Yay! The holiday is here. I thought it would never arrive. All aboard the P and O liner "Ventura" in Venice and so let the chillin' begin.
Our "Ports of call" on the voyage are: Kotor - Montenegro, Corfu, Civitavecchia, Ajaccio - Corsica, Genoa, Livorno, Capri, Dubrovik - Croatia, Venice.
Hopefully as the trip passes I shall be sharing pics and comments of what we're up to - Wi fi permitting... Enjoy!
Day 1: Arrive in Venice and luggage drama!
We set off from Manchester Airport this morning at an un-Godly hour... and so that we we didn't sleep in and miss our flight, (we were supposed to check in at 4:30), we set alarms on both our phones and the hotel room clock. Needless to say we woke naturally at around 3:45 - how does that happen?
You'd expect the airport to be quiet at 5 o'clock in the morning, it wasn't it was heaving, and whilst we were in one of the numerous queues I met someone I knew from Nottingham, isn't it weird how often coincidences like that happen? Anyway, despite our early arrival and stress about being on time the plane was delayed on the runway for 45 minutes due to some "paper work". The steward asked me to take out my earphones just before take off and I was tempted to say: "You leave on time and I'll take my earphones out, deal?" But then I thought being chucked off the plane for being "arsey" might not be a good idea...
Sunny Italy on our arrival was not sunny at all, in fact it had just stopped raining and was very overcast, hmmm.
We didn't realise that our luggage would be taken directly to the ship independently, and so had not put our cabin details on the labels, and this proved to be the cause of a bit of stress later...
The "Ventura" seems like a lovely ship, the boarding arrangements were quick and straight forward, (Thompson Airlines please note). Our cabin is great, with complimentary champagne and chocolates to greet us, (although the chocolates didn't last long as soon as Jan spotted them!)
Because our bags hadn't been labelled properly they were really late being delivered to our cabin, and it was strangely unsettling having no belongings. It seems like a natural need to establish a "nest" when you arrive somewhere new and neither of us could relax without our stuff.
I phoned reception and was told that "some bags had still to be delivered", and a little later whilst walking along the corridor found them outside another cabin! All's well that ends well.
We sail this evening at 7:30 and have a full day at sea tomorrow, the chillin' has begun!
We set off from Manchester Airport this morning at an un-Godly hour... and so that we we didn't sleep in and miss our flight, (we were supposed to check in at 4:30), we set alarms on both our phones and the hotel room clock. Needless to say we woke naturally at around 3:45 - how does that happen?
You'd expect the airport to be quiet at 5 o'clock in the morning, it wasn't it was heaving, and whilst we were in one of the numerous queues I met someone I knew from Nottingham, isn't it weird how often coincidences like that happen? Anyway, despite our early arrival and stress about being on time the plane was delayed on the runway for 45 minutes due to some "paper work". The steward asked me to take out my earphones just before take off and I was tempted to say: "You leave on time and I'll take my earphones out, deal?" But then I thought being chucked off the plane for being "arsey" might not be a good idea...
Sunny Italy on our arrival was not sunny at all, in fact it had just stopped raining and was very overcast, hmmm.
We didn't realise that our luggage would be taken directly to the ship independently, and so had not put our cabin details on the labels, and this proved to be the cause of a bit of stress later...
The "Ventura" seems like a lovely ship, the boarding arrangements were quick and straight forward, (Thompson Airlines please note). Our cabin is great, with complimentary champagne and chocolates to greet us, (although the chocolates didn't last long as soon as Jan spotted them!)
Because our bags hadn't been labelled properly they were really late being delivered to our cabin, and it was strangely unsettling having no belongings. It seems like a natural need to establish a "nest" when you arrive somewhere new and neither of us could relax without our stuff.
I phoned reception and was told that "some bags had still to be delivered", and a little later whilst walking along the corridor found them outside another cabin! All's well that ends well.
We sail this evening at 7:30 and have a full day at sea tomorrow, the chillin' has begun!
