Finishing off the first day of our week-long cruise on Azura to the Adriatic, this post contains a few photos from our time after getting back on board the cruise ship.
If you’ve read the previous post in this series then you’ll know that we’d had a walk along the shoreline of Valletta, appreciating the sixteenth century architecture of this largely designed city and its impressive defensive fortifications. We’d been able to do this because we’d been on an early flight to Malta that had allowed us to spend a little time in the morning on Azura before we could drop off luggage.
That early flight and time in the sun, plus the drinks before we’d had a short look around Valletta and the drink in Valletta itself, was all starting to take its toll on us so we decided to rest for a bit mostly in our room on the ship ahead of its departure from the port, where we’d be able to sort out our luggage that had now been delivered to the cabin and watch the world go by from our balcony.
These Grand-class ships used by P&O (UK and Australia) and Princess Cruises have great balcony cabins on deck 10 that are double the (already decent) depth of the decks above, and half-covered unlike the deck with larger cabins below. We always try to book for this deck on these ships just for that additional space. The point about cruising for us is that the travelling itself is relaxing and you’ve got access to the sea air and great views. More often these days cruise lines are reducing that personal outside space for their passengers to squeeze in more additional charge locations as the balance between providing an attractive service and giving profits to shareholders swings inevitably in favour of general enshittification.
One weird sight we saw from our balcony in Valletta harbour was a boat towing a circle. We didn’t know what it was at the time but this is apparently a tuna cage net. There are, it seems, tuna farming areas in this part of the world.
We knew we weren’t going to have a late first night on the ship so we headed for a pre-dinner drink then to the main dining room for dinner a lot earlier than we normally would when we cruise. You can also take a look at the drinks menu and dinner menu below.
We had time to take part in trivia on Azura so made our way to a packed Brodie’s and ended up finishing second. We stayed to listen to the busker for a while before calling it a night.
In the next post in this Azura cruise travelogue series we’ll have a day at sea heading north from Malta across the Mediterranean and up the Adriatic towards Croatia.