This was an extremely enjoyable cruise but the things that made it enjoyable are not found in a cruise description. The people we met, many through cruise critics, set this cruise above the rest. Next was the attitudes we approached the trip with (whatever came our way was greeted as an adventure) and prior research into the ports and excursions. Again the reviews of the ports, information from several people on our board, particularly MavisMarie, was invaluable.

The ship itself is a sister ship to the Jewel that we were on last year. Overall it fell just short of the Jewel--little items were off like few sanitizer balls, the supercharge chlorine level in the pool, the cool "hot" tubs. My husband's personal gripe was the poor selection of movies and the fact that the one along the theme of our cruise (The Davinci Code) was shown in about 5 languages--none of which was English!! After chasing around in port he enjoys relaxing for a bit with a movie before dinner--we booked a late sitting for this reason. My gripe was having to go to the outside pool to sign out a towel.

The food was good, we ate in the dining room each night because we sat at a table with good people and an attentive waiter. He would listen to a discussion as we were trying to decide between two and would frequently bring the one not selected along so the table could sample it anyway. He also saw to it that my husband got 4!!! lobster tails, which was about 2 too many but we appreciate the effort. We had friends that were on the early seating that avoided the dining room because their's was a "stuffy" table. Alot of it is in the draw of table mates, but the one thing you can do on one of the large tables is to change seats each night. We suggested it and the others approached as a game. Each night we would take a different seat some nights next to our traveling companions some days across. We couldn't wait to get back from a port to compare notes with our dinner companions. The Ports were an adventure of a life-time and the decision of what to do with limited time was a hard one. We booked private tours at two of the locations and would do so again in a heartbeat. We split the cost of a van along the Almalfi coast and in Florence with two other couples from cruise critics. Read more