Virgin Voyages Scarlet Lady Sea Day

Describing this final post in this short travelogue series covering our weekender cruise on Scarlet Lady as a sea day is a bit of a cheek since they were all sea days, this being a cruise to nowhere and simply a chance to get back to sea and get away from the drudgery of lockdown life. Still, it was a day at sea so it’s an apt description even if it isn’t that different from the previous posts, and to be certain I ran some of the other potential titles through my mental focus groups…

• That Day We Had Afternoon Tea On Scarlet Lady
• Scarlet Lady Cruise: Memories Of When I Didn’t Take Many Photos
• Scarlet Lady Day 3: The Third Day

… and the responses were not positive.

The lack of potentially compelling titles is an artefact of us not really doing anything that different on this day at sea. You might think that with such a long lay-off from cruising due to the pandemic we’d be keen to do everything going. You might think that this would especially be the case on such a different ship as Scarlet Lady. Perhaps, with hindsight, we should have been a bit more outgoing, adventurous, seeing what was going on, but that’s not really who we are or why we generally cruise. We’ve always been about the destination and exploring ports, with the luxury and convenience and sense of motion that comes from being on a cruise ship very much secondary benefits; albeit great ones that make us favour holidays at sea over those on land. These “seacation” cruises coming out of lockdown took away that main driver for us and we slipped easily into the “inbetween ports” mode of travel once more, content to mostly read, drink, eat, and just relax. Just relaxing is great for your physical and mental wellbeing, but facilitating the generation of snappy post titles about cruises on luxury ships… not so much.

We intend to try out a few more things when we cruise again with Virgin in 2022 on Valiant Lady, now that we have more of an idea about what the cruise line does and what it offers. Perhaps there will be more interesting posts after we’ve done that. I wouldn’t count on it because I know me and I know what bores my readers to tears.

So, if we didn’t do much, then what exactly did we do on this final day of the cruise, en route to Portsmouth? Well, the one thing that we did do that wasn’t eating and drinking was have a proper walk around Scarlet Lady, taking lots of video as we went.

Now, I’m not a video person normally. I know that when it comes to documenting cruises people broadly fall into the bloggers or vloggers camp. The personable, attractive, or egotistic people prefer to use video. I like the first of those sorts of people – well, the clue’s in their adjective – and seethe jealously at the second group while avoiding like the plague the third bunch. I also don’t fit into any category there which is why the written form and photography are the realms in which I inhabit. But when it comes to finding out about things – cruise ships, for instance – people also fall broadly into those who prefer to read and those who would rather watch moving images. To simply ignore one group of people trying to get information goes against what I’ve always asserted the internet should be about and so I have begun to consider embracing – after a series of microscopic baby-steps – video a little more. Maybe my voice will appear on a video in 2029. Perhaps a split-second reflection of my ears around 2036. Anything could happen.

I took a lot of video. The raw clips you don’t want to see, trust me. However, I have edited together several minutes of venues inside and outside taken across this Scarlet Lady cruise. If you’re the sort of person who prefers a seven-minute video to a four-minute read then you’re in for a treat.

All the video for this cruise was taken on my phone. I had to stop to move files off my phone and onto a portable SSD a couple of times because I was running out of space. I’ll probably use more of a hybrid solution of phone and camera video in the future because my camera deals with low light so well and allows me to really play around with depth of field while my phone has better opportunities for stabilisation through using the gimbal. Gosh! Who cares about any of that!?

Video bits done in the morning, we decided it was time for just some general relaxing, and since it was around lunch time we thought we’d get a bite to eat. An aborted attempt to hit the pizza place – no available seats inside and it wasn’t really the weather for eating on the promenade deck – was followed by us walking by the Lick Me Till… Ice Cream spot and deciding to try some out. We’re really annoyed that we didn’t try some before this last day because they were fabulous. Different flavoured cones and different scoops of flavoured ice cream added up to a ridiculous number of combinations possible and we only managed two of them between us.

