I Tried a Traditional British Cruise

I've just disembarked a traditional British Cruise despite very much not being a traditional person this Cruise was very different from any cruise I've ever taken before and we had highs and lows that I could not have imagined the highs and lows were literal too because the ship was very Rocky and the Seas were very rough I usually cruise with the Casual cruise lines I love the big new exciting cruise ships like the ones that have ropes courses and water slides I've been skydiving on cruise ships I've even tried surfing which was very cool but taking a traditional cruise on a smaller ship wasn't something that was on my radar when I saw an amazing itinerary sailing with the traditional Cruise Line Fred Olsen though I thought maybe this would be my chance reading their website I saw that it said if after a couple of days on board you find that it's not right for you we will fly you home and your cruise fare will be refunded I have never heard any Cruise Line promise anything like that so I figured I had nothing to lose and I booked the cruise I was definitely nervous I didn't know if I would fit in I wasn't sure if there would be lots of raw that I had to follow I thought that I might maybe find it a little bit boring and I had no idea how a small ship would handle the North Sea which is notoriously Rocky at this time of year we embarked the ship in Newcastle and embarkation was made very easy by the fact that we'd already been sent our luggage tags and our tickets pre-cruise with most of the big Cruise Lines you have to remember to print and organize everything yourself so this was one of the first real differences that I noticed on this Cruise it was a really good sign for me that traditional cruising might have some benefits that I hadn't thought about before the ship that I was cruising on was called the belletta and as soon as we got on board we walked into this amazing Atrium and we're greeted with this huge clock that honestly just looked like something out of some steampunk Style movie there were fresh flowers everywhere there was music playing in the background and it all felt very classy this was very different from the sparkly atriums that you'll find on more modern cruise ships but personally I loved it the carpets were really really colorful too and it felt like the ship was just making a statement there was nothing about this cruise ship that it was subtle up until 2020 most of Fred Olson's cruise ships were from the 1960s and the 1970s and they just really didn't interest me in 2020 though they bought this cruise ship from the cruise line Holland America and that is when I put Fred Olsen on my maybe maybe list heading up to the top of the ship we found this massive Lounge that overlooked the ocean on three sides I personally love lounges like this and I particularly love them when the seats recline I didn't know that the seats reclined when I sat down but a man sat down next to me clearly he knew what he was doing clearly he'd been there before because he sat down he leaned back his feet flipped up and I instantly copied him I imagine a lot of people fall asleep in these seats because they were very comfortable I noticed that there was a little stage beside the bar and I started to wonder what kind of entertainment would be on a cruise like this I couldn't imagine that there would be all that much happening during the day and I very much came on this Cruise ready to entertain myself anything else would have just been a bonus I could not have been more wrong about that one there were so many things on the schedule and things that I've never seen on cruise ships before after a quick Pepsi we decided to head to the buffet for lunch I've been in lots of cruise ship buffets over the years so I thought that I knew how this would work normally when you go into a buffet you go up to the food you either take it yourself or you ask the person behind the counter and they will give you your food then when you have your food you'll go and you'll find a table that is not how it works on Fred Olsen as I tried to walk into the buffet and walk up to the food one of the crew members stopped me and asked me how many of us there were I said two and she took us to a table I've never been seated in a buffet before and it was nice not to have to find my own seat this was one of the first signs that this Cruise would take things that I thought I knew about cruising and just do them completely differently straight away I found Yorkshire puddings and roast potatoes in the buffet which made me very very happy I was expecting this cruise to be very British in terms of things like food because the majority of the guests on board were from the UK at this point I'd only spoken to other guests who were British but later on I did find a few Americans on board next it was time to complete the safety drill that is a legal requirement on cruises it has to be completed on the first day of a cruise and for us that meant going to find our cabin we'd booked a balcony cabin on Deck 6 which meant that we really didn't have very far to walk from the buffet on deck 8. on the big cruise ships I'm pretty used to having a cabin that's on Deck four or five and walking up to decks 15 or 16 to go to the buffet sometimes even 17 or 18. the first thing I did when I got into the cabin was I went straight into the bathroom and I understand that may sound a little bit odd but pre-cruise I have heard a few rumors that some of the cabins on belletta had baths and it has