I went on a couple of Cruise Holidays in 2022, and 2023, visitng Spain, Germany, France, and the Netherlands, and I find it rather difficult to choose which was best! Both of them had their positives, and both had some negatives, although few in number. But there’s one thing that the second cruise had over the first one; choice of soft drinks.
For my first solo cruise in 2022, I went with MSC Cruises, and sailed aboard the MSC Virtuosa. At the time it was something like the joint 12th largest cruise ship in the world alongside her sister ship, the MSC Grandiosa. It was a really nice ship to be on. My room had a nice size to it, with en-suite toilet and shower facilities, and even a TV (which could only access BBC, ITV and Channel 4). It was easy to navigate around, and it had plenty of restaurants to try out (some free, some not free), it had a couple of theatres for shows, and even an arcade, with some shops, bars, and restaurants, and an arch like roof, that showed ever changing fancy patterns.
The first time I saw the Virtuosa in person, was when my friend Matt drove me to the terminal. It was so big, you could barely see the sky. It weighs over 180,000 tonnes, although based on my experience on board, I bet a good fifth of that, was alcohol.
Alcohol was served everywhere, all the time. There was even a corridor, made of alcohol. OK, not really, it was a small passage leading to one of the main dining rooms, but the walls had gloss bottles full of Alcohol, behind glass cases. Now I am not in anyway saying there cannot be alcohol on a cruise ship, nor am I saying that people can’t drink it either. Everyone on board all spent nearly a grand plus each to get on-board, so we should be allowed to drink what we like, except maybe bleach…or anything lethal. But in my case, the abundance of alcohol, made my choices very slim…as I don’t drink alcohol.
I have tried in the past, but I usually spit it out, as I can’t stand the taste. The only times I will drink alcohol are:
- When it’s in a stew,
- When it’s in a pie,
- When it’s in my brothers Birthday Cake (i.e. Guinness Cake, it’s very nice),
- When I accidentally swallow mouthwash,
- Or when I have eaten something, too quickly after coating my hands in anti-bacterial hand sanitiser.
Basically I am teetotal. So you can imagine how difficult it must be to find something I can drink, on a cruise ship partially built out of alcohol.
There were some soft drinks available on the Virtuosa, but the range was very limiting. It came down to just 3 flavours: Coke, Fanta, and Sprite. And guess what? I am not a big fan of fizzy drinks either! I have drunk them in the past, but I’d rather have something like squash, or juice. That’s what I usually drink on a day to day basis.
So, I was on a cruise ship holiday, spent nearly £1000 on it, and had next to no drink options. I did get some Fanta on a couple of occassions on board, as out of the three, it’s the one I preferred, but I’d have still liked something else. There was another drink though I could have. Sadly not a J2O, as they weren’t anywhere onboard. No, in the Marketplace Buffet, where I had most of my meals, I was able to drink Apple Juice. It came out of a dispenser, and was more like Apple Squash than actual Apple Juice, but given the struggle I had for choice, to me, it was a luxury.
And then, whilst on an excursion in Bilbao, I wandered into a corner shop, where I discovered a drink called Aquarius. It was like Lucozade Sport, so I bought one of them (and a bottle of Sunny D). I liked it, so the following day whilst on another excursion, this time in A Coruña, I bought a couple more bottles, and smuggled them onboard. For me, both the Apple Juice, and the bottles of Aquarius, were the closest things to a luxury drink.
The struggle to find a nice, luxury like drink onboard the Virtuosa, was really the only major problem I had with that cruise. Virtually everything was great, other than the selection of soft drinks. I wasn’t even able to buy anything soft/non-fizzy in the ship shop. So the following year, I made sure to pack a bottle of Vimto squash, to take on board, although in hindsight, I didn’t really need to.
The following year (2023), I travelled onboard the MS Iona, with P&O Cruises. And they had a lot more to offer in the way of soft drinks. I still drank from my bottle of Vimto squash when in my cabin. But the bar about three floors above my cabin, stocked Orange and Passion Fruit J2O’s, which was fantastic!
The ship also had an ice cream parlour on-board to, I was there everyday!
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