Suzze's VirtualTourist Home Page

MAY 2009
We have just survived our first cruise and can't wait to do it all again!!

We sailed with P&O on the newest and biggest of their ships at the moment, the Ventura. So many leisure and dining options. A great atmosphere and as lively or as quite as you wanted it. First class shows with breathtaking acts almost everynight.

With 3,250 passengers it was hard to imagine that this ship could provide such excellent service and make you feel so welcome. The staff always went out of their way to say hello to you.

I was never a cruise fan before but the last few years, talking to other people of my age or around have been making me think, this is not a bad way to have a holiday and see lots of different places at the same time.
What I loved about this was, the boat catered for everything we could have hoped for. That being, a lovely cabin with a comfortable bed. Our cabin steward looked after us so well, coming in twice a day to clear up after us. When we came in from our evening out, we would find the curtains drawn, the bedside lamps on, clean towels again, the bathroom all clean again, and chocs on the bed. Obviously being a woman I wasn't used to all this! :-)

So much to see and do in the evenings. We have never had all of this in any hotel that we've stayed in on the Med or anywhere else come to that.
We would never go to the same place twice in one evening. We would normaly go to a show before dinner, then have our meal and then perhaps watch a comedian or a singer. Not every night we could do that as sometimes after a day on shore we were too tired to stay up late!
The food was fantastic and so was the service. Where ever we were on the ship the service was always there. We never waited more than a minute for a drink.
Plenty of sunbeds too, but having said that my only grievance was, they are all laid out together, so you could end up laying next to a complete stranger. That didn't happen to us as they were never all occupied.
The shore excursions also ran smoothly and felt that everything was really organised.

We sailed out of Southampton, so no flying which was great for me! I could take as much lugguge as my husband could carry!! It was really good not having to worry about how much everything weighed though when I was packing. A great bonus for cruising.

So if you want to see lots of different countries, only tasters mind, love being waited on hand and foot. then this is for you! Bearing in mind you don't suffer from sea sickness........
Having said that though, you could hardly feel the boat moving at all most of the time. We had a couple of rough nights when the sea was rough and you could feel it a bit then. That didn't bother me, just kept me awake a bit that's all. I wasn't sure if I would suffer but I didn't.

We did the freedom dining which is an option worth considering if you don't want to be at a set time and sit at the same table everynight. That is the club dining. We went with the freedom dining, dining at a time to suit you. We could either go to the formal restuarant or the more casual relaxed ones, which was great. We could please ourselves.

Our ports of call were

SPAIN

CADIZ

CPSPAIN

BARCELONA

FRANCE

VILLEFRANCHE

ITALY - PISA

LIVORNO

ITALY

ROME

SPAIN

CARTAGENA

GIBRALTA

I HAVE JUST STARTED MY PORTS OF CALL PAGES, HAVE TWO MORE TO DO!

JULY 2009
No travelling for me here but I have one of my sisters coming to vsit from New Brunswick to celebrate our birthdays together, and to see her great neice for the first time Emelia.
My sister Bev will be celebrating her 40th birthday here which is great. So I have this year off as the last few years it's been me flying to Canada!

MARCH 2008 THAILAND
We had our first few days in Bangkok and then went onto Ko Samui.........wonderful!

This is a photo of my two sisters who I miss dearly. We have spent most of our lives living apart from each other, and this was a time when we spent almost two weeks together. Even though they both live in Canada they live a thousand miles apart from each other, so even they don't get to see each other. So big sis here, arranged for a get together which we have never done all three of us together at the same time, but hey... that's what big sisters are for aren't they?!!

This is where we slobbed out for a week just outside our hotel. This was our veiw for our duration here and it was bliss! I would lay out here on my sunbed thinking of what I would be doing if I wasn't where I was, and I would just just smile and lay back in the sun and have another mojito!!
We did do quite a bit of looking around the time we were there, we didn't slob out too much! I love to take my camera out and click away at everything and everyone. Did a great chillout cruise too.

This was my first time of going to Ascot! We all had to dress up as ladies for the day and it was great! We had a stretched limo to take us there and back too. Highly recommended girls if you fancy a posh day out!

This is my neice and my daughter standing behind her looking out onto the Millenium footbridge across the Thames. We had taken my neice up to London for the day to show her the sights.

and showed her the sights of Brighton too

This is me with my hubbie, daughter and son xxx