We were on this tour in May 2023 westbound from Edinburgh to Glasgow. I am doing a short review with some pictures and our impressions of this tour. The first part will be opinions of this tour followed by our day to day excursions. When you come across any blue underlined text, they will be links to outside material if you want to explore. My ratings are on a 1 to 5 scale with 5 being best.
The cruise had 154 passengers all of which were Tauck. There were no Ponant passengers as Tauck had the entire ship.
Accommodations
The George Hotel Edinburgh
✮ ✮ ✮ ✮
This was the hotel we stayed at before the cruise. We arrived one day early so we were in this hotel for 3 nights. Our room was nice and functional. Our room was probably one of the basic hotel rooms.
voco Grand Central Glasgow
✮ ✮ ✮
This is an old historic hotel adjacent to the Glasgow Central Station. The room was nice, but I am only giving it 3 stars due to the view from our room as shown below.
The ship Le Dumont-d'Urville
✮ ✮ ✮ ✮
Our room was a Prestige Stateroom which is all that was available when we booked. The majority of cabins on the ship were this category. At 205 square feet it was quite small but functional. My only complaint was that there was only one chair in the cabin. There is a deck with 2 chairs outside the cabin but this did not get used as it was either too cold or too windy or both.
The Staff
✮ ✮ ✮ ✮ ✮
Staff abord the ship were excellent. Five stars for the ship staff.
The Entertainment
✮ ✮
If there is one disappointment for myself and my wife it would be the entertainment on the ship. We would have liked to have more entertainment related to Scotland. There was live music most nights, but it was on the order of music of Beyonce or Ballet Pairs C’Show. Not really my cup of tea. We have been on 2 Tauck river cruises where local talent has been brought on board to perform regional music.
The food
✮ ✮ ✮
The food for the most part was good. Having been on 2 Tauck river cruises however, I felt the food on this Ponant cruise was not as good as we experienced on the river cruises. We talked to a few other people who have been on prior Ponant cruises and everyone said the food was not quite up to the standards of what they experienced before.
I felt the head chef was trying at times to experiment with different recipes that did not work. One night I had a filet of sole with some sort of curry sauce. This was not a good combination. Another night I tried ravioli with garbanzo beans. Also not a good combination.
Toward the end of the cruise I ended up with a case of gastritis which I am blaming on some very undercooked Beef Wellington. I am not 100% sure of this but we found out that several other people had similar symptoms and the commonality amongst us all was the Beef Wellington.
Here is the menu with the offending dish.
Overall tour rating
✮ ✮ ✮ ✮
Covid
On the second day of the cruise there was an announcement that the Captain has some very important information to share at the early evening briefing. Everyone was encouraged to attend. The captain announced that one cabin had tested positive for covid. He said he instructed all the ship staff to wear masks from that point on. He said it would be our decision to wear masks but would not force the guests to wear masks. About half of the passengers started to wear masks. By the end of the cruise less than a quarter of the passengers were wearing masks. At the end of the cruise, we heard through the grapevine that 10 cabins had been infected with covid. There could have been more that weren’t reported. Both my wife and I escaped any infection.
Continued on Part 2 - Day to Day activities.
