April 19 – May 3, 2024

Introduction

Over the past few years, we have traveled to many exotic destinations in several parts of the world. But we have never been to the part of the world that should be somewhat like home to us. Since our families originally came largely from the various countries of the British Isles, we thought it about time to check out our “home lands”. Recently, we have turned somewhat lazy: while we enjoy seeing the landscapes of new (to us) countries, we don’t enjoy the daily packing/unpacking, moving, and long bus rides inherent in most land tours. The solution, of course, was to tour the British Isles via cruise ship.

As with the past few reports, this will be a largely daily log of our travels, excursions, and activities, broken up into manageable size “Chapters” of a couple of days each. There will also be a separate chapter on our cruise ship, the Oceania Sirena. If you only want to read about our visit to London, or you are not interested in the cruise ship, feel to pick and choose which chapters you read or skip.

The map below shows the cities we visited on our cruise as well as the starting and ending point of London. We flew into London, spent a couple of days there, then transferred to Southampton where we embarked on the Sirena for the 11 day cruise, and returned to Southampton. Our cruise traveled counter-clockwise around England, with the first stop at Edinburgh and the last at Plymouth.

Full overview map of the trip

The “Set-up”

Once we decided that we wanted to do some kind of cruise around the British Isles, I started looking at the various cruise lines and their itineraries for a cruise in May. I initially came up with cruises on Seabourn and Virgin, but we had not been real happy with our Seabourn cruise last year and I was not excited about the Virgin cruise itinerary. Then I expanded the possible dates and found a cruise on Oceania in late April, about two weeks earlier than the other cruises. We liked the itinerary and we realized that this was the same ship that our friends were on when they visited us in Bonaire in January. They really liked the ship, the Sirena, and had given us a tour of the ship during their visit to Bonaire, so I took that as a bit of a “sign” that this was the cruise to take. With less than three months before the depart date, the cabin selection was very limited but we got all the arrangements in place. As usual, I made all the cruise arrangements through the “Vacations to Go” travel company and James Bingley there has always provided excellent service, as he did again this time.

Oceania Sirena (through a bus window)

The cruise did not include any touring other than on the cruise itself, but as long as we were going that far, we wanted to spend a couple of days in London. After some research, I selected a hotel (that turned out to work very well) and arranged a couple of activities and an all-day walking tour of London. I arranged the transfers around London (airport to London hotel and hotel to Southampton) and let Oceania provide the final transfer from Southampton to the airport. All transfers worked very well and were on time or early.

Going two weeks earlier than we initially planned probably did have a significant impact as the weather was colder and wetter than we had hoped for. Although we did not get as much rain as the longer range forecasts suggested, rain was a threat almost every day of the cruise and we wore our rain-resistant heavy jackets more than I had anticipated. We did experience several rather cold and windy days, but at least the seas were relatively calm and we did not notice any passengers having motion sickness issues.

Getting There and Back

Departing Atlanta: a long way to go

There are multiple flights between Atlanta and London every day, so it was a matter of selecting the best time versus cost for our purposes. The best fare was on a 5:05 PM departure but it got into London long (6 hours) before we could possibly get into a hotel room. I realized that I could pay the extra cost for another day in the hotel room, start the reservation the day before our actual arrival, and still save over $1,000. So, we took the early flight. On the way back, our flight was largely dictated by the time the transfer from Southampton would get us to the Heathrow airport.

When making the air arrangements, I realized that the “Delta 1” cabin was very lightly booked, so I followed my usual strategy of booking the next class down (“Premium Select”: what used to be “First Class”) and hoped for a free upgrade. Unfortunately, my strategy did not work this time as all the Delta 1 sets were taken by the date of the flight. Premium Select was reasonably comfortable and the service was better than some of our other recent flights.