always been a cruising dream of mine to have a bath on a cruise it's very rare to get baths on cruise ships without booking a suite and when I saw one there oh my goodness I was so happy you could say disproportionately happy but I can't explain how much this bath meant to me I would end up using this bath more than I predicted due to rough season feeling really seasick but more about that later our cabin felt very spacious it had tons of storage space and I'm often asked did the cabin feel dated I always find that one tricky to answer because dated just technically means that you can look at something and work out the date and I think looking at this cabin you can see that it isn't a modern cabin but nothing was broken nothing was damaged and it felt as though it had been taken care of some people love the more traditional designs like this cabin and some people prefer the more modern looking cabins like the cabins on the MSC cruise ships one traditional thing that I really liked about this cabin was that every single night they would leave a chocolate on the pillow most cruise lines have got rid of that but on Fred Olsen those chocolates are still there and they change every day our balcony was huge and I instantly noticed the ashtray sitting on the table almost all cruise lines of banned smoking on balconies in recent years but Fred Olsen are one of only four cruise lines that still allow it I'll leave that one up to you whether you think that's a good or a bad thing there was loads of storage in our room a great big bed which interestingly had two separate duvets there was a sofa a TV a kettle that I used a lot and some intro interesting artwork during this cruise I looked at this particular piece of art a lot as it was opposite my bed I am convinced that I can see a little man inside this fish and I asked you to name him and you did not disappoint me he ended up being called Jonah the grape which I think is just fantastic there was interesting art like this all over the ship and every time I walked down the corridor I would find something new that just made me laugh in our cabin I found a piece of paper that said that we had been assigned late dining I am absolutely an early dining person I usually eat around 5 PM when I'm at home but I thought that's no problem on every cruise I've ever taken before I've been able to change the dining time without any problems reading a little bit more I realized that we would be charged if we changed to early dining and I'm a very stubborn person I thought that charge was completely stupid so there was no way that I was going to pay to do that guests who pay for the more expensive Freedom fair when they book their Cruise do have priority when it comes to dining times but in true Emma style I had booked the saver rate so if I wanted to change it would be 2 pounds per person per day that would be 36 pounds for us for the cruise which I know isn't a huge amount but I was not going to pay that it just leaves a bad taste in people's mouths on this first day which no one wants that the dining time piece of paper did have a map on the back so that you could see where your table was in the restaurant I love that because I just love to be prepared and to know where I'm going late dining was 8 30 p.m so we had plenty of time to watch the sail away from Newcastle our cruise was heading up into the Arctic Circle in pursuit of the northern lights and at this point I thought this was cold I could not have been more wrong it was about to get so much colder we headed to the terrace restaurant for dinner and I expected that we would be sat on a table for two as table sharing had never been mentioned when we got to the table we saw that there was another couple there and they looked just as confused that we were sitting down at their table this was actually their first cruise too so I tried to sort of reassure them that this is not normally how it goes on a cruise it's a very traditional thing table sharing and almost all cruise lines have got rid of it unless you specifically say say that you want to I would never usually pick table sharing but we got very lucky with our table mates and we probably would have never met them if we weren't table sharing the food was all pretty good and we came away from that first meal pretty happy there was always vegetarian choices and things like gluten-free dishes were marked quite well on the menus that said though I didn't know if we would be back too regularly because 8 30 is very late for me we did tell our new friends about this so they didn't think that we were ignoring them if we didn't show up at dinner again if you do take a cruise that includes fixed dining you don't ever have to go to that dining room at that time it just means that if you want to eat in the main dining room that is your reserve space you can still eat in other places you can go to the buffet where everything is included in your cruise there or you can pay extra to go to some of the restaurants that they call Specialty restaurants when I take a lot of travel sickness medication it does make me pretty sleepy and I slept quite a lot during this cruise at one point when I took a sleep during the day my Apple watch recorded that I did a three and a half hour Dance Workout just because of how how much I was moving in my sleep because the ship was pretty Rocky we finished dinner at around 10 pm which was the perfect time to go to the theater to see the second showing of the theater show the theater on board the balletta is called the