At the time of sending this newsletter, I will be on a cruise ship for some much needed R&R.
My wife and I are taking a second honeymoon and we set sail from Southampton on 9 August.
We’re on the Norweigan Jade ship through http://www.ncl.com (although we did find a cheaper deal through a US based travel agent).
Having never been on a cruise we’ve been asking around to get an insight to what lies ahead. And in the process I can’t believe how many people have been on cruises and generally rave about their experiences!
After leaving southampton we head to Malaga. We also visit Barcelona, Nice, Florence, Rome, Lisbon and Vigo.
One of the main attractions to the cruise is that dinner is in ‘freestyle’ format. On some ships you are required to sit at the same table every night in the same restaurant with the same people. Now I’m all for meeting new people, however didn’t fancy being ‘stuck’ with someone that I didn’t want to be with.
With freestyle, there is a choice of 13 restaurants. In some of them you need to pay a supplement, but the rest are included in the price. And all the rest of your food is inclusive as well.
Thankfully there is a gym on board as I think I’m going to need it!
One thing we did do was research what to do in each port. In some, such as Barcelona, you just walk up into the city from the ship, but in Rome for example it’s a 90 minute train journey. Rather than doing this ourselves, we used a company in Bangalore who did all the research for $50. They’re a sort of Virtual Assistant company and I have been quite impressed by them. If you want to know who they are email me and I’ll pass on their details to you.
We sail back into Southampton on 23 August and then fly back to Newcastle, but at least it’s bank holiday weekend so that’ll help a wee bit when the Monday comes around 
