This was our very first ever cruise. We'd got married in October last year and pretty soon after starting planning the wedding we'd talked about doing a cruise for our honeymoon. But budget and timing conspired against us taking a cruise immediately after the wedding, so our guests generously gave us vouchers for a travel agent which we put towards the trip.

We had no real idea at all about cruises, which lines were best etc. I had spoken to my manager at work who has done a few but she's done small high end ones we knew were out of our budget. We'd also had an idea we didn't want anything too big, but that was more as we didn't feel a need for water slides, surf pools and climbing walls. At the ages of 53 and 47 we'd both brought up teenagers and done all the fun filled family holidays --we wanted a bit more grown up relaxation!

We chose the Eastern Med as we wanted somewhere without many days at sea. I now totally appreciate the whole days at sea thing but before sailing I think we saw that as almost a 'wasted' day. We did a 10 night, 7 port trip and that one fitted the bill in giving us a fair few places to visit, with a mixture of pretty busy and more relaxed, came in at the sort of budget we could manage and we knew we'd get good weather. We're Brits -- we need summer sunshine as we only get about 10 days of that back home! Read more