Neptune Lounge so I didn't really expect to see a big theater on some smaller cruise ships you'll find that they just have a lounge where they do evening shows like on some of the Azamara cruise ships but this was every bit as big as impressive as the theaters that you'll find on much bigger cruise ships the show told us a little bit more about what we could expect from this cruise and it introduced us to a few of the crew members we saw a couple of songs from the show team and we were introduced to the guest speakers who would be hosting talks throughout the cruise it's fairly common for Cruisers to have guest speakers but you'll probably just find one per cruise on this cruise we had four guest speakers and they would be doing talks on all kinds of things from what it was like living in Norway to how to photograph the northern lights they did have bar service in the theater which was good it was always pretty fast and the drinks prices were actually pretty decent there was no automatic gratuity added on like you'll find happens on a lot of American Cruise Lines and the price of something like a Pepsi was only two pound fifty which is around three American dollars most of the cocktails were around seven pounds and a pint of beer was around five pounds which is pretty similar to what we would pay if we went to a pub on land at least where I live I spent that first sea day feeling pretty seasick and pretty awful so I was so happy when we docked in our first Port of Allison our ship was actually sailing away at 1pm so we had to be all aboard by 12 30 which really was a shame usually cruise ships stay important until around dinner time or later into the evening but to be honest I was just so happy that we had a stop here on our route into the Arctic Circle and I loved I loved all of this snow the afternoon on board the ship gave me a chance to properly explore there was still so much that I hadn't seen we found this big bar area which was kind of like the pub of the ship they had games here to play and this Lounge was very very popular when the football or the rugby was on they would even bring and serve food here I'm not somebody who's interested in sports so I would normally be in another bar but this area was very very popular when this ship was owned by Holland America this was actually a casino and they took that out there's no casino on board bellessa it's not uncommon for British cruise lines to have very small or no casinos we don't gamble per person as much as Americans or Australians or most other people that cruise we also found the piano bar which would become one of my favorite bars on board it was pretty small it felt modern and my favorite part were these cushions that I think looked like raccoons I don't know if you see it if you see it too please let me know as the name suggests there was a piano here and they would play live music in the evening my only criticism of this bar was that they would often Play My Way by Frank Sinatra which is the most popular funeral song in the world I don't know why it's so popular on cruise ships most of us have been to a funeral where that song's been played and it just seems such an odd choice for me on cruises but it's such a popular song Fred Olsen do have a drinks package that is called all-inclusive and like any anything that's called all-inclusive it doesn't include everything but it does mean that you can have unlimited amounts of soda you can have beer you can have wine you can have spirits and you can have one cocktail of the day and that was around 25 pounds per person per day I've paid nearly that for a soft drinks package before on some other cruise lines so I think that's pretty good value we also found this bar which I think is very very beautiful but it has no name on the deck plans so I just called it the garden bar so here you go here's the garden bar there was this beautiful Tea Room next door and these areas have definitely been refurbished very recently but even the bars on board that hadn't been refurbished so recently and didn't seem so modern in design they never seemed damaged they never seem old another bar was by the atrium where they would have music and they would play games we would often get a drink here and take it back to our cabin because it was only up one flight of stairs to our room which was very convenient by this point we were getting quite hungry and that is the British quite not the American quite so we decided to go and have some food in the poolside restaurant on most cruises you'll find something by the pool that serves things like pizza or hot dogs or cheesy chips usually it's just grab and go but on balletto this was a proper sit down restaurant and it's all included in the cruise there they had similar things on the menu but in a much more refined and classy way than I'm used to on most cruises they had Burgers they had fish and chips they had halloumi that had quite a few times and on one day I even asked them you know this isn't on the menu but can you make me a halloumi burger they said no problem at all I think you could have asked the crew to do almost anything and they would have done it for you they were so unbelievably friendly one crew member even brought me a blanket when I was cold that's so nice I did wonder though with that extra service come at a cost for me would I be stuck following dress codes that I hated would I be bored every single day I was on a mission to find out the restaurant is located right by the inside pool and I say inside pool but it could either