There’s a tradition online that the end of each year sees bloggers producing and publishing an article covering the year in review, a tradition started when people began asking themselves “What’s the least original thing I can do with barely any effort required?” Well, I’m not a traditional sort of person but I can certainly see the appeal in being lazy so without further ado let’s take a quick look back at 2019 and see how the year panned out as far as travelling went.
March
This was the month we took our big cruise of the year. We had a stressful start (last minute flight changes and luggage that didn’t follow us to Chile) and I had the pain at the end of losing all the video I’d taken but the trip itself was nothing short of incredible. The cruise in question was on Star Princess, cruising from Chile to America and the things we saw and experiences we had included:
- Crossing the equator for the first time.
- Visiting an observatory.
- Visiting Incan ruins and seeing petroglyphs.
- Visiting Peru, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Mexico for the first time.
- Hiking up a volcano.
- Seeing ridiculous amounts of wildlife such as rays, dolphins, sea snakes, iguanas, and monkeys.
The two stand-out elements of that cruise were the excursions to the Cerro-Tololo observatory in Chile and the hike around the Mombacho volcano in Nicaragua. In both cases these were excursions that didn’t attract a lot of people and that appeals to our sense of being a little bit different when we travel. The observatory was incredible because we’re nerds, we love most things science-related; the hike was incredible just because it was hard work with one hell of a reward. My wife struggles with an old leg injury and a poor ability to control her core temperature so physical exertion is not something she enjoys (that’s putting it mildly) but she did it anyway just so she could have that memory of seeing the fumes and feeling the heat from fumaroles while standing in a cloud forest, gazing down on the largest lake in Central America. It’s the sort of thing we travel for.
May
We took two cruises in 2019 that were with completely new cruise lines for us and the first of those occurred in May with a taster trip aboard Celebrity Silhouette. This cruise would see us visit and stay overnight at Amsterdam, something we’d done before, but it also took place over the weekend of Liberation Day in the Netherlands which meant it coincided with a music festival in the city.
This was very much a mixed bag of a cruise. We’d heard so many good things about Celebrity Cruises that we felt sure we were going to have a good time aboard with food reputedly better than we were used to on Princess. Oh, that so wasn’t the case. Variety: no complaints. Quality: ah. The staff seemed surly at first, too, and embarkation wasn’t the relaxing event we’ve become accustomed to, either. A blessing that we spent as long ashore in the Dutch capital as we did, ultimately, and we enjoyed that aspect of the cruise. And, to be fair, the last night aboard saw a Jekyll and Hyde transformation in staff attitudes and some generous drinks-pouring that almost made up for the disappointments.
September
The third cruise of 2019 was the second with Princess Cruises but a new ship for us in the form of Emerald Princess and a week in the Mediterranean.
This was only our second time cruising in the Mediterranean and, like the first occasion, it was just a week in length. There are some fascinating ports and plenty of history to explore in this part of the world but its close proximity to the UK means we have made a conscious effort to look on it less favourably than destinations further afield on the assumption that travelling will become less easy as we get older and we may as well take advantage of being able to make long-haul flights while we’re physically able to and while society hasn’t collapsed.
The most interesting aspect of the cruise was that we kept ending up on the same excursions as a lot of other people. When you consider the number of people on a cruise ship of that size and the excursion options in every port it was fascinating by the end just how many people ended up making exactly the same choices as us and arriving at the meeting point for trips at roughly the same time so that we’d all end up assigned to the same bus.
One highlight of the cruise had to be the immense amount of fun had watching (and photographing) people in the vicinity of Pisa posing for photos in front of the leaning tower. Another one, and a surprise, was just how much we liked Rome from the disembarkation tour we arranged. We paid a visit to the Vatican City and had a bit of a drive around before heading to the airport and we had an instant feeling that we’d need to come back and look around Italy’s capital again.
