Kids | Gill Watson

Why not a review I hear you ask? Because I don’t want the cruise line to sue me that’s why.

The Southampton skies were a-looming with scary, black clouds as we embarked on the Italian ship-that-shall-not-be-named. “Best get drunk then if it’s going to rain all day.” I said to Ged-the-husband as we made our way to the Welcome Buffet.

Then, as if by magic, the skies cleared and before you could say, “Two all inclusive Caipirinhas, please” we were doffing off and bagsying the sun loungers by the pool.

Zoe and Joe were the first to jump in. “Aren’t we lucky?” I shouted to them “You’re in a pool, in the sun, on a ship!”

Joe shouted back. “Mum, the pool’s sea water and I swallowed some.” and then he threw up. In a pool. On a ship. And we hadn’t even set sail for Guernsey.

Now, I saw two options open to me. I could either call a member of crew and let them close the pool or I could spend the next half hour pretending I was treading water in the corner while actually directing Joe’s ‘Welcome Buffet’ in the direction of the filter.

The reason I did the latter was because

a) no one had noticed he’d thrown up.

b) the pool was starting to fill up with kids who were likely to kill us if they had to get out because of Joe’s mishap.

It could only happen to us. Other than that little disaster, everything was fine and dandy.

We’d paid just over £100 each for 2 nights on the ship, all inclusive of food and drinks and I drank over £100 worth of cocktails within the first 2 hours. My excuse is that the house wine was a bit crap so I was forced to drink cocktails instead. The food was also a bit disappointing to say it was an Italian ship. I think the calamari fritto below was about he best thing served in the restaurant.

All the staff were lovely though and the ship was gleamingly clean. I found this South African lady cleaning the loos and asked for her story. She is working to support her family back home and missing her young daughter every minute of every day. She said the cruise company were good employers and I hope she’s right. #Note to myself to remember how lucky we are.

Joe had lots of fun racing his cars down the Italian flag stripes on the table while not eating his Tiramisu.

One thing to remember if you’ve never been on a cruise is that when the sirens go off for the ‘Man the lifeboats’ drill you have to go to your Muster station and put on your life jacket. This cannot be avoided by hiding in your room because the crew will come to get you. And they won’t be happy about it.

That’s us, with our life jackets on, pretending we’re scared. There was no pretending about it actually. I may have become blasé about the air hostess showing me the airline safety procedures but I really didn’t like preparing for a possible death by drowning.

I was also a little alarmed that the whistle on my life jacket was badly chewed. As if someone had spent a long time in the water with nothing else to do.

We arrived in St. Peter’s Port at 8am the next morning. It’s bloody gorgeous Guernsey. Look at that beach. We looked at that beach but we weren’t allowed to run/swim/sunbathe on it because we only had time to do the round-the-island bus tour. With no getting off. However much we wanted to.

Fortunately we did have time to eat at The Boathouse which was completely brilliant and excellent value as Guernsey is notoriously expensive.

My huge prawns with salad and fries was £11.95 and seeing as you had to pay £18 for fish and chips in a crappy caf up the road, I reckon that’s a great deal. Everyone else had mussels which were also excellent. I had to have a pint of shandy too as I was feeling a bit delicate after all my cocktails. It cured my hangover nicely so I could get straight back into the cocktail bar as soon as we were back on the boat.