A Fred Olsen cruise felt more informal than a P&O cruise to me. The activities were very similar from quizzes through to dressing up for some of the evenings. Don't remember P&O having nautical dress themes though. We did get a very good show from the crew of Filipino / Thai / Indonesian dance and song. In addition to shows from professional performers of course. There were talks on board, someone with a police background gave interesting talks on memory and illusions and cons. For culture we had a harpist which was rewarding, she explained that harpists don't use the little finger which I didn't know. She arrived at the terminal the same time we did.

We sometimes ate in the main restaurant, sometimes in the Garden Cafe buffet. Dad preferred the buffet in the Garden Cafe even though he had to painfully manoeuvre around with his sticks. Vanilla sauce always seemed to be very like custard. I got quite into porridge with maple syrup in the mornings. The food didn't always agree with me, I hesitate to blame Fred Olsen for that. Unlike P&O at breakfast and lunch we got to choose which table to sit at - we felt that P&O's showing us to a table helped break the ice of British reserve. The staff we met were very pleasant, and very hardworking.

I tried each day to do 5 laps of the ship (a mile.) We also took the laptop and kept in touch with Wi-Fi access (£5 for 25 minutes.) Bottled water on board was expensive, cheapest way to get was to buy when going on an excursion when it was only £1 not £1.40. Very necessary to carefully check the on ship accounts - both we and the people we sat with for the evening meals had problems with amounts for the excursions. The reliance on paper forms and people getting the cabin number right may cause errors.

Got through quite a few books on the cruise. Liked Tim Power's "Last Call" and Garth Nix's "TroubleTwisters" (jointly written with Sean Williams.) Virginia took her Kindle as did Dad who seemed to be trying to sell Kindles to other passengers! I also wasted some time taking pictures of the ship for making a virtual tour or game based on the Black Watch. Not sure how far I'll get.

The seas were very kind. Only had troubled waters and no going out on deck on the last day. I'm happy to do more cruises - just not next week!