There's good and bad about this cruise and the Azura. The staff work very hard, and are very friendly. P&O went the extra mile for Virginia. She's avoiding dairy and each day got the menu for the next day so the chefs could prepare suitable versions of the dishes. Other people had potassium free diets and similar. The food was plentiful and good, I treated myself to porridge with golden syrup in the mornings and to four course dinners.

We met some nice people including our table of six. Of the plusses with P&O is that they choose where you sit if you eat in the formal restaurants, and one day we sat with a professional dance instructor. He had been involved with the BBC's "Strictly Come Dancing", and was very interesting on that topic.

I did quite a bit of time reading, and want to read more of Brandon Sanderson. His "Rithmatist" I really enjoyed, an imaginative magical system.

On the down side there are no quiet places on board - there are a lot of areas but all have muzak blaring away. The Planet Bar might have done but Virginia found it too dark in evening for her Kindle, and during the day golf or other activities like choir practice took it over. So we never really found anywhere decent to sit where I could just sip sherry and sip a book.

The library was vestigial - perhaps killed off by the Kindle? The entertainment felt dumbed down, there was no classical music for instance.

The sheer number of people caused problems, for example we couldn't see the captain at the captain's reception. P&O by choosing to go for bigger ships may be having to cut costs in order to fill their Atlassian argosies.