Even though I’d taken photos on board P&O Cruises Ventura before (see: Ventura Photos), and even though I’d taken photos on board many Grand-class cruise ships before, you’d have to be suffering horribly from the effects of some kind of brain-eating parasite if you knew me and didn’t think I’d look at a mostly bright, fairly warm sea day on a cruise ship and not think “Maybe I’ll take my camera for a walk around the ship grabbing some pictures. Again.” It stops me from starting drinking too early, it gets me moving, there’s fresh air, a bit of sunshine; it’s good for me. This post, therefore, taking place at sea between Portugal (that we’d just left the day before; see Ventura Departing Lisbon) and the Canary Islands, is mostly activity-free, other than those photos of Ventura, concentrating on the top deck and the sunset and dusk views from our balcony.
I might not have left my wife behind to read while I wandered around the top of the ship taking photos if there had been activities that had interested us, but it tends to take a certain something to grab our attention and this sea day didn’t have it.
Breakfast out of the way; wife relocated to a lounge with her Kindle so as to give our room steward time to plump up the pillows, tuck in the duvet, replace our towels, and give the basin a quick wipe over; time to point my camera in the general direction of the ship’s uppermost reaches and views out to sea.
The weather, as you can tell from the photos, was fairly bright, but cloudy enough with a brisk-enough wind to keep the sun away most of the time. That won’t stop the average Brit from hogging the spots around the swimming pools or on the open decks when they’re on a cruise ship, though, especially as the ambient, sheltered temperature was reasonably nice.
Personally, I’m not a fan of the whole laying around on loungers in my shorts next to other people in their shorts or bikinis with bare feet and bum cracks and hairy backs glistening with sweat on show all over the place, but it’s nice that so many of you people with that disgusting kink find so many of your kindred spirits like to go cruising too.
Grand-class ships will have two main pools and a few other smaller ones on them, so no shortage of options if you want to go swimming. On Ventura one of those main pools is protected from the elements by a retractable roof. Great for itineraries that are hitting more inclement parts of the world or when cruising in the winter seasons, and probably the main thing you should consider if choosing between Ventura and her sister ship in the P&O fleet (as mentioned here: P&O Cruises: Azura Versus Ventura) and you like to swim. We’ve never once actually had a swim in an enclosed pool area on any ship, mainly because they always tend to be so humid and noisy.
On this sea day on Ventura I just limited myself to shooting pictures of the various swimming pools and sea views from the top deck so there isn’t a lot more to say from the remainder of the photos as I headed towards the ship’s aft and its tiered spaces with small pools offering attractive views of the wake.
Once I’d met up with my wife again we decided we’d treat ourselves to some non-alcoholic drinks (we do that from time to time) then decided we’d do something we don’t normally do when we’re on a cruise ship on a sea day, and that was to have lunch in one of the dining rooms. Typically, if we eat at all, it’ll be from up by the pools or from the buffet, but it’s nice to change things up every now and then. Well, it can be nice. To be honest, the food options in the dining room were pretty mediocre and took ages to arrive.
Later in the afternoon we made our way to The Exchange for the trivia with a couple with whom we’d started teaming up with some success. Not on this occasion, however. I took the opportunity to snap a few shots of the drinks menu here, and I know some people just love to see them if you follow any of the cruise groups on Facebook.
“Does anyone have a drinks menu they can share?”
“What ship, Sandra?”
“The one we’re going on to Spain in 2026.”
“That’s years away. The menu will have changed by then.”
“Have you been to the website?”
“What ship, Sandra?”
“I know, I just want to see if it’s worth getting the drinks package.”
“What ship, Sandra?”
“Have you tried searching this group? People share pictures of the drinks menu every other day.”
“We loved the drinks we got on our honeymoon in 1994 in the Maldives.”
“What’s that got to do with this group?”
“Anyone?”
“You just have to click on the search box and enter ‘Drinks Menu’. It’s not hard.”
“What ship, Sandra?”
