April A to Z - Azamara Pursuit - A Boutique Cruise Experience

I'm excited to participate in the April A to Z challenge once again! I want to give credit where credit is due . . .I did use AI as I crafted my A to Z list. We've been using AI often at work and I wanted to see what help it could offer me as I was feeling overwhelmed. To come up with the list, I did feed a LOT of info into ChatGPT and we had several "conversations." The writing each day is mine. AI crafted some of my daily titles.

With that said, let's jump right in and talk about the Azamara Pursuit, which is indeed a boutique cruise experience!

We boarded our ship in Galataport Istanbul. 

Prior to October 2024, Mark, nor I were "cruising people." Back when I was 20 or so, I went on a cruise to the Caribbean and had not been on a cruise ship since. Mark had never cruised before so the Azamara Pursuit was the perfect ship. This beautiful ship was launched in 2018.. As soon as we boarded the ship back in October, I fell in love with the ship immediately!

Mark and I decided to splurge on an upgraded room and it was worth every penny. I felt like I was "living in a movie" all week! As soon as we were on board, we were greeted with a glass of champagne! We arrived in our room and we found a bottle of champagne on ice waiting for us! 

We met our butler, Omar and our room steward, Christopher. They were totally amazing. They asked our drink preferences and then had our drinks (including a bottle of whiskey for Mark) delivered to our room. We ordered room service every morning and it was delivered and set up on our little table for us to enjoy. We were surprised by "tea" one afternoon. Diet Pepsi was not available but Omar kept me supplied with Coke Zero.

There are multiple restaurants, lounges, and bars on board. With our upgrade, we could dine anywhere but the food was so good in the main dining room that we only ate in one of the really nice restaurants one time. Our friends ate at the pool bar one night and they said it was good, too!

We enjoyed dining with some of our old and new friends!

Mark and Lu and Dave tried out the pool bar.

The food below was from the seafood buffet in the main restaurant. It was delicious.

Mark really enjoyed the gelato!

Here is a picture of some of us out on the deck outside the restaurant.

We had lovely amenities in our rooms. We were provided luxurious white fluffy robes and slippers and those robes came in handy when our breakfast was delivered each day.

Due to some sinus surgery I had a couple of years ago, I have to do a crazy nasal wash twice a day. When I shared that with our butler, he hand delivered a new bottle of distilled water to our room each day.

Our room was truly lovely with high quality linens and a comfy bed.

We had a mini fridge and bar area, along with drawers and a closet.

We had a small desk which I also used to dry my hair and put on my make-up.

Our bathroom was a great size - full size tub and shower, sink with lighted mirror and toilet.

We loved our little balcony!

As we were pulling out of port on the first night, the sunset was amazing.

It was so lovely up on the top of the ship.

Look at that sunset.

Even the stairwells inside the boat were luxurious.

We used one of the lounges every afternoon for our recap of the day.

 

Mark and I highly recommend Azamara. We felt like we were living in the lap of luxury all week. Our week on the ship was truly a boutique cruise experience.