Back to Southampton

Days 11 and 12 At Sea 22C falling to 18C Sunny and windy

The Technical Bits – how we blog

IB writes the blog and chooses the pictures. Then IG reads through, corrects IB's poor grammer and spelling and uses her editorial veto as she sees fit.

Blogger is a pretty crude tool and the ship's internet is very slow and unpredictable. We can write the text in Word and paste that into blogger, but the pictures need to be loaded into the text whilst on line. To lessen the time on line IB uses a program called Irfan View (thanks to Alan D) which can reduce the 4KB pictures down to a more manageable 500MB. Normally a days blog with 6 pictures takes from 10 minutes up to 20 minutes to post. We mentioned earlier that the ships internet had stopped counting our usage: this lasted for 5 days so we had free usage of over two hours! It is now counting again but we still have over 2 hours of our original 4 1/2 . Yesterday in rough weather every time we tried to post pictures the internet went down during the post – normally this would be very frustrating but with all the 'free' time it did not concern us!

Update on 'Man overboard'

As expected the full story of the guy falling off the gangway has emerged. It appears that the man turned to talk to his wife as he was going ashore and leant on what he thought was the rail. It was in fact the rope that connects the gangway to the ship, and it gave way and he fell some 30 feet into the sea. At Lisbon there is a gap between the dockside and the ship created by large fenders. As he fell, he missed all the possible hazards and fell straight into the sea so he was actually very fortunate that he fell into the water. His wife shouted 'man overboard', but it seems that there was a crew exercise going on and some thought it was part of the exercise! It took some 5 minutes to get him out but after a hospital visit it is reported that he is fine.

Arcadia moored at Lisbon showing gap between ship and berth

At Sea 14^th and 15^th June days 11 and 12

From Cadiz to Southampton is some 1120 nautical miles and we need to steam at around 18.5 knots, well within the ships maximum cruising speed of 24 knots. Even so this is the fastest leg of the cruise. P & O must be crying at the cost of the fuel at this speed!

The sea has been pretty kind to us and despite winds of force 7 IG has not felt the need to pop any pills. The pool seems to have more of a swell than the sea!

We like to spend the morning by the pool, and IB spends about an hour swimming in two or three sessions whilst IG reads (IB cannot read!).

Our favourite loungers by the inside pool

Then we have lunch and tend to spend the afternoon either in the cabin blogging, siestering, or surfing or just walking around the ship. Then a late swim before dinner and the theatre.

The Verdict

It's been a good cruise, we like Arcadia but as with all things there are a few points that could be improved. We have always thought P & O's dinners are among the best and this cruise was no exception. However the lunch buffets are not to our taste: we only have had one joint (beef) and that was on the first day!

Typical lunch buffet menu

We like the central covered pool, which we think is essential if we cruise from Southampton. We had thought we might do another cruise to the Med. in October on Oceana but feel that without a covered pool Oceana is out and also one cruise a year is enough for us. There is nowhere at the front of the ship to easily see us enter ports, all the open areas have tinted glass. The one area that you can walk fron side to side to get a full view will go at Christmas when it is turned into a group of single cabins! More passengers with less space!

We liked all the ports, especially Cadiz, Valencia and Almeria and even Gibraltar seemed much more enjoyable than last time. The weather was great and our dinner table companions were fun.