P&O Iona Embarkation Day, Southampton

Описание: On the day of embarkation, P&O will have previously contacted you with a time to arrive at the terminal. So you may well have a whole day to spend in Southampton, so we spent it as part of our holiday and visited the shopping centre, West Quay which wasn't far from the Holiday Inn where we were staying. Holiday Inn offered to store our suitcases in a room for us so that we were free to roam around Southampton which actually, is a lovely port.

The shopping Centre is enormous and gets very busy on a Saturday but is a nice day out and outside, there are lots of restaurants to eat in.

After spending a day there, we went back to the Holiday Inn to collect our suitcases and were going to walk to the terminal but it was raining so we got a taxi. Holiday Inn allowed us to book from their reception.

Getting on board was like lightening. we were onboard Iona before we knew it. I follow a YouTube channel called 'Solent Ships'. An excellent site where 'The Captain' makes lots of chat and banter while watching cruise ships depart. So we took a Union Jack flag with us, fully knowing that 'The Captain' would find us and focus on us to allow our daughter, Lucy watch us leaving the UK live on his YouTube channel. 'The Captain' did us proud and I included some clips taken from my TV in this video for my video. He's a lovely commentator and actively searches for passengers to highlight so that they can have one last connection with their family before they leave.

My wife was on the phone to Lucy, so we knew that 'The Captain' had found us, which Lucy actually found very emotional .... to see her parents sailing away into the sunset!!