One thing we didn’t like on this particular day on Ventura was the fact that this was day four of the cruise but the second formal night. I know that some people love formal nights. We honestly don’t have an issue with a formal night per se but we’d like to see it done maybe once per cruise – once a week if absolutely necessary – and to really make it an event. When the formal nights come thick and fast and the only difference you can see on the ship or evening’s activities is that the backdrops and lights are set up for the ship’s photographers to try to sell portraits then it doesn’t feel special and, more than that, it’s an effort we’d rather not make on our holiday. It’s true that these days the lines are more relaxed with how people dress even on formal nights, no longer barring them from venues or tarring and feathering them in the atrium, and that’s a good thing, and we dress pretty smartly anyway, but I just don’t feel comfortable in a buttoned-up shirt and tie and don’t want to have to do it more than once on a cruise, and I don’t want to think that everyone’s staring at me for not conforming with the dress code even though I know that’s a side-effect of my introverted nature.
All of that is to say that we opted not to dine in the main dining room on this day. Had this been a Princess ship then we’d have ordered food to our room and watched a movie and left the fancy clothes-wearing mob to enjoy each other’s company, but P&O charge for room service so we weighed up between hitting the buffet or trying a speciality venue and opted for the second, giving Ventura a chance to show us how their Beach House fared against our experience on Iona. More on that in a bit, though, because first…
Our cabin balcony was on the starboard side of the ship and Ventura was heading south down the Atlantic, west of Africa. This meant our view was towards the west and that’s where the sun was setting over the horizon. You can never tire of looking at sunsets at sea. You can never tire of looking at the sea. Every moment is different, every light beam reflecting off a wave in a new way. And when you have puffy clouds dotting the sky you can get some stunning colours along their edges as the increasingly refracted sunlight illuminates them while the blue wavelengths all around give ways to pinks, purples, and oranges. If we believed in souls then we’d say there’s nothing better for them than to gaze out to sea as dusk approaches, but we don’t because we’re not daft so we can’t. It feels bloody wonderful, though.
The following video comprises a number of clips of the sea as seen from Ventura on this day of the cruise. First up are some views from the promenade deck, looking down and looking at the aft. Then there are views from our balcony, during the day, then later in the evening after the sun has just disappeared from view. I challenge you to not feel relaxed after watching it.
After a long, peaceful, uplifting period watching the waves and the sun we headed down to the Red Bar for a couple of pre-dinner drinks. The views down into the atrium on Ventura aren’t the best simply because P&O’s interior design on their older vessels leans towards dark and claustrophobic with a hint of 1990s shopping centre. I decided to push the boat out – well, when on a cruise ship and all that – and try an Aperol Spritz since there are many cruise bloggers who rave about these drinks. Yeah. Well. It was okay enough to give it a second go just to see but no, not really my thing. Just goes to show that you can never trust the opinion of a cruise blogger. Liars with terrible tastes in everything, every last one of them.
Dinner then, as mentioned, was at the Beach House. You can read what we thought of this venue on Iona here – P&O Iona: Food And Entertainment – and if you’ve read that then you’ll know that prior to Iona we’d never been to this eatery on one of P&O’s cruise ships before. We’d already discovered that the Epicurean on Ventura was about a billion times better than Iona’s experience so we were interested in seeing if the same would be true of the Beach House. The style of food isn’t one we’d normally go for and it would be wrong to say that my wife approaches food like this with an open mind no matter how many times she says she will. I know she’s going to grudgingly pick something and claim it was okay. She knows she’s grudgingly going to pick something and claim it was okay. She grudgingly picked something and claimed it was okay. I was less reserved but also thought it was okay. Nothing brilliant, again, and not any worse or better than when we did it on Iona either, but certainly worth doing very occasionally just for something different.
The evening ended for us at Havana, just for one, sat at the back by the bar with all the other people who’d decided posh frocks and jackets could take a hike.
In the next post in this Ventura cruise travelogue series we’ll pay our first visit to the Canary Islands as we arrive at Tenerife.