P&O Azura Fly-Cruise To Malta: The Good And The Bad

We have just returned from a week aboard P&O‘s cruise ship Azura (a ship we’ve cruised on a few times before, as you’ll see if you follow that link), but this was the first time sailing with P&O Cruises where we didn’t sail out of Southampton. Given that I’m going to be busy processing the photos taken during that cruise for the best part of a week, and given that it would otherwise mean I’d not been keeping the website updated with new content for a few weeks, and given that this makes for a good way to get some thoughts down ahead of the proper cruise travelogue posts (which will be a while as I still haven’t finished the write-ups for one of last year’s cruises and there were two more after that before we get to this Azura one) I thought that I’d do a quick review and list of highlights and lowlights from both the cruise ship and the cruise destinations we’ve just experienced.

Let’s just preface our first P&O Cruises fly-cruise notes below by saying that we had a fabulous time. Any negativities were small things individually, any excessive moaning is just my way of keeping it real, and I need to put down these thoughts while they and the emotions are still fresh because it’ll be the best part of a year before I write up about this cruise based on my current backlog. I’d hate to remember it all glowingly and worry people who know me better than that.

Azura Cruise Itinerary

Verdict: Excellent

This was a week’s roundtrip from Malta with sea days sandwiching four port stops at Split (Croatia), Trieste (Italy), Zadar (Croatia), and Dubrovnik (Croatia). I’ll go into more details about what we got up to in each of those ports further down this blog post, but Zadar was a late replacement for Rovinj, also in Croatia.

There were two key elements to us booking this cruise, despite it being during Easter half term and therefore far more family-oriented than we typically experience on a ship: firstly, we still had credit left over from The Pandemic Years and at the time of booking this was a good way to eat it all up without spending too much over the top, and we wanted a change from Southampton itineraries; secondly, we’d never been to Croatia before and, with the Italian port of Trieste being just fifteen minutes’ drive away from the Slovenian border – another country we’d not visited either – we’d be able to tick off two new countries from the list. In fact, once we got our flight times and saw details of Azura’s departure from Malta we realised we’d be able to explore ashore there as well on the day of arrival; yep, we’d never been to Malta before and wouldn’t have counted a simple flight and transfer through.

P&O Azura Fly-Cruise To Malta Experience

Verdict: Very Good

This is all the off-ship stuff before and after the cruise, and we liked it. The six in the morning flight out of Gatwick was daunting to start with, and our inability to sleep well the night before at the airport hotel didn’t make for the best of starts, but it all ultimately worked in our favour. It meant that Gatwick was mostly empty so we were checked in (once we found the desks allocated for our P&O-only TUI flight) and through security in fifteen minutes or so. We’d heard horror stories about Malta airport but, again, after a shuffling wander through passport control to get our stamps we found our bags already waiting for us to pick up in an area set aside for us, trundle them along to the bus, get on, and head off to the ship. We were aboard and ordering a drink from the aft pool bar before 11:30 in the morning, local time.

The return leg was more mixed, but that’s not P&O’s fault. The tagging of luggage on the last night with flight stickers and the delivery of boarding passes simplified a lot of things; we wouldn’t have to check our luggage in at the airport and would see the baggage next at Gatwick. However, Maltese baggage handlers were on strike which delayed boarding and led to a crowded departure hall, and French air traffic controllers were on strike so the flight had to head up over Italy and through German airspace instead, adding time. And turbulence. Bumpy, bumpy.

One thing that was a big and pleasant surprise to us, based on our previous cruises with P&O out of Southampton, was the number of non-British cruisers aboard. We’d come to expect that P&O ran at close to 100% Brits on their cruises which can be grating if you’re anything like us and trying to get away from this country, but with the Mediterranean cruising season it seems they open this up a lot more to other nationalities. Lots of Spanish voices, some French, some German, and a Maltese couple next door to us too. Brilliant to see.

