From all around the west coast of Phuket you may get the feeling of being watched over by a figure sat high on a hillside above you - that of the Phuket ‘Big Buddha’ statue. After a day exploring viewpoints around Phuket town, we decided to take a trip up the hillside to view the Big Buddha up close. The…
What to Expect on a Caribbean Cruise on P&O Arvia... We booked a two-week Caribbean cruise with P&O on its newest ship Arvia, having been amazed the previous year by its almost identical sister ship Iona in the Norwegian Fjords. What we hoped for from our P&O Arvia Caribbean cruise was to get away from the dreadful British winter weather…
Our first port of call on our P&O Arvia Caribbean cruise was the British Virgin Island of Tortola. We hadn’t booked a P&O cruise excursion in Tortola, as we’d read that it’s easy enough to visit the Virgin Gorda baths yourself independently, so we decided to do an independent Virgin Gorda Baths cruise excursion ourselves, making our own way over…
For our shore excursion in the Dominican Republic on our P&O Arvia Caribbean cruise, we’d picked to do the Saona Island excursion called 'Escape to Saona Island' with P&O. It promised a full day with all the things we’d hoped for on a day trip in the Caribbean - boat rides, snorkelling, all food and drink catered and remote island…
With most of our shore excursions on our P&O Arvia Caribbean cruise being beach-based, we wanted to pick something a bit different for our excursion in St Martin, so decided to do the zipline excursion in St Marton at Rocklands Estate, booked direct through P&O. Rocklands Estate is a kind of adventure park set in the forests of St Martin.…
For our stop in Antigua, we’d booked another excursion with P&O - this time the ‘Stingray Sensation’ excursion, which takes you to the so-called ‘Stingray City’, where you get to swim and interact with stingray on a sandbank just out off the coast of Antigua. The Stingray City excursion turned out to be one of the coolest, most fun things…
We’d spent the morning in Antigua doing one of the most fun holiday excursions we’ve ever done at Stingray City and, with the afternoon free, wanted something else to fill the time before heading back to P&O Arvia for an evening departure. While we were at Stingray City, we noticed a leaflet advertising a snorkelling tour at Galleon Beach in…
We’d heard that Les Salines beach is the most beautiful beach in Martinique, but it’s quite a long way from the cruise port and not that easy to get to. But the photos we’d seen and reviews we’d read, combined with there not being a huge amount of places to visit in the immediate Martinique cruise port area, meant we…
For our stop at St Lucia on our Caribbean cruise on P&O Arvia, we wanted to visit the familiar sight of the Pitons - the twin mountain peaks that are St Lucia’s most-famous landmark, so we booked an independent excursion with the Caribbean tour company called ‘Caribbean Tours You Save They Benefit’. The excursion is called the ‘Land and Sea…
Our last day of our Caribbean cruise on P&O Arvia arrived as we docked back where we started in Barbados. We had a full day and night in port before leaving the next morning so decided to make the most of being able to be out later in the evening and booked a sunset catamaran tour - an independent excursion…
For our two week Caribbean cruise on P&O Arvia we stayed on deck four, in a four-berth family LB grade seaview cabin. Here’s our Arvia cabin review of cabin 4445… Cabin 4445 on Arvia is a good cabin in our experience and we had no issues and would stay in it again. We deliberately chose the location on deck four…
Because I run my own business, and have various family matters that mean I have to stay in touch with home when away on holiday, we decided to pay the extra fee on our Caribbean cruise on Arvia for the wifi internet package, as there’s no mobile service at sea. It’s an expensive add-on (about £250 per person) so I…
In the months leading up to our Caribbean cruise on P&O Arvia, we joined several popular Arvia-related Facebook groups, which are great for getting ideas and advice from other past and future cruise passengers. However, they're also a great way to get filled with negativity, as the majority of people posting in them seem to be complaining or worrying about…
All the details on what to expect when flying to a P&O Caribbean cruise: How do you book seats? can you be sat together? What are the planes like? What happens with your luggage? How do transfers between ship and airport work? Answers to these questions and more... The subject of flights seems, along with that of availability of sunbeds,…
This was our favourite of all the places we visited on our week in Alicante - a stunning set of waterfalls in the mountains about an hour's drive from Alicante centre. We were actually staying in El Campello, about half-an-hour north of Alicante itself, so the drive from El Campello to Fonts de l'Algar was only about 40-minutes. If you're…
We had walked around Alicante town, visiting the 'Mercat Central' market, and wandering around the streets of the 'El Barrio' old town before deciding we should head up to see the dominant feature of Alicante - the Santa Barbara castle at the top of a huge hill overlooking the town and sea. Views from the top of Santa Barbara Castle…
Whilst on our trip into the mountains around the Costa Blanca, after our visit the stunning Fonts de l'Algar, we decided to carry on up the mountain road towards the mountain-top village of Guadalest. We weren’t totally sure what was here or whether it’d be worth driving the extra distance up the winding mountain road but it turned out it…
We were looking for a very last-minute Easter school holiday trip, anywhere warm to escape the terrible April weather. The last available flight we could find to anywhere warm was to Alicante in Spain - and the Dormio apartments resort was about a 25-minute drive or so from Alicante airport. We found the place on Airbnb. It looked decent from…
As well as its popular, beautiful mainstream tourist beaches, Mallorca's coast is full of small, natural 'cove' beaches - known as calas - many of which are more remote and difficult to access, but provide a more natural and 'wild' beach experience for those willing to put the effort into hiking / climbing / boating to them. Perhaps the most…
We had seen pictures of Cala Murta before our trip to Mallorca - and we knew it was a remote, natural beach hidden away and only accessible by walking a forested mountain-side trail. It sounded like just the type of place we love to visit - and a welcome change from the busier, more mainstream tourist beaches on the island.…
