Two important things to consider when booking any cruise with P&O at the moment is firstly to book the car park early if you are not on select Fare as the CPS car park was not available one week before so we had to book a hotel package (or we chose too). Secondly trying to get through to P&O on the phone was virtually impossible all communication had to be done by email and took 4 days to get a reply so maybe choose a reputable travel agent we used Cruise UK they were excellent. That said we got an email from P&O CEO stating that they were taking on more staff to deal with bookings and enquires so they are aware of the problem.

We booked around 5 Tours because of not knowing if we could get off the ship unaccompanied but we found no problems at all in Spain, most people were walking around the cities without masks except for going indoors to shops or supermarkets. We only had to carry our passports and proof of vaccination Barcelona but were never asked to show them whilst off the ship.

From arriving at port by taxi we dropped off our big bags and kept our cabin bags with supplies of soft drinks to put in fridge on board. It took 1 hour to get to testing point in a snake like winding queue with no seating areas for people who were bad on their legs, then 20 mins to wait in seated terminal for test result then a further 40 mins to get booked in and on board. Ship is great lots of restaurants, there was 2 formal nights on this 14 day cruise. Shame the cakes are not free in Costa now but the waistline is happy. When we got to Vigo we did walking tour not worth money, do your own exploring the ship docks right next to the town. When back on board we cancelled 2 remaining excursions in spain and just kept the Portugal one open. For this excursion we had to take an antigen test 48 hours before cost £18 each but it could have been worse we may have had to pay for spain as well and before getting off the ship at Southampton but that was NOT needed so just the PCR test for 2 days after return. Read more