A Christmas Cruise to Dublin on the Marco Polo

I have just returned from our annual conference on-board the Cruise and Maritime Marco Polo.

This was a 3 night sailing including an overnight stop in Dublin. The Marco Polo is quite an old smaller traditional style ship and as such not as refined as modern counterparts. Uneven floors in places and plenty of creaks and rattles but that doesn’t really bother me.

The ship itself had some pleasant enough public areas. The food was ok, sometimes good, sometimes not great but overall did the job and I always found plenty to eat. I particularly enjoyed the gala dinner on the last night and the baked Alaska (eaten after the crew parade). Service for drinks could sometimes be a tad on the slow side but I don’t think it is fair to judge as normal clientele on this ship is not often a large amount of thirsty travel agents and I think there was more demand than the crew were normally used to. All of the crew I came across were nice enough and polite.

We had an Ocean View cabin (sorry for our messy cabin in the pictures but it gives you an idea). The beds were comfortable and there was plenty of storage space. The bathroom was fine, pretty much what you would expect from most cruise ship cabins.

I had a Premium drinks package included which seemed decent enough to me. It did seem a little strange that cocktails and branded spirits were included but not coffee’s for example which had 50% off on the package but personally that suited me fine.

As to be expected at that time of year the crossing from Bristol to Dublin and back was a little bumpy. Fortunately for my cabin mate and myself this was not an issue as we do not suffer from sea sickness but a very large amount of people did and I know it really did ruin their experience so my advice would be to think twice about a sailing like this if you know you suffer from sea sickness.

There was some entertainment around the ship from quizzes to musicians in the lounge and I even went to see the show in the theatre on the last evening. The show was originally going to be an Abba tribute but was changed to a West end musical medley in the end due to the adverse weather conditions. Even though I am not personally too much of a fan of these types of performances I have to say that I thought the singers were very talented and was impressed by the standard of their performances.

From the outset I had realistic expectations and I didn’t expect this ship to be quite up to the standard overall of let’s say Fred Olsen or P&O and as such I would expect the price to reflect. However I did have a lovely time overall and thank you very much to Cruise and Maritime and the crew of Marco Polo for hosting us.

Here are a few of my pictures ( you can click to enlarge them if necessary).