Azura Service

Verdict: Poor

Poor is the overall rating for service aboard Azura, but the first day was very good. It just deteriorated a lot after that. The simple fact is that there aren’t enough staff for a fully-laden ship, and certainly not one containing as many family groups as this one had. The thing is, we couldn’t work out why. We’d already been told that cabin stewards would only clean rooms once a day, in the morning, before 11:00, and only if you put the card in your door requesting service. No card, no clean. Not an issue for us, and when you remember that P&O include the daily gratuities in the cruise fare (conveniently, so you aren’t sure what you’re spending per person per day on that widespread cruise industry charge) it didn’t make a difference. What confused us was the excuse for this: namely, that this was to allow the stewards to work elsewhere on the ship in the evening. Great. But where? They certainly weren’t in the bars or restaurants. I’ve no doubt they were somewhere because it’s not like cruise lines are going to let the staff have short days when they can work them all hours, but those bars and restaurants were calling out for additional help.

Bar service – if you walked up to the bar and ordered a drink – was pretty good, but waiting for your area of a bar to be checked over to see if anyone new had arrived or if anyone had run out of drinks… yeah, lap of the Gods time as to when that might be.

Azura Food Quality

Verdict: Bad

Ooh, boy. Breakfast in the buffet was the sort of thing that if you’d booked the cheapest B&B in some deprived town you’d be pretty happy with. If you’re on a cruise ship that advertises with scenes of luxury then what we saw each day was simply not up to standard. Scrambled eggs were arguably more fluidic than the sea we were cruising on. Sausages were a tough nightmare. The corned beef hash I didn’t dare try. The fried bread could only be eaten with bullet-proof shielding around it to protect everyone’s eyes from the shards. Hash browns were notable by their absence. And it was exactly the same every day, no variation, except for availability which varied depending on when you turned up and when anyone could be bothered to check what needed to be refilled. My wife liked the bacon, though, so there is that.

That inability to manage levels found its way to the poolside pizza counter too, where on one of the two days we went there we found ourselves in a queue watching pizza after pizza being cooked and sliced and put out to eat while there were no plates for anyone to put them on. The pizza was decent enough, but P&O have a way to catch up with Princess there.

Evening meals in the main dining room on Azura were average quality-wise, but poor variety-wise. It was a simple starters, main, dessert arrangement – oddly, where you need to order dessert while ordering starters and main, which is something we’ve not had to do on ships before – but whoever was coming up with the menu didn’t seem to give much thought to it. Starters always included some dishes as standard, which meant a lot of salads. The main might have seven options but three would be chicken, two would be some other form of salad, etc. Oh, and green beans. Let’s not forget the green beans. You’ve ordered the steak? Green beans and carrots for you! Oh, and you’d like the chicken? Carrots for you, with some green beans then. Ah, the surprising addition of a lamb option has tickled your fancy today? Please enjoy it with these green beans and carrots that we apparently have filled our entire hold with. Fish course? Let me tell you what goes well with fish! Broccoli! But alas! we don’t have any, so enjoy these green beans and carrots.

We ate at the Glass House on Azura on two occasions as we’ve had good experiences in this additional charge restaurant on P&O Cruises ships in the past. The fact that we ate at the Glass House twice tells you that the first time must have been good. It was, although not perfect. We had a selection of their mini-plates to share, which were lovely, and both chose the fish and chips for main. We’ve had the fish and chips before so knew that the fish would be good, lightly battered, succulent. And it was. About those “triple-cooked chips” though… yeah… er… We’re going to say cooked once, reheated under a lamp twice. They were still nice but they certainly weren’t what we had eaten before either on a P&O cruise ship or in a pub restaurant on land.

Ah, but that second Glass House experience. Holy crap. We were seated near two other couples and waited for a bit. After about twenty minutes one of the other couples got up and hunted for the head waiter and we all suddenly got some drinks orders in from someone sent scurrying over; we ordered a bottle of wine. Some time later the other couple received their starter that they’d obviously ordered before we arrived. The Glass House emptied of many people, and our wine bottle emptied of much wine. Someone took our food order (no fish and chips this time because the ship – that thing that sails on the sea – had run out of fish), and we ordered another bottle. It was eventually one hour and forty minutes from sitting down to getting our food. The first couple who’d attracted the waiter’s attention initially had been waiting longer, wolfed theirs down, and left. “Not staying for dessert?” I asked. There were firm shakes of heads no. The second couple eventually got their main course after two hours of seating. Their medium-rare steak selection was charred and the head waiter was summoned to be told that they were disgusted with the service and being charged when they could have had better in the dining room far quicker. They also skipped dessert. We had dessert just because we had nowhere else to go and were two bottles of wine down at this point so interested in the duration of the experience. My wife’s food, by the way, was lovely. The same can’t be said for my selection of sliders that had all the texture and temperature of a meal that had been prepared and left on the side for twenty minutes waiting for something else to be cooked. Two hours and fifteen minutes – and two bottles of Cabernet Sauvignon – of bad food and godawful service but lots of near-hysterical giggles at points with the other couples.

