A Week’s Cruise On Iona: Part 1

When I write these travelogues about our cruises normally, I like to break them down into daily updates of port days – perhaps further broken down into differing activities if there are excursions involved – and sea days. But, for the first lot of post-pandemic-hiatus cruises there were no port days, and that’s certainly true of this particular one aboard P&O Cruises largest ship in the fleet, Iona. We would be spending a week at sea, leaving and returning to Southampton, with a sail past the Channel Islands and seeking out some sunshine in the Bay of Biscay off the coasts of France and Spain, and with every day a sea day, and many of those fairly routine drinking, eating, and reading days, that daily blogging style won’t really work here.

Instead, this account of our 2021 Iona cruise will be split into just a few parts, each covering some noteworthy events (if there are any) and accounts of what we ate and drank on the ship, along with impressions of Iona’s design and P&O’s cruising practices in a post-lockdown world. We’re usually all about the destination with the ship being secondary, but these posts will of necessity focus on the ship and line. If you’re used to reading about cruise ships from other bloggers or watching their videos where everything is amazing and everyone is incredible then prepare to be disappointed.

It’s worth mentioning right up front, and I’ll mention it again in this travelogue series when I reach the concluding part, that this would turn out to be probably our least favourite cruise we’ve taken to date. We won’t be looking to cruise again on Iona, and P&O themselves are effectively walking a tightrope as to whether or not we’ll even look at them again too thanks to just how incredibly disappointing this cruise was (although we do have one other cruise booked with them, plus some future credit to use (or get a refund for) so they will have chances to redeem themselves in our eyes). But, as I’ve said on numerous occasions, never take a stranger’s experience too much to heart, and don’t solely use that as the basis for making your own decisions. Everybody’s different, everybody’s past experiences are different, everybody’s expectations are different, everybody’s threshold for what they consider average or outstanding is different, every cruise experience is different. This will simply be an account of our experiences on Iona, littered with grumbles and complaints. Hey, I like to grumble and complain. Other people like to tell you how amazing things are all the time. We’ve all got hobbies.

So, time to start the first part of this Iona cruise travelogue series properly, and this post will take us through the first couple of days of the cruise from embarkation through the first sea day. Expect lots of food and drink photos because we didn’t really do a whole lot else other than that to start with (I wanted to wait until the ship was further south and cruising under better weather conditions before photographing it too much).

Iona Embarkation And First Day Aboard

Oh, but this cruise on Iona got off to a terrible, terrible start.

There was a requirement to not only be fully-vaccinated (and we are, because we’re not fucking morons) but to also pass a lateral flow test for Covid-19 prior to boarding. We’d experienced this already when cruising on Regal Princess, and we’d experienced it when cruising on Scarlet Lady, and while it’s a stressful thing because it can scupper your cruise at the last second, we were used to it, we knew what to expect, we understood why it was being done, etc.

So, pre-cruise testing: if you’re cruising with a cruise line under the Carnival umbrella (and we were) and you’ve arranged parking with CPS (and we had) then the testing takes place at a drive-through marquee at a terminal near where the ship is. This was exactly the same setup as we’d gone through on Regal Princess.

This’ll be fine, we thought. Drive there, join the queue, edge forwards, get details checked, get swabbed, drive off, we thought.

No.

There were a lot more cars at the testing tent than we’d seen before. There were two reasons for this: there were two ships being tested at the same time; and Iona is a big ship, and even at reduced capacity was carrying a lot more passengers.

Now, all this would have been fine had one of two things happened. If there had been more testing locations in place to cater for the increased volume of traffic then that would have alleviated some of the problems. What I think would have been a better idea, though, would have been to stagger the testing more given that all the people arriving for the other ship were getting priority as that ship was departing several hours earlier. When one set of people are given priority it means everyone else is pushed down the queue. And down the queue we went, along with everyone else due to board Iona that day. We’d arrived almost dead on time according to our communications from P&O. It ended up taking three hours from arrival to stepping on board. We were not happy that our cruise had started with hours sitting in our cars on tarmac that could have been avoided if we’d all been asked to arrive a couple of hours later.