be an inside or an outside pool depending on if the roof was open during our cruise the roof was closed because we were cruising in the Arctic Circle but I've been reassured that when they the ship does go somewhere warmer they do open this roof all the pools on this ship were heated which was amazing given the chilly temperatures outside at one point the temperature got down to -14c which is 6f and being able to come into this area even just to pick up a drink from the bar was really really fantastic at the back of the ship there is another pool that's also heated and some people did Brave this I have to say there's snow on the deck and the ice did put me off but some people seem to really love it and good on them I'm sure it's good for you if this inside pool area was on a cruise ship owned by another Cruise Line it would have been full of people and probably been full of kids at this point I'd seen two children on board and I didn't know if that was just because they're all hiding somewhere or if it really was just a more adult Cruise Fred Olsen don't have lots of things for kids on their ships like ropes courses or water slides but they do have kids clubs and they open during the peak Seasons as we sailed away from Allison and up towards Tromso I began to wonder what the schedule would be like for the next day I saw that the blue nose ceremony was on the list and there were a couple of guest speakers that I wanted to watch but apart from that my schedule was wide open to do anything that I found interesting I also knew that tomorrow night was formal night which made me a little bit nervous I didn't know how seriously Fred Olsen Cruisers would take the dress codes and I don't mind dressing up when I cruise but I just like to be prepared we headed to the buffet for breakfast and I found the most amazing donuts it was around now that I began to realize that I actually hadn't heard anybody on this Cruise complain about the food which is very strange normally you hear people complaining within an hour or two of getting on board regardless of the cruise line I wondered if this may have something to do with who was actually on this Cruise Fred Olsen do have an older than average passenger demographic and they have a lot of repeat Cruisers the other guests love to chat especially when we were sat on joint tables like at lunch and they would usually tell me that this was their fifth or their tenth or even their 30th Fred Olsen Cruise there wasn't a huge selection because the buffet on the ship isn't massive but there were always local dishes to try as well as classic British things like roast dinners and sandwiches I like this little section that had small pots of dishes like salads that you could just pick up and they even had crisps and biscuits at afternoon snack time which was incredible custard creams has got to be my British Schism of the week the definition of biscuit and cookies does always get confusing but the most important thing is that in the UK we call this a biscuit and this is a custard cream a custard cream is the best biscuit of all time and I would always come home from school and eat two custard creams from the biscuit tin I really can't imagine my life without custard creams I must have eaten hundreds of thousands in my life and they had Bourbons too but they're not quite as good they had bar service in the buffet which was always pretty good and most days I ended up eating here for dinner because I didn't really want to wait until 8 30 to go to the main dining room we did go to the main dining room for lunch and we sat on the bottom level again we were sat with strangers and we weren't asked if we wanted to do that we were very lucky with our table mates again but in future I'm definitely gonna try and stick with cruise lines that have more flexible dining it's just not really me but it was totally fine it was not a problem the daily schedule was Far busier than I'd imagined pre-cruise every day would start with walk a mile where guests and the crew would walk a mile around the Promenade deck I did walk around the Promenade egg but I was never up at 8am to join the group they actually had another deck area out the front which was right by my cabin this was fantastic for our itinerary and I don't think that most other guests knew about it because we would almost always be the only people out here the red light staircase at night did look a little bit scary but I just didn't go down there they also had lots of exercise classes golf putting Bridge classes cooking demonstrations and crafts there was a small charge for a few of the activities like some of the crafts it really was a small charge it was about two pounds it's not like some of the other Cruise Lines when they say that there's a nominal charge of 39.99 it was only two pounds something like that they also had trivia they had game shows and they had things like Name That Tune which are very common on cruise ships I know I'm going to get comments for how we say tune in the UK that's how we say tune we don't say tune we say tune on one day we did have afternoon tea in the observatory which was lovely I love a good scone and these were very very good scones or scones they had live music playing and everything was served to you by the crew who wore these lovely white gloves I was still feeling the motion of the ocean got a bit I'm watching The Horizon go up and down wasn't ideal but it was worth it to get to eat that food afternoon tea does cost 13 pounds per person and if you didn't want to pay