P&O Cruises Experience

Verdict: Average

This is relating to the way that P&O Cruises operate on their cruise ships, and some of this will be when compared to Princess Cruises, who suit us better. This is all mostly stuff that’s been said before on this site, but it bears repeating, and I’ll try to be a little more brief because I know you have stuff to do.

Something we pondered over on one of the evenings on the ship was this: What do P&O Cruises do well? Each line has its way of doing things that make them better-suited to certain people, so what do P&O do that we like? We came away with this:

• Drinks prices. These compare very well with ashore.
• Beer range. While not as good as before, and with the understanding that whatever the list says on the bar menu you’re still going to find a third of it is unavailable, the variety of beers and ciders suits a British pub-goer pretty well.
• Bacon. My wife’s the expert here, and she said it’s always good on P&O.
• Excursion prices. Compared with other lines, P&O’s prices for shore excursions is very competitive indeed.
• On board credit. This was something we only realised after thinking back to some of our Princess cruises last year. We both had per-person spend allocated as part of the Select Fare price we’d chosen (to mostly pick our cabin with its large balcony), but when checking the account during the cruise spotted that my wife’s spend initially came off her allocation before eating into mine. In other words, it appeared to work on a per cabin basis or per joined account basis instead of per person. This, we liked a lot. We almost got stung on Princess last year when we realised my account had used OBC up because I was mostly flashing my medallion for things in shops, but none of my wife’s had been touched at all. We could have lost that credit if we’d not spotted it.

There. If those things are important then maybe that will help you choose to cruise with P&O. Things we aren’t so happy with are things we’ve said before:

• Cruise card. We really don’t like picking this up from the room and on this cruise this introduced a new problem since we were on so early. As we knew we’d be able to explore Valletta before sailing off we needed that cruise card to disembark, but we couldn’t get it until the room was ready. Now, it’s possible that they would have accepted the tiny QR code they printed off for us to buy drinks in the bars since they apparently couldn’t accept the on-phone-only boarding passes we had (yeah, you apparently need to print off that PDF they send you for, I don’t know, reasons) but this didn’t feel safe. Anyway, it meant we had to wait until early afternoon before walking into the city. A minor thing, but an annoying one.
• Drinks packages. Still terrible value for money based on what’s not included for us.
• Cocktails. We love trying cocktails with different ones for different moods, but P&O’s range, particularly on these Grand-class ships, can be counted on the fingers of Terry Nutkins. Iona had a better range and specialised options in venues, which was good, but Iona also had that drinks package that meant we couldn’t drink them.
• Advertising disparity. P&O Cruises run some adverts which show the ships and gorgeous people enjoying the quiet decks and luxury. Fine. I get that. The reality is so far removed from that, and regular cruises will know not to take those adverts at face value anyway, but new cruisers might not. You will often hear people say “Butlins at sea” when dismissing cruising, and those people are ignorant arseholes parroting things they’ve heard other ignorant arseholes say and they should be roundly ignored, but P&O are as far from being Butlins at sea as they are being whatever ultra-luxurious image they put up on TV spots too, and it’s worth keeping in mind.
• Speciality dining. No idea what it was like as we didn’t book any, but when we checked on day two we couldn’t anyway as it was all booked out for the week, and we talked to someone who’d turned up on a late flight on the first day and was out of luck too. P&O need a different booking system that’s fair to everyone, and I don’t know the solution but it isn’t “let everyone who lucks out with an early flight or bus do what they want and sod everyone else.” This was further exacerbated on this cruise because we were on for a week but a lot of people were on week one of two, and a lot of other people were on week two of two; Azura was doing 7-day cruise itineraries in and out of Malta. The upshot is that some people might be first aboard for a week and still luck out completely if the people who’ve been on for a week already have taken every booking slot. I’m sure P&O Cruises don’t really care if they’re booked solid, but it’s still a very unfair system as it stands.

