Travelling with allergies

Our daughter has a milk allergy and has done since birth, so you can imagine when it comes to eating out we have to be very careful. At home we have our go to pubs and restaurants and know what she can eat off the menu, always double checking though. However, when it comes to travelling, it brings a whole new lot of anxieties for us.

On our recent P&O cruise on Iona, we did struggle a bit at first, but I think that was down to us not asking what was available for our daughter. On the second night, our waiter informed us that we could pre-order her food the day before and the chef would make sure her allergies were catered for. The Head server came across and took our details and her food preferences. We then did this every evening, and her food was always ready for us once we were seated.

On our 3rd day we had booked a table at The Olive Grove which has some additional charges to items. Our server that day was incredible and asked us exactly what our daughter would like to eat even if it wasn’t on the menu. He then went into a different restaurant to get her food. We rebooked this restaurant a couple more times and the waiter always remembered what our little girl wanted to eat.

Where we struggled though was the buffet. All the foods are labelled for allergies but when you are in a line and trying to carefully read each label it can be very time consuming when you have a hungry toddler so we soon realised that eating in the main dining rooms was the way forward.

Dairy free spread and a range of alternative milks are available if you ask across the ship. I cannot fault the P&O staff for their hard work and for putting our minds at ease. Not once did we feel we were being a bother. If they couldn’t answer our questions, they would always find someone who could.