We finally boarded Iona with thoughts of “Well, at least the worst is over. It’ll all get better from here.” And, without wishing to spoil things, it didn’t get any worse, that’s true, but the trickle of irritations kept coming and coming. And it started with needing to attend our muster before going to our room. Having sat in a terminal for a while, passing through security, walking up the ramps, checking in at the ship entrance, all with masks on and carrying hand luggage, I can’t honestly say we were pleased to be told to head off to where we’d need to muster in case of an emergency before doing anything else. Was there a sensible purpose to it? Probably. Was it bloody annoying? Absolutely.

To the room then. A chance to see the stylish elements of Iona in relative peace (as it had all been chaotic and crowded to this point), an opportunity to quickly book the speciality dining on board through the ship’s intranet site, but also to walk face-first into the next baffling bit of P&O decision-making.

“This is so fucking stupid. You know, this is starting to get aggravating,” said my wife, but I’ll get to why in a moment.

A quick word about the room since I couldn’t be arsed to take any photos here. Modern, clean style. No complaints about the quality of anything we saw in terms of furnishings. But a tight fit in places. Not much space at the end of the bed to walk past, and exactly one wardrobe door’s width of space between the side of the bed and wardrobe. What’s that? You want to put some clothes in there? Okay, one of you – just one, mind – scuttle sideways past the door, then open the door. Lean back, get the clothes put them in, close the door. Scuttle sideways. Hang something up in another wardrobe? Scuttle, scuttle, scuttle. Inconvenient would be the term to use here. There was a sofa at the end of the room. Pretty nice. Great for getting neck ache if trying to watch the wall-mounted but non-adjustable TV positioned off-centre from the end of the bed. The bathroom we did actually like. Large, glass door shower, mirror that didn’t mist up, and a night light that meant you wouldn’t disturb your partner in the room when the need to flush alcohol inevitably prodded you awake.

Speaking of alcohol brings us back to that aggravating and bewilderingly crap decision from P&O…

Upon arrival at our room we found an envelope with our cruise cards (I much prefer to pick these up before boarding, but that’s by the by). Open envelope. Enter room. On the bed was another envelope. Any thoughts that this might be some kind of treasure hunt to entertain boarding guests went out the window immediately. A letter.

Thank you for pre-purchasing the drinks package. For your convenience before you can have any drinks you’re going to need to have a small coloured sticker attached to your card for some unfathomable reason in this day and age of technology. Is the coloured sticker in this envelope? No! Did we put the coloured sticker on the cards we attached to your door? Also no! Are we now going to send you up several more decks to join a queue of people at a bar beside the pool in the dome, many of whom will be grumbling about why we just didn’t put the fucking sticker on the cards since you’d bought the package already? We just might! Will the people who have to put the sticker on your cards have an alphabetised or numerically-sorted list of people and rooms to compare your name and cabin against? I don’t think so! Please get ready to enjoy the spectacle of staff members running their fingers down pages and pages of lists of people in a random order to try to find your name!

“Maybe…. maybe now things will start to settle down. That’s probably all the shit little things done. Let’s get a drink.”

We arrived at the bar just in time for an announcement that the crew would be undertaking mandatory muster drill tests for the next ten minutes and all bars were closed.

We gazed across at the taps on the bar and eventually ordered drinks.

“I’d like a pint of Aspall’s,” said my wife. You’ll spot that what she got was Old Peculier in the photo below. I just about managed to hold back my wife’s loud utterance of “Oh, for fuck’s sake!” when told they didn’t have any Aspall’s on board. They never have the first thing we order aboard P&O ships. It’s a tradition we’d like to see go the way of the dodo.

We stayed for a second drink and got chatting to a couple on the table next to us, comparing how long we’d all waited in the car park and what our first thoughts of Iona were. We discovered that they’d boarded half an hour after us and, like us, immediately tried to book speciality dining knowing that these things get booked up pretty quickly. Too quickly for them, as it turned out, as all options were sold out. We’d actually gotten lucky here but this did highlight another incredibly poor bit of management aboard P&O’s ship; namely, that if you get on the ship late then you’re fucked. In fact, you could see that if you’d arrived on foot and been tested at the terminal before boarding then you’d probably have got on a lot earlier and would have had the pick of choices. Paid for parking? Made to queue for hours? Let’s take your mind off that annoyance by taking away some food options you might have been looking forward to, too.

