Marco Polo Review

3.5 / 5.0
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Ghent and Amsterdam xmas shopping cruise dec. 15th 2013

Review for the Baltic Sea Cruise on Marco Polo
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Fussymoo
2-5 Cruises • Age 80s

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Sail Date: Dec 2013

Quite a nice ship but the service was quite poor in the bars. The staff were friendly if they understood English. They appeared to be mostly Eastern European and some being quite inexperienced.

The three night trip was to Ghent and Amsterdam for xmas shopping. Prior to the trip we were offered excursions to Brussels and Bruges but nothing for Ghent. However, being a small ship it is able to dock in Ghent along the waterways from the open sea. We were not told that there were courtesy coaches at the dock to take us in to Ghent until we enquired. Maybe they wanted us to book excursions. We did pre-book the city and canal trip in Amsterdam. This was a four hour trip, of which over one hour was takenp up with travelling around the outskirts, the pleasurable canal trip took an hour. We were given a half slot to visit the flower market on foot and then return to the ship. We had no time to eat or drink. The trip went at 12.15 which meant sitting around the ship after breakfast and there was no time for shopping or visiting the xmas market as you had to be back on the ship by 5.30. Not only did we miss lunch, but afternoon tea had also finished. We found out that the ship docked approx. 20 minute walk from the city centre with buses and taxis outside the dock gates. Had we known this, we would not have pre-booked the tour as we would have gone into the city after breakfast and seen far more of the interesting parts of Amsterdam.

We were later informed that we had to vacate our cabins by 7.30am and left the ship at around 10am.

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