Wed 23rd - Stayed overnight at the Holiday Inn near Heathrow which cost £119 (no breakfast) but with 11 nights car parking.

Thu 24th - We were up at 4 a.m. to catch the hopper bus at 5 a.m. from the hotel to the airport as we were catching the 7.10 a.m. flight from Heathrow to Milan on Alitalia. We got to the airport about 5.15 a.m. but couldn't join the massive queue because a sign told you not to join before 5.30 a.m.. We did this but every so often Alitalia would call people forward who were going on earlier flights. This happened about 3 times. One British couple behind us were very angry and tried going to one of the counters to see if they could be taken 1st. (They were very posh and probably didn't think they should be queuing with the rest of us). After he was sent back from one desk, a few minutes later she went to another check-in desk and lo and behold she signaled him to join her. That was them taken care of. The rest of us were still queuing at 6.45 a.m.. We had to run to the gate so there was no time for duty free or breakfast. Because we have different surnames and were separated the last time on Alitalia I took the trouble to ring them beforehand and explain the situation and "booked" seats side-by-side. What happened when we got to the desk - separated. What is the point? What is the point? On the plane the breakfast was disgusting and the pilot was up and down like a yo-yo. His descent was appalling. The worst thing though was when we were waiting to take off Hubby noticed that a whole bunch of luggage was being covered up and being taken back to the terminal. Sure enough half the people on the flight only received part of their luggage. They had to fill in reports and that delayed the bus departure time. The worst of it was knowing that Alitalia had done it deliberately because there was so much freight on the flight that they just didn't bother loading all the luggage! Unbelievable. Luckily Costa arranged for the luggage to be delivered to Naples (our next stop) but Alitalia couldn't have cared less. Hubby reckons it was lucky we were very late getting our luggage checked in as that meant our bags were on the top of the heap and would have been loaded 1st. (Don't know if that's the case or not).

Overview CostaMagica is an Italian ship and I was interested to see how the Italian cruise experience differed from the American experience. Well it was definitely "Cruising as only Italians know how"!!! Everybody was complaining about the food & service. I don't know if this was because the Magica is a fairly new ship and therefore has teething problems but the organisation was 0. All the announcements were in 5 different languages and the shows were limited (obviously because comedians etc were out because of the language situation). A few of the shows were good but very amateurish. The open seating at breakfast & lunch in the dining rooms was a shambles. They didn't "fill up" the tables, you could sit where you wanted but when you placed your order with the waiter it didn't go any further until he'd filled a whole sheet of orders from nearby guests. It meant waiting anything up to 20/30 mins for your 1st course. There was a lot of Italians on the cruise (obviously) and a lot of family groups which resulted in a lot of noise - even in the corridors late at night. Read more