My husband and I left Seattle on May 16 to spend four days in Rome followed by an 11-day Mediterranean cruise aboard the Equinox. We are not very experienced cruisers, and my husband had serious doubts about signing up for this one, but we wanted to see Rome, Athens, Istanbul and the Greek islands so we decided to give it a try.

We spent four nights in Rome, staying at the Hotel Artemide. The room was small, with not much space for hanging up clothes, but it was clean and quiet, with a large buffet breakfast included in the price. It was a long walk or a short cab ride to most of the things we wanted to see, such as the Vatican, the Gallery Borghese and the Spanish steps. We almost wore ourselves out before we even started the cruise, but we did get to see some of Rome's major treasures.

We had a car service pick us up at our hotel on May 21, the day the cruise was to start. It all went smoothly -- we got to the port at about noon and were quickly processed through the cruise terminal. We went aboard and found a huge and beautiful sparkling ship awaiting us. The staterooms were closed off, but we found our way to the Oceanview Cafe on Deck 14 and sampled some of the buffet items for lunch. Read more