The Glass House

We hadn’t booked anything special for embarkation day so decided to eat in the Glass House for the first night aboard P&O’s Iona. Actually, we were left with eating in the Glass House when we took at look at what P&O call their app but what is really just a fairly basic intranet portal site. The Glass House was the only thing listed. Now, it’s entirely possible that we could have gone to the main dining room anyway but that wasn’t immediately obvious. I would end up having a conversation with one of the dining booking people later in this cruise asking how it was possible to tell the difference between a venue not having availability yet and a venue being completely full for the entire night when the option to virtually queue seemed to randomly appear and disappear from locations around the ship. More on that confusing system in a subsequent post.

We remembered the Glass House from our cruises on Azura and Ventura previously. We’d really liked the Glass House on those ships. We didn’t like the Glass House quite so much on Iona but there was nothing wrong with it, per se. As with a lot of features across the P&O fleet in recent years, the Glass House had undergone a bit of a more refined upgrade. Fancier food, basically. We’d really been looking forward to some of the more basic but so very tasty food choices we’d had on other ships so this was a minor disappointment. But, to give Iona its due, there is a Quays area on the ship that is very good and does some of those basic food options like fish and chips, and it’s included in the price. So, arguably, an improvement. Accompanying wines in the Glass House, though, were not an improvement, but that’s down to so many exclusions from the drinks package. That’s been covered in my “short” list of good and bad points about Iona. I’m going to try not to repeat myself too much in these travelogues but, yeah, that drinks package was a terrible purchase for us based on our drinking style, and a huge regret from this cruise as a whole.

But, the food in the Glass House: yes, it was all very good, and the location around the expansive, light, and airy atrium was very nice. Glass House menus and photos of the dishes we picked are below for you to try to guess what we selected.

Iona started to disembark from Southampton as we finished our meal so we wandered out onto the wide, wraparound promenade deck to take a look at the city at night. We’ve never cruised out of Southampton so late in the day before but it’s obviously an easier decision to make for a cruise line when you don’t really need to get anywhere for a specific time.

We were pleased to see Sky Princess in dock as we left. Sky Princess would be the cruise ship we would sail on a month after this cruise on Iona (spoiler alert: Sky Princess was fantastic!) and we could hear loud music and see flashing lights on the mostly empty vessel as we glided past.

First Sea Day On Iona

We’d gone to bed fairly early the night before as my wife started to get a headache. It could have been the stress of all the tiny annoyances mounting up, but we’ll never know.

The view from our balcony (deck 12) was what we like about cruising. Sea. Sky. Occasional land masses on the horizon. The Channel Islands in this case. The feel and sounds from our balcony were what we like about cruising, too. Fresh air. The white noise from the ship cutting through the water. The gentle undulation that lets your body know you’re not stuck on land.

We could look down onto the promenade deck from our balcony where loungers lay in waiting for those who wanted to relax in full view of everyone’s rooms, and where some crazy souls were taking in brisk walks around the ship to burn off calories. Iona is the first ship we’ve been on with an uncovered promenade deck like this set out from the main banks of cabins. We would come to understand on this cruise that the reasoning behind this would be to give more outside space for sun worshippers to make up for the distinct lack of it on the top of the ship. We would come to realise that starry sky worshippers such as ourselves would be fucked over by this decision because the only view we would get at night would be a washed-out, light-polluted glare thanks to the spotlights all along the promenade’s edges. Thanks, P&O. Another one for the list of grumbles.

After breakfast we had a quick look around some of the spaces before seeing what the morning quiz would be like in Brodie’s on Iona.

We won the quiz!

This had never happened on a P&O ship for us before. We’ve done really well on other cruise lines but P&O has always seemed to set questions that other people like and we don’t. But we won. Our prize would come later in the week because Iona used a prize passport system where stamps were accrued for winning things and these could be exchanged for gifts at the end of the cruise. This was something we really liked on this cruise. This was something we’d like to see other lines copy.

In the photos below you’ll see a picture of the gin distillery equipment aboard Iona. This was a feature of Iona we were quite keen to experience but never did. We’d wanted to buy a bottle of the gin distilled at sea and take it home with us, but tax and revenue rules meant that because the ship never docked outside the UK none of the gin produced on board could be sold. The only bottles you could buy were distilled on land. Well, what’s the point of that? If you’re cruising on Iona and she does hit a foreign port then you’ll probably be able to do what we couldn’t. C’est la vie.

