World Cruise - Southampton, 8th January 2013

We have recently cruised on Adonia - 29th October to 8th November. Our cabin was very satisfactory - kept clean and tidy by our designated steward. The Pacific Restaurant provided very good varied meals with attentive service from the waiters. We chose to pay cover charges to have evening meals in The Sorrento Restaurant, and also the Ocean Grill, the latter being overseen by Chef Marco Pierre White who spent two days onboard. The food and service there in was outstanding. Excellent planning and organisation of the evening entertainment could not be faulted and every act was first class - our particular favourite being Hilary O'Neil, the all round comedian, singer and impersonator. We did, however, wonder as to why the curtains in the Curzon Theatre were not drawn in order to reduce the distraction of the outside lighting. The speakers on board were very interesting, in particular Tricia Stewart, one of the original Calendar Girls. The scheduled ports were popular with clients, but due to very bad weather, the ship was not able to call in at Monte Carlo (the main reason for our choosing this cruise), where Shirley Bassey was waiting to board for lunch with the Captain. The Adonia is a lovely small friendly ship and we plan to revisit her.

I recently returned from a cruise on P&O Adonia in the Black Sea. ThesShip is a recent addition to the P&O line after refurbishment, although it is the smallest ship in the fleet she is able to go to places the larger ships cannot. We had a really wonderful time and the weather was really good to us. The staff on board were really very helpful and happy, nothing was too much trouble. We had an inside cabin (late booking and no balcony's left) but it had plenty of room and plenty of wardrobe space ( I had previously read an article on the Adonia saying the cabins were small and not much space). The dining room was very elegant and around the ship a lot of real wood staircases (the elegance of days gone by). Plenty too do if you want or just sit by the pool and read a book. We had some very interesting speakers on board including Edwina Currie, the evening entertainment was very varied some good and some not so good, but on the whole enjoyable. The Black Sea resorts in the Ukraine and Bulgaria were places I would return to, but not Constanza in Romania, a place I didn't feel comfortable in. The food is exellant and lots of it, one critisim is that the Conservatory is only open on special events and not every night so you have to either go into the dining room or one of the specialist restaurants, with Strictly on the TV we had a young couple of dance teachers to show us the right way to dance, very hands on, and even had Darren Bennet and Lillia Kapilova dance on one of the entertainment evenings, with every opportunity to have a chat with them. I could go on for so much longer, would I go on the ship again, definately, did I have a good time, you bet cha, not may times you could say you were on first name basis with the Captain, but I was.