For the past 3 weeks, I’ve either been:
preparing for vacation
on vacation
or saying “Are you kidding me? I’m not doing ANYTHING. I just came back from vacation!”
Did you miss me?
I took a cruise with my family from Southampton, England to several ports in Spain on Royal Caribbean’s Anthem of the Seas, for the second consecutive summer.
And now I’m back at work I’m left feeling somewhat underwhelmed by my time off. I’m not nearly as refreshed or reinvigorated as I hoped I’d be. For a number of reasons.
1. My damn wiener kids
I’ve been in the almost constant company of my kids. I love them dearly, but really - how much family time is too much family time?
Dad, come and swim with us. Dad, get us an ice cream. Dad, come here while we make fun of you and your pasty, untanned man-boobs.
Let the uniform shopping commence and let’s get a back to school countdown started!
2. The weather
Summer? What summer? Here in the UK, it’s been a complete washout, with far too much rain. Now it’s freezing, and someone reminded me that the nights are drawing in. Next stop - Christmas.
I was hoping that the sun gods were going to strike me with a whole summer’s worth of sunshine packed into 9 golden days. A cruise to Spain, can’t go wrong, right?
Except the days out at sea were too blustery. The days in port were too hot. The return journey home was too… foggy? The weather was never quite right for this little Goldilocks…
3. The cruise
We’re loyal to Royal in our house. We’ve cruised with Royal Caribbean 9 times now, with number 10 already in the diary for next year. We love it.
I even wrote a few posts on Medium about cruising under the name of Dave Of The Seas last year. I fancied myself as a bit of a travel writer. But the idea wore off before my tan.
But this was the first time we’d sailed on the same ship back-to-back with a couple of the same ports. Even some of the staff were still the same. It was fairly relaxing I guess.
But not when someone pooed in one of the pools. That caused a mad scramble.
It just wasn’t new or exciting enough to feel like we’d done something different. The ship is beautiful. The speciality restaurants are great. The entertainment was fab. I’m just underwhelmed.
Ignore me, I’m just a big spoilt man-child who spits his dummy when every holiday isn’t bigger or better than the last.
The itinerary looked like this:
Day 1 - Board in Southampton (with lovely views of IKEA and the port car park)
Day 2 - At sea (swanning around from bar to restaurant to bar)
Day 3 - Vigo
Day 4 - Lisbon, Portugal
Day 5 - Cadiz
Day 6 - At sea (more swanning around)
Day 7 - La Coruna
Day 8 - Bilbao
Day 9 - At sea ( I’d had enough swanning by this point)
Day 10 - Right, get off - you’ve had your fun. See you next year.
In case you’re interested in the ports, let me whizz through and give you a whistle-stop tour, so you don’t have to spend a ton of money finding out what it’s like for yourself.
Vigo
We visited Vigo on a cruise 2 years ago. It was lashing down at the time, so we never really saw a great deal of the place. We found it quite boring. Now we’ve visited it in baking heat and I can say with certainty that we were right, it’s incredibly boring and given my time again, I’d have stayed on the ship.
The highlight of Vigo was seeing the typical Spanish streets open up into a huge square, where a wonderful orchestra entertained Sunday morning cruisers and locals at nearby cafes with songs from West Side Story.
That passed 20 minutes. Other than that, I’d be happily persuaded otherwise that Vigo has much at all worth going back for.
Lisbon
We visited Lisbon on last year’s cruise. It’s an absolute delight. With it’s distinctive cobbled streets, Middle-Eastern influenced tiled buildings and vivid yellow trams, Lisbon’s got plenty about it to keep tourists entertained.
As sad as I was to depart, both last year and this year, I particularly liked sailing away from Lisbon, as you get to go underneath the ‘25 de Abril’ bridge, which is a replica of the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco. It’s quite wild as you don’t feel too far away from it from the top deck of the ship!
Cadiz
With its castle ruins, historic old town and beautiful old cathedral (they don’t make ‘em like that any more), Cadiz looks like a film set. It’s one of the most authentically Spanish cities I’ve been to. No one I saw spoke English, so I was forced to put my Duolingo 700-day streak to the test and work through some scenarios with locals.
Mostly I asked people if they spoke English. When they said no, I asked them to speak more slowly cos the little bit of Spanish I know is really bad.
We went to one of the beaches - Playa De Santa Maria Del Mar - which was understandably rammed with holiday-makers, but had lovely soft, golden sand and calm, warm, shallow waters. Perfect for the kids.
La Coruna
Where Cadiz felt like you were walking through an Indiana Jones movie, La Coruna, is full of modern shop-fronts and outdoor markets. The pace of life here felt relaxed.
We dipped into the Museo de Bellas Artes (mainly cos it was free and my middle-aged bladder doesn’t like to wander too far from a toilet) and then we went to the beach again.
The waves were rough as hell and I didn’t know Spanish water could be that cold in August. But it was a pleasant couple of hours milling around. I didn’t see anything worth going back for.
Bilbao
I travelled to Bilbao on my way to San Sebastian a few years ago, but never stopped to see what the city itself had to offer. I didn’t do that this time, either. The ship docked 20 minutes away by shuttle bus, in the town of Getxo.
We took the bus, $10 each for a round-trip, and it left us perfectly placed to head to the Guggenheim Museum. An architectural delight from the outside, we just had to go in. There are some extraordinary works in there, but my favourite was Maurizio Cattelan’s ‘Daddy Daddy’ - which shows Pinocchio face-down, dead in a pool of water.
Don’t worry, he’s not a real boy.
4. The drive home
It was the worst cruise I’ve seen for people being sick. The pool got emptied 3 times for someone pooing in the water.
I can’t help it, I just get so excited on holiday.
I saw 5 separate people throwing up in the buffet restaurant. So when I started to feel unwell the night before we left, it didn’t surprise me at all. I got up 3 times in the night, and had to stop in a lay-by on the motorway too.
I don’t think the toilet attendant at Cherwell Valley service station and I are ever going to be friends either.
The times I’ve driven to Southampton and back have always been alright. About a 4hr drive, with a stop for a coffee.
This time, it took 6 and a half hours plus. It was grim.
And now I’m back at work, with not so much as a day off to look forward to between now and Christmas.
Ah well - I’ll just have to plough on and get more writing done!
See you next week.
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I was hired to speak on a cruise and it is the last cruise I will ever go on. They are not maintained with health in mind. May your next holiday be magnificent.