Diary of a[nother] cruise
We returned, J and I, on Sunday from another cruise, this time aboard the biggest and newest ship in the UK cruise fleet, P&O's Ventura. Our private ship's log, or diary, of the two weeks afloat, is here. You can see a selection of the photographs I took, as we wended our way round the Mediterranean, here (guidance on how to view them is given at the end of the diary). They may give at least as much of the flavour as the diary. It will be obvious that this was no adventure cruise to brave the pirates of the Indian Ocean, to see giant penguins or the stone statues of the Galapagos Islands, or to experiment with our breathing in minus 30 temperatures at the South Pole. It was devoted almost entirely to kitsch.
It was a very good holiday, but somehow we don't think we'll want to cruise on quite such an enormous ship again, even if we can afford it once the slump now about to engulf us has done its work on our modest savings. And if Senator John McCain and Governor Sarah — but that's for the next post. Watch this space. 
Brian
Jeez Brian, the US Navy fleet carriers are small along side that behemoth. It is like Manhattan Island with propellors . There are countries in the UN that are smaller.
Brian writes: Absolutely right, Carl. She is one big ship. Our contribution to the P&O Ventura Suggestion Box was that they should get Hertz or Avis to run a car rental service on board so that passengers could get around the decks and the cabin corridors more easily. We kept on coming across bewildered passengers who had been on the ship's maiden voyage in March and were still looking for the place to disembark from. Even the satnavs got lost.
Thanks very much for your interesting cruise diaries! I’m currently writing a dissertation on the cruise industry (from an anthropological viewpoint, looking at ‘tourist bubbles’, cruise communities, passenger hierarchies within the ship, representations of cultures, etc etc), and found a link to your website via my online research. Your cruise diaries were a wonderful read, so rich, full of fantastic descriptions and brilliant turns of phrase. I loved them. Please go on more cruises and write more of them!! 😀
Best regards,
Michelle (University of Portsmouth)Â
Brian writes: Thank you, Michelle, for such a complimentary comment. I hope you will put your dissertation online when it’s finished, and send me the website address: it should be a very good read!
You, or anyone else, should be able to find everything I have written about our cruises (so far!) by entering ‘cruise’ in the search box at the top of each page, and hitting Enter. Links to several cruise items are included in my home page:
see https://barder.com/.