Turns out I wasn’t brief at all.

P&O Azura Fly-Cruise To Malta Highlights

Finally, in this way, way, way longer than I thought it would be post (but what else is new?), a quick glance at the ports we hit and what we did there. Again, when I get around to writing about this cruise properly there will be more information and loads of photos (and we saw some fantastic things on this cruise), but if you’re thinking of booking a cruise doing a similar itinerary then it might be handy to know what’s to come on this site sometime before 2025.

Valletta, Malta

We walked along the waterfront, took a look at the Siege Bell War Memorial, wandered some of the streets, and had a drink in a bar with a landlady who had some strong views about political things and people from other countries that I wisely decided not to say anything about as it looked like she could probably take me in a fight.

Split, Croatia

We took an excursion to delightful Trogir which included a visit to the cathedral there and some free time to wander. Following that we had a snack and a glass of wine at Mlinice Pantan, a great little restaurant in a former mill. Seeing my interest in taking photos the owner opened up some downstairs space with old millstones and a door at the back out onto a private jetty so I could shoot more shots. Lovely. We finished with a short walking tour of Split to point out some interesting spots and some free time to explore.

Trieste, Italy

We took an excursion here over the border to Slovenia. In Split the day before it had been 25 degrees, and here it was 5 degrees, so quite a shock. It was also rainy. But Ljubljana was great once we got into the capital city’s centre. Architecture and abstract art and expectations about the place at night, plus the churches and the castle means this is a place we’d love to revisit for a weekend break. Next up was an hour and a half’s free time at stunningly picturesque Lake Bled. Despite the weather, you could see why people like this place. However, a summer visit sounds like it would be a traffic-based nightmare. We almost didn’t bother looking around Trieste at the end of the tour because we’d walked a lot at Lake Bled and our daily programme port guide had indicated the town centre was twenty minutes’ walk from the ship, but a P&O excursions rep had been on the tour as this was the first time P&O were offering the Slovenia tour this year (the border had been closed before) and he told us the walk was closer to two minutes. He was right and Trieste was stunning. So many Roman ruins. So many steps. So close to being killed by my wife. Excellent city. Incredible day.

Zadar, Croatia

Shuttle bus here, and as Select Fare cruisers with P&O this was free. The area between the port and Zadar itself won’t win any prizes for beauty, but Zadar’s Roman and Venetian ruins were many and incredible. On top of that there’s the Sea Organ that uses the tide’s motions to play music along the clean and popular promenade. One issue we did have was with the lack of places taking card payments. You won’t lack for ATMs every few metres and that would be the solution there, but it’s annoying in this day and age, and the Archaeological Museum – which was brilliant – was a surprising inclusion in this odd practice.

Dubrovnik, Croatia

Another shuttle bus trip here. We decided not to do the walk around the walls partly because everyone does that but partly because I’d already subjected my wife’s dodgy ankles to more steep climbs than expected in Trieste, so explored inside the city instead. That’s mostly churches and alleys and bars and restaurants. And steps. Turns out we climbed almost as high as the walls at some points so didn’t gain anything. We might do the walls if we go back but Dubrovnik as a whole didn’t wow us the way it did other people. Crowded and very, very samey after a while. Horses for courses; we talked to another couple on the ship that were planning on coming back for a week as they liked it so much. That said, we did find Glam Bar down an alley because we were looking for Croatian craft beer and it sold some. Oh yes. We ended up sitting with a family from West Bromwich, the son of whom was more of a craft ale person than we are, and we ended up being bad influences on one another, spending several hours going through pretty much everything they sold there between us. Great stuff.

An apology for the length of this post for those of you who subscribe to these blog updates. The next one may be a while coming; I have a lot of photos to go through.