This was our first cruise and as Newbies we had a few concerns before going - sea sickness,would there be enough to do, small rooms, snobby passengers, inedible food, cleanliness, drunkenness, dress code. would the ship be big enough, would it be too big and so on, many of the things that i guess a lot of people new to cruising worry about..

We are English and previous to this we had mainly done long haul holidays to the Far East and America. Normally, where budget allows, we try to stay in the better hotels in town such Mandarin Oriental, Shangri La, Ritz Carlton, Four Seasons etc. We normally do 4-5 nights and move on. So 14 nights at sea with same 2800 guests and 1200 staff was always going to be a VERY different holiday.

The cruise was 14 days Southampton - Gibraltar,VilleFrance, Rome, Florence, Genoa, Malaga, Lisbon, and back to Southampton with 6 days at sea. In port we did a mixture of ship arranged tours and some self-guided wondering around (the latter with mixed success). Read more