A very enjoyable experience

We sailed from Southampton on 29th June, our 46th wedding anniversary. In the evening in the Meridian we had a window seat and the waiter put some balloons over ouheads on the ceiling and at the end of the meal 5 waiters came and sang “Congratulations”. We are not seasoned cruisers and found this a very nice touch. A bit cheesy maybe but we were pleased with the attention. My wife had her 70th birthday on July 5th and we celebrated with a meal in “17”……absolutely first class would highly recommend it. My 69th was on July 7th and we ate in Sindhu. Again a real treat. We were unfortunate to have a very loud Welshman on an adjacent table, his name was William Morgan Lewis he was noisy and dominated the conversation on his table for the whole of the evening. Apart from this we found the food and service excellent.

Apart from our celebrations we really enjoyed the whole cruise. The food on board in the Meridian was generally excellent, The buffet is a good place to visit fior a chat over some tea in the afternoon but found the sandwiches a bit boring. The places visited wre an excellent choice as we had not been to any of them before. St. Petersburg was a highlight. The P and O excursions were really good. Catherines Palace wa an early visit,7am departure from the ship but was worth it as our party was on it’s own in every room. The following day we had an excellent guide for “An introduction to St. Petersburg” spent about 4 hours seeing the sights and plenty of photo stops. Again highly recommended.

Our first time in the Baltic and we will be back to see more.

The Azura staff and facilities were very good, we like this ship and would cruise on it in the future.