The Olive Grove

For lunch we decided to see if we could get into the Olive Grove as we’d heard good things about it. We checked the not-an-app and saw it was listed and open so wandered up and were seated immediately. This would be the only time we could get into this place as it was apparently booked solid for the rest of the week. Lots of empty tables when we checked and told no, sorry, and on a vessel at very reduced capacity. Hmmm.

Anyway, the fact that we tried to get in on more than one occasion tells you that the Olive Grove was good. It was good. It wasn’t perfect because my tagine came with some staff member’s long hair strung through it. Fairly low on the gross-o-meter to me but it still registers as an unpleasant discovery. The less hirsute part of the tagine was gorgeous.

The afternoon was spent with books and a few drinks. Our time in the Emerald Bar was enjoyable because we got to watch some acrobats rehearsing and training for shows.

Sindhu On Iona

The first of our speciality dining reservations was for this first full day at sea on this cruise, and it was the one we’d been most keen to book simply because we’d never been able to do so on any previous cruise with P&O. This was Sindhu.

Everyone who cruises with P&O raves about Sindhu. Or they used to. It was something we’d not managed to experience before and we are keen to experience new things; that’s what travel is all about for us. Counter to that, though, is the fact that neither of us like Asian food very much. We definitely don’t like heat. We’re old school when it comes to eating food: we like a mix of textures, something attractive and cared for, and a range of complementary flavours. And we’d like to be able to feel our lips afterwards and not be crying. How would Sindhu fare?

In a later post in this short travelogue series I’ll put up some photos of Sindhu from a day exploring the ship. There isn’t much to go on here because people were eating and I wanted to respect their privacy to some extent but believe me when I say that Sindhu on Iona looked utterly stunning. A more beautiful restaurant, we’ve not dined in. Loads of golds, even reflected in the high quality cutlery and placemats.

As for the meal: well, we didn’t have anything to really compare it with so we found it okay. There was some heat, but not a lot in what we picked. But we also found that much of it all tasted the same. The spices seemed to be the same mix for most dishes. Oh, it’s a blend of spices in meat-shaped food! What meat is it? Absolutely no idea! Well, what about that different meat next to it? That also tastes like a blend of spices in a meat texture shape. It does look like a different meat but it could be anything from swordfish to elephant with the flavourings used. What about that dip? What sort of dip is it? It’s a yellowy-brown dip that seems to enhance the meat spices more and numb the tongue. Do you think the peas taste like peas? Let’s see. These could also be spicy meat, just coloured green to be fair. Is all Indian food like this? Maybe. Okay then.

Okay, it wasn’t quite that bad, and we thought that the meal was reasonable given what we had and what we paid for it. The service was pretty perfunctory and possibly even a smidge snooty but that just generally seems to be the way P&O have decided they want their ships run these days so we can’t complain too much there. However, we did talk to another couple later in the cruise and the subject of Sindhu came up as they’d been in here as well on one of the nights. They were experienced Sindhu diners, having eaten in the restaurant on numerous other ships over the years. Where we had nothing to compare and felt it had all been okay but not really our sort of thing, they were scathing. It used to be like a banquet, they told us. There used to be a feeling of flair and drama and showiness. It used to feel like a special event. They likened their Sindhu on Iona experience to little better than any half-decent Indian restaurant.

After dinner we felt like hitting a bar or lounge. You’re surprised by this news, I can tell. We’d not been to the Crow’s Nest thus far so felt like hitting there for a few late night drinks to conclude our first full day on Iona. “I’d like a Woodford Reserve,” I told the staff member who came to take our orders. “That’s not included in the drinks package,” he replied. “But it’s under the price limit point,” I replied. “Sorry,” he said. We ordered other drinks and took them back to our room because we were feeling pissed off. Again. Later in the cruise we’d have no problem ordering a Woodford Reserve at all so, yeah, thanks a lot for that.

That brings part one of this Iona seacation cruise travelogue series to an end. In the next part I’ll cover the ship in some detail with a walk around its upper deck, promenade deck, and inside.

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