Island Princess 25th August, 2023

This was our second cruise on Island Princess and the ship lived up to expectations. 14 night cruise around the British Isles with three sea days, extended to four when we were unable to go into Kirkwall owing to the threat of high winds later in the day. As usual Princess staff (team-mates) go out of their way to make you welcome and we enjoyed Crooners and the Good Spirits Bars. Using the Medallion (which automatically unlocks your cabin door on approach) made life easy and when ordering drinks. We chose our dinner booking in the Bordeaux restaurant and received excellent service knowing that we could always walk straight in. Our regular waiters were excellent. Our highlight of the cruise was the visit to Lerwick and we did the North of Scotland trip on a fantastic clear day. Liverpool was also a good call as were Greenock and Newcastle, along with Edinburgh. Not so happy with Holyhead where we did a trip to Penrhyn Castle which was nice to see but not outstanding. Portland could have been missed as we took the shuttle to Weymouth which seems to be very down at heel. Falmouth would have been a better call (which she was doing on the next cruise!).
Best of all was disembarkation – Princess arrange the luggage in the baggage hall by time of departure not by deck. The result was we were off the ship at 6.45 and were driving home at 7.15 – brilliant. Other lines ought to do this. We do have more Princess cruises booked as they are clearly a cut above P&O when sailing from Southampton.