To cut a long story short, me and Patsy arranged to meet at Town Quay, Southampton, before heading to the airport to fly to Amsterdam where we travelled on to Rotterdam. We stayed overnight in a hotel near the cruise terminal and joined Getaway the following day, January 13th.
This post will be just photos of the ship. Subsequent posts will show some of her interiors as well as the other ships I saw (not many, because of the long hours of darkness at this time of year).
On the morning of the 13th, we got up at the hideous hour of 0400 and walked across the Erasmus Bridge to watch the ship dock after a one-night cruise into the North Sea. As PD will no doubt remind me on Facebook later, I whinged about stupid o'clock excursions and the fact that it was cold enough to freeze spherical objects off alloy simians, but it was worth it when I look at my photos which came out pretty well.
Later that morning, on our way to the terminal, we stopped on Erasmusbrug again for photos of the ship in daylight, where we could see her gaudy hull art in all its glory. Personally, I quite like it on the ship (although it would not be the sort of thing I'd hang on the walls here at home) and it certainly livens up what would be yet another boring white cruise ship. Traditionalists may splutter into their beards about both the art and the ship's looks, but I think she looks great and I love her.
The Butlins-at-sea on the uppermost deck is a bit crap, as is the shite pop music (One Direction, Maroon Five, etc. - and I only know who they are thanks to being subjected to local commercial radio at work! Luckily I had brought my iPod with me.) blasting from the speakers, but this is easily avoided by not going up there and the rest of the ship, inside and out, is superb.
Obviously, being on the ship at the time, I have no photos of her arrival in Southampton, although plenty of my ship-photographer friends were in Mayflower Park on Tuesday morning and one friend, Gary Davies, was on a RIB. Check out his website 'Maritime Photographic' for the photos of Getaway in Southampton Water.
The next opportunity I had for photos was after disembarkation on Thursday (yesterday) morning at the City cruise terminal (Berth 101, next to Mayflower Park), as we were walking back towards our respective ferries at Town Quay.
It was then that the heavens opened, with (yet another) heavy shower as we exited on foot through Dock Gate 8. Fortunately, this had stopped as we got to Mayflower Park so we could get some photos from there, as well.
As I waited for the 0915 Red Jet home, I took a couple of long-distance shots from Town Quay, always an activity fraught with cluttered peril because that disgrace of a burned-down and partly-collapsed Royal Pier is in the way.
The interior shots and pics of other ships will follow sometime over the weekend.
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In some very interesting news, P&O Cruises are changing the appearance of their ships. The funnels will become blue with a golden rayed sun on them and there'll be a Union Flag on their bows. The artists rendering shows the new Britannia, due in spring 2015, in the new colours but, as I understand it, the whole lot are getting the Union flag as well as the new funnel colours. Interesting, and a move which will no doubt cause the traditionalists to have kittens. They already hate the hull colours on the likes of the NCL ships so they'll have a collective meltdown over a traditional company like P&O adopting this approach. Me? I am looking forward to it!
