use of the tube system and buses across the two days.
The first place we visited was the one furthest away: Rotterdam Zoo. We could see on the map that it was fairly big and that wasn’t wrong at all. In fact, we spent way longer here than we’d expected and hadn’t seen it all before deciding we needed to swoop around the aquarium area (we like a nice aquarium when we travel) then head off while it was still light enough to at least see one other thing.
After the zoo we went to the historic area of Delfshaven. This reminded us of Nyhavn in Copenhagen to some extent. Expect older buildings and historic ships, some of them with plaques outside explaining what they used to do and what they do now. They’re mostly lived in now.
We didn’t think we’d have enough time to do justice to either of the museums we’d been thinking about then so we cut our exploring short and made our way to the more popular destination for visitors to Rotterdam, but ignored the food market hall and Cube Houses in favour of a craft ale bar called Bokaal where we tried a range of drinks and light bites over numerous hours before hopping on the underground again back to the ship for the night.
On the final morning we then headed back into a rather rainy Rotterdam, this time to finally take a look at Markthal from the inside and to pick up some local food to take back home with us. We’d very much liked the building from the outside the night before, all lit up, but we’ve never been as drawn to heading straight for it in the same way that a lot of other travel bloggers seem to have been. It’s nice, don’t get me wrong, but it is just a fancy-shaped, colourfully-decorated hall with places to buy food and drink when it all comes down to it.
Still plenty for us to see and do in Rotterdam on a future trip – those museums we’re keen to visit, for one – and we’ll be sure to make plenty of use of those public transport tickets again if we return to this port in the Netherlands especially as the day tickets also include transport in The Hague if we’ve got time enough and the inclination to visit there. For my wife with her tendency to twist an ankle or knee or hurt her heel (she did, again), using public transport just allowed her to rest a bit between longer periods of walking around and allowed the pair of us to fit more in. Not that we really did, thanks mainly to how slow we wandered.
Final Aurora Cruise Thoughts
Seasoned cruisers will always have a few gripes and we did have a few, but everything was very minor overall, so we enjoyed this short break on Aurora a lot. The ship was a good size for getting around easily, with a lot of character in little areas tucked here and there. While not spectacular, we had a better than usual level of friendliness from the P&O staff aboard so that was good to see too, because P&O’s staff have a reputation of being a bit standoffish. Not everything worked quite like it should have – the elevators announcing the wrong floors or warning about too much weight in them when there’s just you (and that didn’t just happen to us; I know what you’re thinking) – but Aurora is fairly old so it’s perfectly understandable. We’re just the same.
We’d happily cruise on Aurora again; we’d prefer to cruise on her than we would Iona, for instance. We’d really like P&O to adopt some of the things that make a line like Princess that much better and more attractive to us – better hardware, software, drinks range, staff attitude – but they’re fine for what they offer and we will be cruising with P&O again later this year when we spend some more time on Ventura and head for some late summer sunshine (hopefully) in Spain and Portugal’s waters.