The easy way to see the Caribbean!

When it comes to the Caribbean you want to see as much as you can without the hassle. With many cruise lines, they operate out of the United States so you have to clear U.S Customs and anyone that has done that will know how undesirable it is.

Next is the Indirect flights, if you are wanting to fly from Manchester or even Glasgow sometimes it’s just not possible to do the direct flights, so you have to have one, if not two stops.

Then it’s the hassle of having to stay the night in a hotel before the cruise, with sometimes lengthy transfers.

Finally, if sailing from the U.S you can have 3 days at sea before you see any land.

Well, there is an Alternative, P&O Cruise is the answer! Why you may ask?

They offer direct flights from the UK, normally with Thomas Cook or Thomson – If you can get Thomson then it is better as they tend to use the Dream Liner Aircrafts. You can fly from London Gatwick as standard, or they do offer Manchester and Birmingham for a small supplement. On some dates you can even fly from Glasgow, Cardiff and even Bournemouth.

The flights are generally charter flights, so everyone on the flight will be flying to the ship so you can meet and make friends before you even left the airport.

Next benefit is that you fly to Barbados, so no U.S Customer, you will cruise from Barbados and generally back to Barbados on nearly all sailings of 14 nights, also you will join the ship on day one, so no need to check in to a hotel for a night before the cruise.

Another fantastic benefit to the Barbados start is that depend on which date you choose to fly on, you would have either the first or last night of the cruise overnighting in Barbados giving you loads of time to explore, I would recommend the latter of the two, so you have the day before last in Barbados and then overnight and then all the next day before your flight home. Doing Barbados on the way out, you would land early afternoon and then have that evening in Barbados and then the following day but you could be nursing Jet Lag so you may not make the most of the time. However, you sometimes find doing it with the other night in Barbados first, the price is overall less.

P&O based the Azura and the Britannia in the Caribbean which operated 14 night Caribbean Cruises in 2015/2016 however for Winter 2016/2017 they have decided that Britannia will not only operate from Barbados but also St Lucia and that she will have 7 and 14 night sailings. However, St Lucia is not an overnight stay so if you opt for 14 nights from St Lucia you wouldn’t see much of St Lucia.

Azura will operate only the 14 night sailings, however for something different she does have a couple sailings from New Orleans, which again is something different, and who would have though you could fly to New Orleans from Manchester!

So where can you expect to see from a P&O Caribbean Cruise, well the list is endless but you will get St Maarten, St Kitts, the A, B C Islands – Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao, Tortola, St Vincent, Grand Cayman, Grenada and Montego Bay in Jamaica

So this really is the life!

Who fancies it?