Ice cream is not a lunch, though, and we’d intended to find something a little more substantial when we wandered past the Sip Lounge and spotted some stands containing what looked suspiciously like an afternoon tea on them. We’d not seen them mentioned in any pre-cruise blurb, we’d not heard anyone talk about them, we’d not seen it promoted anywhere, but we sat down and asked a passing member of staff. Yes, apparently, there it was, tucked away on one page of the lounge’s menu: afternoon tea. A choice of teas and an option for some fizz as well, and of course we went for the fizz as well. It should be noted here that this was one of the few exceptions to the rule on Scarlet Lady in that this food cost extra. It should also be noted here that this was absolutely wonderful. I mean, you can tell that just from looking. Proper green tea in a proper ball tea infuser. Proper cream. Proper way too much food. Perhaps we should have ordered one afternoon tea between us, but that feels like cheating.

Criticisms of the afternoon tea on Scarlet Lady were simply that it wasn’t advertised well enough and that I could have done without the blue cheese thing. Did Virgin buy a job lot of blue cheese before sailing? It seemed to appear quite frequently in dishes.

Stuffed, we headed back to our room – you know our room; that Seriously Suite cabin – to rest with some sea views, something from the complimentary bar, and put some music on the turntable.

The final evening on Scarlet Lady started with dinner that we’d booked at the Wake restaurant. The dining venue did not disappoint in terms of its view, and the menu offered was very good indeed. There were plenty of options and you could easily come back night after night and choose something different. I decided to try the bone marrow as starters which wasn’t to my liking but hey-ho! You don’t know until you try, do you? The main course and dessert were perfectly good, though. My wife’s filet mignon main course was very good, it’s true, but it wasn’t quite to the same standard as on a Princess ship in the Crown Grill. That’s fine; everyone’s got their specialities and you can’t be the best at everything. Where Virgin excelled in this dinner was the bread. Oh my! That was incredibly good. They should just have a bread place on board that makes those. My half-Irish blood bubbled with joy eating that bread. I’m quite fond of the bread is the gist of what I’m saying here.

Just the last night to get through then, and, after a quick wander onto the aft deck to get some fresh air following dinner, we made our way back inside for some drinks to conclude this cruise. It was more crowded in most places than it had been on the previous nights but understandably so given the drop in temperature and increased wind velocity along with no pool parties to persuade the masses up on top. However, finding seats was never an issue on Scarlet Lady as she always seemed to have plenty around, and a quick message from friends saw us meeting up with them at the Roundabout area. Live music nearby, plenty of chatting, and sampling of some different alcoholic beverages once more rounded off the day nicely.

That concludes this travelogue series on our UK Scarlet Lady cruise, short simply because the cruise was short, and not in any way comprehensive because there was far more to do than we reasonably could have done and because we didn’t know what to expect so didn’t approach this trip with any firm plans. Things will be different on the next cruise. There are shows we’d like to see, cocktail evenings we’d like to attend, activities we might be interested in now that we know a little more about them.

We’d been unsure about Virgin Voyages and Scarlet Lady from the first PR releases, and we’d been convinced that what they were planning to do was unsustainable given the sort of people who cruise and the itineraries and durations proposed. She’d not been a ship we thought we’d be interested in, but pandemics and home-porting down the road from us have a way of changing people, and perhaps the delay had a way of altering Virgin’s original plans a little and tempering them towards the existing cruise fanbase a little more instead of trying to start from a clean slate. I don’t know for sure, but the result was a thoroughly, thoroughly fantastic experience. The ship’s not perfect – I really missed a proper pool to swim in and sometimes it felt she was trying too hard to be a little too different with food and drink offerings – but she’s bloody close, and none of the gimmicks felt gimmicky; they felt right. We’d talked to plenty of people on this ship and nobody had a bad word to say about her. We even talked to a retired couple who almost exclusively cruised with Cunard and they were talking about booking more cruises on Scarlet Lady. That’s quite the recommendation to try her.

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