Thoughts on Aurora

Last week we at cruise.co.uk enjoyed our Christmas party over to Bruges.

We boarded the ship around 1.30 and not to break tradition headed straight to the Buffet for a spot of lunch. Our cabins we’re ready within the hour and our luggage also arrived very quickly. We we’re in deluxe balcony cabins which was lovely and I was impressed with the amount of storage space.

Most of us spent the afternoon relaxing in the Champions bar sipping cocktails and watching the football. We we’re on second dining so there was no rush to get ready.

The sail away party was freezing but the bag pipe players on the dock side was a lovely touch.

I have to say dining in the main dining room the first night was terrible. We we’re served our starters and after waiting an hour and a half for our mains I approached the waiter only to be told “The restaurant is busy and we can’t serve everyone at the same time, the chef is cooking it now”

After another ten minutes we requested to speak to the Maitre’de but to be honest he wasn’t much better he just grumbled something about the restaurant being busy. So eventually we we’re served cold food and asked them to take it back. By this time most of our party had finished dinner and we’re heading off to enjoy the night but not us.

We did get hot food the second time as they zapped it in the microwave. At this point we had another visit   from the maitre’de and this is how the conversation went.

“Is your food hot?”

“Well yes but you have just put it in the microwave”

“I know but is it hot?”

I can honestly say this is the worst dining experience I have had on any ship and found the staff to be rude and most of them unable to understand or speak English.

After what had happened the first night I was quite reluctant to go back to the restaurant for the second night and was considering going to the buffet for Curry night. I did eventually get talked in to by my colleagues and as it was formal night thought we would give it another bash. I am glad to say it was much improved. We we’re served nice hot food out of the restaurant at a descent hour.

All in all I did enjoy the cruise and I’m looking forward to the 4 Night mini cruise I have booked on Azura in April.