To celebrate our upcoming wedding anniversary, we decided to take a SOKI cruise on P&O’s Arcadia to Iceland. The ship also stopped off in Scotland and Ireland on the way back and included the solar eclipse as a bonus.
A quick word about cruising; some people think cruising is expensive and it certainly looks expensive when you look at the brochures. But when you consider that, depending on what type of cabin you book, you are staying in a 3, 4 or 5 star hotel that travels from place to place, includes all meals and snacks and has plenty of entertainment. When you add up the total cost of accommodation, travel, meals and entertainment, cruising compares very favourably to some other types of holiday.
While P&O is still a very good cruise line, their standards have definitely slipped in recent years. Although comfortable, our cabin did not have any USB ports, which made charging our phones difficult and they assigned us to a dining sitting that was completely unacceptable. When we booked, we nominated freedom dining as our dining preference because we like meeting new people and we don’t want to always eat at the same time every night. P&O ignored our preference and assigned us to the final sitting of the evening. When we complained, we were told to speak to the head waiter so, off we went two floors down to speak to the head waiter. When we got there the queue of other passengers who were not happy with their dining assignment was over 20 meters long, which makes us wonder why they bothered to ask if they have no intention of allowing our choice. Eventually we reached the front of the queue and were told that dining assignments are based on cabin type, however we could go onto a waiting list if we wanted. We made it clear that an 8:30 dinner sitting was completely unacceptable and after two days of wrangling, we were eventually moved to freedom dining, which is what we wanted all along. It does pay to be politely persistent but it should not have been necessary.
Our first port of call was Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland. Reykjavik is a really nice city but, like the rest of Iceland, it is very expensive. Fortunately, being on a cruise ship meant we didn’t need to worry about accommodation or meals. We bought tickets on Reykjavik’s hop-on hop-off tour bus as an orientation which took just over an hour to do a circuit, then we stayed on the bus to go back to the places we liked. For us, the highlights were a flea market in the docks area that had lots of interesting tourist trinkets and Reykjavik’s iconic Lutheran Cathedral.
After Reykjavik, the ship took us to Grundarfjörður, which is a very small town that is mostly a jumping off point to see the Kirkjufell Waterfall and mountain then off to Ísafjörður to see the thermal springs and geysers and to learn about how Iceland is using their volcanic activity to generate cheap, green and almost limitless electric power.
From Grundarfjörður we travelled to Ísafjörður then Akureyri to see the famous Godafoss waterfall and the Laufás Folk Museum with its traditional farmhouse built of stone and turf. An interesting piece of trivia about Akureyri is that the red light of all the traffic lights in the city is heart shaped. Apparently, it was done to cheer people up during the pandemic.
While the ship was enroute to Akureyri we managed to see the total eclipse of the sun. P&O had provided all guests with eclipse safe glasses and the captain managed to manoeuvre the ship to keep it within a small hole in the clouds so that we actually achieved Totality and saw the whole of the total eclipse of the sun. A brilliant piece of navigation to give us a once in a lifetime opportunity. Well done P&O!
After leaving Iceland, the ship headed to Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, followed by Greenock just outside Glasgow. In Glasgow it was raining so we took refuge in Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. We intended to stay for a couple of hours and ended up spending most of the day there. Well worth a visit.
Our last port of call was Cobh in Ireland. Cobh was the last port that the Titanic sailed from in 1915 and is about 40 minutes from Cork. It is the gateway to Blarney Castle where you can kiss the famous Blarney Stone. If you do decide to visit Blarney Castle to kiss the Blarney Stone, make sure you get there early because the queue grows very long very quickly.
After Cobh the ship sailed back to Southampton and we went back to reality with memories that will last forever.