that you can get most of the same free food in the buffet you just won't get the live music and you won't get the white gloves but they do have the scones and that's the main thing the real difference on a ship like this compared to a big cruise ship with the cruise line like Royal Caribbean was that there was just one or two things happening at a time if you're on one of the biggest cruise ships there can be four five six things happening at a time but some of those really big cruise ships hold up to 7 000 people and Valetta only has 1 300 so you don't need six options at once I did really like the lack of fluff in this daily schedule on some cruise lines that include things like Spa discount on this game schedule that's not an event you're just trying to make it look like there's more stuff there than there is when I embarked the cruise I met one of the guest speakers David who will be talking throughout the cruise he's a Brit who moved to Norway in 2011 and he now writes and presents about living in Norway there was a q a happening with him in the theater next and I knew that I didn't want to miss it we went in and we sat on the top level which gave us a great view Fred Olsen do have an app but the app itself doesn't really do anything there's a web page that you can access when you're on board that does a lot more and you can check things like the daily schedule or your onboard account there was definitely a lot less focus on Tech on this Cruise than on some of the big British or American Cruise Lines it would be totally fine to take a cruise with Fred Olsen without having a phone at all but on some of the other Cruise Lines that's getting a little bit more tricky on belletto we were given a proper paper schedule every single day and you still had to book things like specialty Meals by going to the reception desk I booked a couple of specialty meals here and there was no cue at all which surprised me I don't think I ever saw a queue here throughout the entire cruise which considering how many things this place does I don't know we never really had to queue for anything on this Cruise apart from a little bit I guess when we wanted to disembark the ship and it was a busy day but you would expect that we decided to get dressed up for formal night and I just couldn't wait until 8 30 for dinner so we did decide to go to the buffet I shouldn't have been so stubborn really but I am stubborn so it's fine we were spending the next two days in Tromso and alter and spending most of our evenings keeping a watch out for the northern lights in Ulta we went on an Excursion to go and see racing Huskies which was probably the best cruise on Excursion I've ever taken and in tromzo we bought the most amazing snack which is basically a Norwegian version of a KitKat and a much better version Fred Olsen did put on a free shuttle bus for us in Tromso which was very nice a lot of cruise lines don't do that I knew that there was still one area of the ship that I hadn't discovered I'd seen the art studio mentioned multiple times but I had no idea where it was I'd also heard rumors that there was an auditorium for presentations I hadn't seen that either still on my my to-do list was to see a proper theater show with the theater team we watched a q a with the theater team but I hadn't really seen them perform because they had to cancel a couple of shows because of the rough weather it turns out that every single member of the cast this was actually their first contract at Sea and they were very friendly and very open talking to everybody about how they got into this career and what it was like behind the scenes belletta actually has two specialty restaurants on board and I decided that I would book both I rarely do specialty restaurants when I cruise but Fred Olsens are so much cheaper than you find on most of the other Cruise Lines each restaurant costs 10 pounds per person for unlimited food and on some cruise lines you can pay over a hundred pounds for a specialty restaurant so 10 pounds is okay as I was on this cruise for quite a long time and I didn't always want to wait until that 8 30 dining slot this worked out very well I'm glad I did because somehow the team at color and taste managed to turn a cauliflower into the best food on the entire ship it was amazing this sauce fantastic the food in Vasco was great too but I was absolutely not hungry enough when I went to dinner my friend David had warned me that when you go to Vasco you need to go with an empty stomach and you need to be really hungry I tried but I still wasn't prepared it was very nice on the theater schedule I saw let's go to the movies and I love this kind of traditional singing and dancing cruise ship entertainment it definitely wasn't the type of big Broadway style shows that you'll get on a lot of the big cruise lines but I wouldn't expect it to be belletta has a relatively small team and lots of colorful costumes they sang songs that everybody knew which I think we enjoyed I hope you enjoy my new t-shirt by the way it says I'm with Captain Hudson Link in description I designed it myself I've been cruising since I was 11 years old and without a doubt this Cruise was the rockiest cruise that I've ever been on to find out how that went how I cope with my seasickness and whether we did find the Northern Lights watch this video next

Channel: Emma Cruises

Views: 566,681

Keywords: cruise, cruise tips, emma cruises

Id: 10oaJ10kdAo

Length: 22min 53sec (1373 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 06 2023