Time for yet another trip into Lancaster. The tyre problem
proved to be a false alarm. Electronics gone mad without anything being amiss
with the tyre. We were going to pop to a travel agency to get some cruise
brochures while we waited for the job to be done. As there was no job to be
done, we didn’t bother to hang around & just came straight home instead. We
may pop along today. Meanwhile I will search on-line.
So far our cruising hasn’t been wholly successful. We keep
telling ourselves if we could keep the best of each company we would maybe have
a good holiday & it would have certain advantages.
The advantages are firstly no airport to contend with & the
humping of luggage that that involves. If we go from a British port there is
usually a wheelchair accessible coach available that can be got on at
Lancaster. It would be easy enough to get a taxi to the pick-up point.
Secondly the Fox would have no driving to do. As he gets older
he is finding driving more tiring, as well as more difficult & expensive to
hire a car, yet we do want to be able to get out & explore different
places. A ship moving from port to port, even country to country, should do
that.
Thirdly in theory the food should be excellent & plentiful. It
went a bit amiss last time & on our river cruise, but on our first cruise
it was fabulous.
Fourthly there should be plenty of entertainment on site with
shows, concerts, talks, art galleries, cinemas as well as pools, gyms etc. The
fact that a lot of these activities don’t do much for us maybe says something
about us. Certainly there are usually several bars & a library around. That’s
more us.
The cruises we’re looking at go from Southampton, a coach trip
away. The Fox is fancying one to Spain, a country we’ve never visited much but
one that does appeal to our wheelchair user friend who’d like us to go with
them on their first holiday since he became disabled several years ago. I’m
fancying the Canaries & Madeira. Both trips involve 4 days at sea for a
10-14 holiday.
We feel we ought to make a longer trip. We’ve only done a
week trip. By the time we’ve recovered from the exhaustion caused by the travelling,
the getting to the ship & sorting out, it’s time to start thinking about
gearing ourselves up for the return trip, never having really relaxed. Perhaps
a longer trip would mean we would relax. When we’re overtired we do tend to get
hypercritical & maybe that’s part of the reason we’re not yet fans of
cruising. We’ll see.
The Spanish cruise involves two consecutive days at sea from
& two Southampton. However, once in Spain it goes to a different port most
days, the only exception is two days at Barcelona, a place I’ve fancied
visiting for some time. It sounds, & looks, fabulous to me with so much to
see & do.
The Canary cruise never has more than one day at sea at a time,
the 4 days being spread throughout. The Fox is nervous about the latter. He
still can’t get over seeing a sign in a shop window when we were in Tenerife
which said “No dogs or wheelchairs”. It’s nice to feel less even than a dog!
Equally his memory of Lanzarote is blighted by the fact we both went down with
food poisoning, being so violently sick the hotel transferred us to another
clean room.
We’ve still got one company to look at. I might look at that a
bit more on-line today.
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