Yes, I know I said in the end-of-2021 round-up that I was going to write more often this year but you know, things, and stuff, and whatnots kept on popping up. To be fair, I have published a few posts, but I’ve not really told anyone about them. That’s what this post will help to address, at least in some small way.
Let’s start with all the travel content that’s been added to this site since the last time I wrote one of these blogs.
The week we spent aboard P&O’s cruise ship Iona last year – a cruise that took us into the Bay of Biscay, but not stopping at any ports – has been written up in three parts. Iona Cruise Part One covers the initial boarding and day or so aboard the ship, finding our way around, getting used to it, getting annoyed by it. A more detailed look at the ship can be found in Exploring Iona while the final part of the series looks at the Food and Entertainment on Iona. As has been stated elsewhere on this site, and in those posts, we were not very impressed with Iona, although we know plenty of people who loved her. Horses for courses.
Between the Iona cruise and now, we’ve been on three other cruises, and just to be strange and confusing I’ve started writing up about the first and third of those at the same time while leaving the second one until later. I just felt like it, that’s why.
The cruise we took after Iona was the first cruise to feature port stops since the pandemic hit us. The first part of our Sky Princess cruise is the boarding process and first evening aboard, including the departure from Southampton. As we had an aft balcony on this cruise I decided to video all the sail-aways.
The second travelogue from our Sky Princess cruise encompasses a day docked at Portland where, for the first time, we decided to stay aboard the ship. We had reasons. It gave us a chance to take pictures while the ship was even emptier than normal, try out the new design of adults-only swimming pool on this class of ship, and have an afternoon tea.
The most recent cruise we took has had its first day aboard written up about as well, and that was aboard Valiant Lady out of Portsmouth. This cruise was immense fun, helped by knowing a fair number of other cruisers aboard, but mostly down to Virgin’s way of doing things in general. On this first night we go to a baffling but entertaining dance party.
That’s all the cruise-related posts that have been added so far, but there have been a few others. Rolling back the years to 2014, we spent a few hours in Torquay during a stay down that part of the country.
More recently – just a couple of months ago – we found a leisure hotel running a weekend “thing” that was close enough to us to allow us to pack a bag on a Friday night and drive there straight after work. You can read about our VIP stay at the Warner Leisure Hotel on Hayling Island to see what we liked and didn’t like about it, but to spoil it a little, it was good enough that we’ve booked another short weekend break for the end of this month. It’ll be a 1960s themed event, which is before our time, but not by much, and we’ll have a good time regardless.
That’s all the new travel content on the site, so what news is there to report?
Well, we’ve both just got over COVID. Yes, we’re double-vaccinated, and yes, we’re boosted, but this BA.2 variant is utterly rampant in the UK right now with anywhere up to a million people a week catching it and it was really only a matter of time. My wife got it first, and I got it off her a few days later, and statistically it looks like the rammed-to-the-gills trains filled with maskless passengers she had to share her commute with were the likely super spreader locations you imagine them to be. How was COVID? Thanks for asking. For my wife: a bad cold for three days, along with an inability to keep warm, but a rapid recovery on day four. For me: a mild cold for two days but with terrible insomnia that zombified me during the day, then the worst cough I’ve ever had throughout day three, followed again by a rapid recovery. We’ve both still got lingering coughs but are now both testing negative and feel fine. I would not have liked to have this without the jabs, but the worrying thing is that there are multiple accounts of people catching it a second or third time so that’s really not great for stress levels with trips planned.
And finally, speaking of trips planned, here’s what’s coming up for us. This month we’ve booked a couple of long weekends away to coincide with bank holidays. First up will be a few days in Salisbury and then we’ll be returning to Hayling Island for that 1960s weekend I already mentioned. Next month it’s the first of our 2022 Sky Princess cruises, and the month after that it’s the second. You can see where we’re going on those trips by checking out the Future Cruises page, and you’ll be able to see where else we’ve got booked for later this year and next year there too.
Sorry to hear you got covid twice. That happened to a friend of mine too. She got delta and then omicron within 2 months. They say omicron is less severe, but my friend got super-sick; her sats dropped to 93, and she was just laid out. She was also vaxxed and boosted. Speaking of boosted, I’m eligible for a second booster, as I originally only got the J&J shot. Hubby is getting jab #4 also.
We’re leaving for our French Polynesia cruise the first week of May. We’re going to have to take 4 covid tests just to get on the boat: one 5 days in advance of departure from the US, one 24 h before we board the plane to Tahiti, one right after we deplane in Tahiti, and then another before we board the boat. We have to take yet another covid test before we can get on the plane to return to the US,. That’s 5 covid tests for one trip. We just got back from a week in Paris, and, for that trip, we only had to take the rapid antigen test to return. Two of the 4 covid tests for the FP cruise are required by the FP government, and the other two are required by Lindblad, the cruise line. Why Lindblad can’t drop one or both of the covid tests, given that we’re being tested twice by FP upon arrival anyway, is fucking beyond me. If we hadn’t already fully-paid for this cruise pre-covid, we wouldn’t be going, as I’m not looking forward to be jabbed in the nose four times.
Glad to see that y’all are out and about though. It does feel really good to be traveling again, even with all the swabs up the nose and masking. Got in a trip to Luxembourg while I was in Paris this time. If you haven’t been, I highly recommend it. Luxembourg City is gorgeous–clean, well-planned, and not crowded. Basse Ville is spectacular.
Only had the COVID once each. So far. Government policy seems to be to just let it run through the population over and over again and to hell with any short-term or long-term effects. Those French Polynesian cruise requirements: ouch. Feels like they’re setting it up for a ghost ship when it sails with all those chances for someone to fail a test.
Exactly. Two of the tests Lindblad can’t help; they’re mandated by the French Polynesian govt, but why the other two? Makes no sense. They also want us masked in all public spaces on board (even after we’ve been tested to death) and are issuing us neck gaiters to wear. Neck gaiters are like sieves–no protection at all against infection. And why mask up at all when we’re sharing air space, even in our cabins? The sheer absurdity of it all makes my head spin. I don’t know whether all cruise lines are like that. Hopefully, the infection theater will die down with time. I’d love to find a cruise line that is as well-run as Lindblad, goes where we want to go, and which doesn’t engage in these farcical displays.