Originally Posted by Randyk47

That was special that Ponant let you tour the ship. Post 9/11 that is a rare opportunity. We’ve come across a couple of their ships in the Med but never been on board. Very slick external design. That said your wife noticing the “sour” smell is not very appetizing. Probably won’t see us getting on a Ponant mailing list anytime soon.

Originally Posted by 747FC

Some other thoughts have come to mind, and I think that in all fairness, I should report:
2. I am just assuming this, but now that I think of it, the boots being stationed outside of the room suggest that their Zodiac excursions may have been landing at very remote settings. At least this was our experience with Seabourn excursions in Antarctica. For our recent Greenland/Canada cruise, which had a similar itinerary as the Ponant ship, we were not issued the boots as we were not landing in remote locations.

Originally Posted by YVR Cockroach

I spent nearly 4 weeks on Le Soléal earlier this year. Yes, there are a lot of French idiosyncrasies. The ships are premium expedition ships rather than luxury. One of the downside is service can be slow on a full ship. Total pax:staff complement is 2:1 if full. That makes the dining room (and bar) a bit slow once the ship gets filled to 200 pax and apparently excruciating if 220 let alone the maximum pax complement of ~260-265).

One thing about the ship size is that it can get to a lot of small places where even a tender can't get it, and the ships have a lot of lift as far as transporting.pax ashore. The 2 lifeboats of course will hold all the pax. There are also ~16 Zodiacs onboard so 10-12 pax can be landed per Zodiac. There are even a doze kayaks (not that they offered the loan of any).

We found the food a bit repetitive on the 2nd cruise as there was no executive and sous chefs onboard (one of the FIlipino line cooks had to assume the acting sous chef position so the kitchen played it safe with stuff they knew how to cook). Food, we thought, was very good otherwise for the most part. Maybe not for the American palate (as confirmed by some (very few) U.S. pax we met onboard) but perfectly acceptable to the French and the Australians (Ponant's top 2 customers by country). A note, the restaurants are open for fairly-limited hours compared to a normal cruise ship though there is a dedicated room service cook and waiter. Burgers onbord are not the gourmet ones one finds in France.

My wife actually liked the bathroom arrangement compared to Princess (only grace is the little walk-in closet, HAL and Celebrity. For those wanting a deck to walk around (in a circuit) outside, there's nothing, unless you want to involve stairs and doors. Standard cabins aren't too small (18 m2 which is about 200 s.f.). The few window rooms (6 per ship?) are larger due to lack of verandah. The verandah rooms on deck 3 have water tight doors due to relative-close proximity to water line so no sliding full-height glass doors..

As for suites on the constellation (for want of an actual name) class ships (Boreal, Lyrial, Soleal and Austral), there are very few real suites (2-3 a ship perhaps?). Most are flexi where the adjoining cabin has the mattress removed and bed converted to a sofa. The big suites can be 2-3 normal cabin sizes while the minis may be 1 1/2. The new explorer class ships have actual suites.

Common areas are: lounge/bar/library at the front of the top cabin deck (6) and the buffet behind. Lounge at the rear of deck 3 with the bar open most of the day (you'll find the officers having coffee here). There is an open air bar and lounge area at the rear of deck 7 (the forward part is where the Zodiacs, kayaks, excess stores and antarctic survival supplies are kept).

Fitness room is small, as perhaps befits a small ship perhaps. Le Soléal had 3 running machines and 5 stationery bikes, and a multi cable weights device.

Any other question and queries, please feel free to ask.

Originally Posted by GeezerCouple

About those "suites" comprised of 2 regular connecting cabins - with one having the bed, and the other set up as a LR - don't they have two regular bathrooms? We may be peculiar (okay, we *are* , but I meant specifically about bathrooms), but we could easily share very small quarters if we needed to... but only one bathroom, and that's not as nice. Even a full bathroom and a lav is better, but two (each with a shower or tub, or even one of each) is truly ideal.
To have relatively small quarters with 2 full bathrooms is unusual.

So to double check, are the cabin/suite plans accurate about the two full bathrooms?

And yes, definitely a "First World" issue, we fully recognize. We certainly do not "need" this luxury!

GC