Sunrise as we approach London

The Atlanta – London flight departed a little late but made up the time in-flight, arriving on time. Heathrow Terminal 3 was reasonably easy to navigate (that would change on departure), passport control, baggage claim, and customs were all reasonably quick and we found our driver easily. After a surprisingly easy drive into downtown London, we were at our hotel by about 8:30 AM.

The return flight departure was delayed about 40 minutes by what I believe was some kind of ATC issues and we arrived back in Atlanta about 30 minutes late. We had to wait about 12 minutes for a Uber ride, but the traffic on the way home was surprisingly light for a Friday evening rush hour.

The Itinerary

We’ll take a quick look at the full itinerary here.

Fri, 4/19: Leave on flight to London 5:05 PM

Sat. 4/20 – Sun. 4/21: In London

Mon. 4/22: Transfer to Southampton and board Sirena

Tue. 4/23: Day at sea (Southampton to Edinburgh)

Wed. 4/24: Edinburgh, Scotland

Thur. 4/25: Kirkwall, Scotland (Orkney Islands)

Fri. 4/26: Stornoway, Scotland (Lewis Island)

Sat. 4/27: Glasgow (Greenock), Scotland

Sun. 4/28: Belfast, Northern Ireland

Mon. 4/29: Dublin, Republic of Ireland

Tue. 4/30: Holyhead, Wales

Wed. 5/1: Cork (Cobh), Republic of Ireland

Thur. 5/2: Plymouth, England

Fri. 5/3: Transfer to London airport, return to Atlanta - Atlanta

Enough of the “preamble”, let’s get moving. We’ll start with our arrival in London and go from there. You can take the following chapters in order, or skip around as you like.

Chapter by Chapter

Chapter 1: London to Southampton

Chapter 2: The Oceania Sirena

Chapter 3: At Sea, Edinburgh, Kirkwall

Chapter 4: Stornoway, Glasgow, Belfast

Chapter 5: Dublin, Holyhead

Chapter 6: Cork, Plymouth, airport transfer

Some closing thoughts

In General

It was a good trip. We saw a lot of new places and explored some interesting structures, old and new. Obviously, many of the places we went (London, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Belfast, etc.) deserve much more than the day or so we were able to spend at each place. Some of them we did not even get into the main part of the city or general area, because we were investigating things like castles and cathedrals out in the countryside. We may come back to visit some places in more depth at a future time but at least we have now had a “once over lightly”.

All of the people we met were friendly and helpful: I cannot remember a single unpleasant person or incident on the trip although, some people were less helpful than they might have been, like the bus driver on our transfer to Heathrow airport. The weather was cooler, wetter, and windier than we expected, but we ended up being impacted very little: I think we only actually got wet one time.

The trip turned out to be more educational than I expected. We learned quite a bit about the stone circles in multiple places (Stonehenge, Kirkwall circle), the Scottish revolution and breakaway from England, the clashes in Northern Ireland, and the potato famine in Ireland. We are certainly not experts on any of these topics, but at least we have some understanding now.

So, I’ll repeat, it was a good trip.

The Oceania Sirena

There were some good things about the Sirena, and some disappointments. The food was a little better than on the Seabourn Encore last year, but not as good as I had hoped and still not, we believe, as good as on Wind Star cruises. The entertainment was a significant let-down for us: they (the Sirena “production company”) played a lot of songs/music that we did not recognize or enjoy. The people were talented, they just did not have the right “play list” or style for us. While our cabin attendant was very good and attentive, the ship’s officers were very scarce. Other than at the introductions at the welcome reception I don’t remember seeing any of the officers around the ship talking to the passengers. We did appreciate the daily printed information and schedule flyer that they called “Currents”. While a smart-phone based app, in theory, sounds good, the implementations we have seen so far are just not as good as having a printed sheet. And, of course, the small cabin and tiny bathroom and shower are factors also. I would not rule out another Oceania cruise in the future, but I will make sure we get a different type cabin.

I hope you enjoyed this trip report. If you have any comments, please send them to me at: mhammoc@bellsouth.net