November
November was our last cruise of the year and the second one with a brand new cruise line for us, Marella. This was a repositioning cruise at the start of a seasonal change from Europe to Asia for Marella Discovery and we booked on for the first week, travelling from Naples, Italy to Aqaba, Jordan. Jordan would be a new country for us and would mean we could visit Petra, and getting there meant passing through the Suez Canal, a bucket list item for a long time.
Pre-cruise was problematic because the cruise line’s idea of customer service and supplying information and my idea of customer service and supplying information turn out to be worlds apart. Indeed, a question I asked in several ways in the months ahead of the cruise was only answered four weeks after returning. Handy.
However, Manchester Airport was surprisingly easy to navigate, the flight out was perfectly fine, the flight back saw us get an upgrade into premium (ooh!), and, most importantly, the cruise ship and cruise were absolutely fantastic. The ship was better than expected, the food was better than expected, the all-inclusive drinks package was superb, the staff were excellent, the things we saw were amazing, and to top it all off, we met up with our second set of cruise bloggers during 2019, Paul and Carole, and let’s just say that things got a bit blurry in the evenings.
You hear people gush praise about Petra and you might wonder if that praise is over the top, whether it’s not as good as people say. It’s better. It’s hard work to see it all but the rewards for an astonishing place are worth it.
December
And so to the final month of the year. No travel exactly but an overnight stay aboard a cruise ship so that almost counts.
For the weekend before Christmas we booked a party night stay on Fred Olsen‘s Black Watch as it was docked in Southampton, would provide for a Christmassy hotel(ish) break at a not-too-unreasonable price, and give us a chance to see what we thought about this again new-to-us cruise line and its smaller, older ships.
There was a lot to like about the Fred Olsen experience even if the ship itself wasn’t entirely to our liking; that mostly stemmed from it being an older, smaller ship and there being some design elements we weren’t keen on, almost all involving the cabin space. With the excellent service, good bar prices, and very good food, though, the right itinerary and onboard accommodation on perhaps a larger vessel could easily factor into future cruising plans.
2020 Travel Plans
That’s 2019 covered so the continuing tradition of these lazy blog posts is to quickly whet the appetite for what’s lined up in the year to come.
Well, if you ever viewed the Future Cruises page you’d see our cruise-related travel plans anyway and if you ever read the regular blog posts you’d know all this anyway too but, whatever.
2020 has six cruises booked so they’re naturally of shorter durations than typical in order to fit in with our annual leave allowance at work. Shorter durations also mean they’re fairly nearby too because that’s how we do things and, indeed, only one requires a flight with all the others starting and ending in Southampton.
- A week aboard P&O‘s Britannia. A new ship for us but hitting some spots in France and Spain that we’ve done before but where we have plenty of exploring to still do.
- The inaugural cruise on Enchanted Princess starting in Italy and ending in the UK. A couple of new ports along the way, including our first visit to Portugal, but this is a rare occasion when the ship may be the star of the trip.
- A weekend to France on P&O‘s Ventura, most notable for being one where several members of a Facebook group of which I’m a member will also be cruising along.
- The longest cruise of 2020 will be eleven nights on Crown Princess hitting the Canary Islands and Madeira for the first time for us.
- Immediately following that we’ll be staying on Crown Princess for another four nights visiting Belgium and Guernsey. While there will be nothing new about the ports or ship in this instance this will mark our first ever back-to-back cruise (we’ve got the same cabin to make things super easy) and we will finally hit that Elite level loyalty with Princess at this point. Several other cruise bloggers will also be joining this cruise so plenty to keep us occupied.
- Finally, a second weekend break on P&O‘s Ventura towards the end of the year and a chance to see Belgium near Christmas.
The only other thing we’ve got planned for the first year of the new decade is a long weekend in Newcastle. I know. Not quite as glamorous as cruising but a chance to see some rugby league, catch up with people we know, and enjoy the nightlife of the northern city.
2021 is the year of travel we’re really looking forward to. But, one year of cultural enlightenment at a time.