This was our honeymoon, we had planned to travel RTW by plane, but my wife's back problems caused by osteoporosis meant that long-haul travel was out of the question. I found a special offer from an Italian travel agency (Falk Travel) who are linked to the supermarket group LIDL, where we do our weekly shopping.

Booking:

A bit of a nightmare, the Italians do love their paperwork, and Falk demanded all sorts of documents to be faxed to them (as if we were another agency with office equipment and spare time to match) at very short notice. I researched MSC on-line, and pre-booked the water, news and two excursion packages over the net. I further visited a High St travel agency to compare our "savings" and find out about parking at Genova. I joined Cruise Critic to ask about my biggest worry: paying on board with my Visa Debit card. MSC is ambiguous on both it's website and in it's brochures, saying only that "Pre-paid debit cards are not accepted" but credit cards are. I don't have credit cards, and didn't want to get one just for this trip. A further enquiry, by phone to the MSC UK call center (to avoid language problems) taught me only one thing: Mark - the call center operator that I spoke to - has no training, manners, people skills or any foreseeable future in customer relations. Read more