Cruising 2023 – Year in Review

Once again we have had a great year for cruising, with the CoViD-19 restrictions and tests well in the past and cruising just as good as it has ever been. While all our travel plans for 2023 did not quite go as expected, we still had a variety of very different cruises and visited some great ports of call. 🙂

After a cruisless first quarter of 2023 (!!), we experienced a wonderful 10-night cruise on Fred Olsen’s Bolette, around the Nordic Capitals of Oslo, Hensinki, Stockholm and Copenhagen, also visiting a new port of call in Demark, Aarhus. It was our first cruise on Bolette and we had the privilege of having our junior suite upgraded to a 568 square feet premier suite, at no extra charge. We enjoyed crisp but sunny weather (as you’d expect in northern climes in April) and had an amazing time.

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We didn’t have long to wait until our next cruise, and this was one a little bit different – a week of island-hopping around the stunning Croatian islands on a 30-passeneger yacht, called Solaris. Once again, we were delighted to get a complimentary cabin upgrade and instead of being on the bottom deck in a cabin with portholes, we found ourselves in a very pleasant cabin on the main deck with a large window. For the overall size of the yacht, we had much more space than we expected, and it was very comfortable indeed.

Life on the Solaris was more laid back than cruising on the traditional cruise ships; no formal evenings, no featured entertainment and no high heels allowed on the vessel for fear of damage to the wooden decking! But the places we visited were so picturesque, and the water was so blue, everything was just perfect. In addition, there were several different nationalities on board; mainly German, but also French, British and Austrian. Everyone soon got to know everyone else and we had a great time. We would certainly recommend this type of cruising.

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We’d started 2023 with three cruises booked and one land-based tour, but shortly before our cruise on the Solaris, we received an email from Newmarket Holidays advertising an 8-night Scotland and the Faroes cruise on Ambition, one of the ships in the new Ambassador Cruise Line. The ship would depart from Newcastle and return to Liverpool, but the offer included free car parking at Newcastle (usually £12.00 per day) and a complimentary coach from Liverpool back to the port of Tyne. In addition, the cost included the complete drinks package, all tips and £40.00 each towards any shore excursion, and it was a very good price indeed. As we had fancied giving Ambassador a try, we decided to go for it. When we called to enquire, they said that only inside cabins were left, but we decided that a cruise in an inside cabin was better than no cruise at all, so we booked up and started counting down the days. 🙂

When the day arrived, we embarked the Ambition and found that, once again, we’d been given a cabin upgrade; we had our ocean view on Deck 9 after all. We laughed because, at 140 square feet, it was less than a quarter of the size of the one we’d had on Bolette in April. 🙂

We visited some great little ports of call. Our first stop after leaving Newcastle was to the historic, maritime port of Dundee, where we were able to have a look around Captain Scott’s RRS Discovery, and afterwards meet up with one of my Twitter pals, Anthony (@nauticallyspeak), where we passed a pleasant couple of hours in a pub enjoying a lively “ship talk”.

Other places visited included Lerwick, Belfast and the pretty little town of Tobermory as well as Torshavn, in the Faroe Islands.

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When we arrived back home from our unexpectedly-good cruise on Ambition (as a budget line we didn’t have high expectations, but it was actually much, much better than we had anticipated) we only had a couple of months before our next exciting adventure, a long-awaited land-based tour of Chile and Easter Island. We had first booked this trip to take place in September 2020, but Covid put paid to that, as it did most things in 2020.

Rebooking it for September 2021 it was cancelled once again, as Covid was still very much in our midst. We rebooked in for February 2022, and it was cancelled once again. We were determined to visit Chile and Easter Island, however, so we rebooked it yet again, and this time it appeared that nothing would stop it happening… or so we thought.

About a month before we were due to go, we received a call from the tour operator to say that during the dates we had booked they were unable to reserve any flights to Easter Island. WHAT?!?! After all this time, we still wouldn’t be able to go?! The company therefore cancelled the whole trip – the fourth year on the trot our visit to Chile wasn’t going to happen!! 🙁

As the cat was already booked into the cattery and time was already booked off work for those dates in September, we decided to find something else available for the dates we required, and we discovered that the wonderful Majestic Line had two spaces left on their little ex-Royal Navy training vessel Glen Rosa for the dates we wanted. Serendipidous indeed. Glen Rosa, which carries only six passengers and two crew, will surely be the tiniest vessel we will ever cruise on, and the cabin we were allocated was also the smallest. We remarked that we’d cruised in the largest stateroom we’d ever had on Bolette in April, and now we were in the titchiest ever.

Our cruise on Glen Rosa was quite the adventure, and the wind, rain, high seas and the tail end of Hurrican Nigel prevented us from completing any of our itinerary, having to go for “any port in a storm”. But the places we did visit were wonderful; all the wild and rugged beauty of Scotland as well as fabulous gourmet food and attentive service and the good company of our fellow passengers and crew. Like our cruise on Solaris in May, it was certainly a different way to cruise.

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November 2023 saw us take our final cruise on the year, the long-awaited “Fleet in Funchal” cruise organised by Fred Olsen Cruise Lines. In March 2020 Trevor and I should have been going on Balmoral for the “Four Freds in Funchal” cruise, where Balmoral would have been joined in Madeira by her (then) sisters Braemar, Black Watch and Boudicca. But… well we all know what happened in March 2020, don’t we?

This time, however, we sailed out of Liverpool on Borealis, to meet up with sister ships Balmoral and Bolette in Funchal. We’d originally booked an ocean view cabin but were offered an upgrade to an aft-facing junior balcony suite for a very good price indeed, so we snatched their hand off. Cabin 6227 was lovely and had the nice big balcony that usually goes with those fantastic aft staterooms. We laughed because the balcony was larger than the whole of our cabin on the Glen Rosa. 🙂

Against the best-laid plans of mice and men, the weather was the ultimate decider of when and where we were to go, and our itinerary had to change. We did, however, make it to Funchal to reunite with the Bolette and Balmoral, and (like our visit to Dundee in June) we were able to meet up with a couple of my Twitter pals, Abi (@Scotontherock5) who was on the Balmoral, and Matthew (@MatthewCruises) who was on Bolette. Seeing all three of the Fred ships next to each other in the sunny port of Funchal was just something really special, and we had a fantastic cruise overall, despite not being able to get to the Azores (we’ve been twice before in any case).

So there we have it. A total of 46 days’ spent cruising this year, in a variety of vessel types, in good weather and in bad. Whilst we didn’t visit any new countries this year we certainly visited some undiscovered, charming little ports, islands and hidden gems, and we’ve experienced that fantastic sense of adventure that comes with trying something new.

Here’s to another wonderful year of cruising and discovering far-away lands in 2024! 🙂