I have taken a while to write this review because I wanted to have perspective on the experience. My husband and I (late 60s) were on the Rotterdam Black Sea Cruise May 2 to 14th. We stayed in Athens two nights before and took private transport to the pier in Piraeus. We stood in line about 1 hour - the check in person didn't seem to understand the process. We got on board and went to the Lido for lunch until our cabin was ready. The ports we visited from Athens were Istanbul, Turkey, Varna, Bulgaria, Odessa, Ukraine, Sebastopol, Ukraine, Kusadasi, Turkey, Rhodes, Cyprus, Cairo and back to Athens. We made all ports but were late to Cyprus because a HAL Executive was late meeting the ship in Rhodes. We took a ships tour in a couple of cities including Cairo, Rhodes and Varna and individually booked tours in Turkey. We highly recommend Ephesus and Istanbul. The Black Sea ports, while interesting are not yet ready for full cruise ship visits. Many shops were closed, money exchange was difficult and there was little preparation on the ports during HALS excursion talks.

We were in a balcony room which had enough space, adequate bathroom and our steward was fine. The beds were very comfortable. The room was clean. We had problems with our toilet two of the days, but they resolved on their own. We had main lower dining at a table for four. Our dining companions were fine. We all commented on how our waiter was always hurried, brusque and never took time to speak to us. In 12 days, he never remembered our names, how we like our coffee or what preference we had. He was like a robot. His assistant steward was actually much better, more friendly and wanted to actually give customer service. ..Food was adequate, but on a number of occasions our dish was the wrong order or was cold. We expected better. HAL also did not enforce the dress code, even on formal night. We were shocked to see young adults in tube tops, jeans and flip flops in the dining room on formal night. As most people know, the Crows Nest was closed during almost all of our cruise. Just to see the sight of that beautiful room littered with awful art broke my heart. Our past cruises on HAL have been great in part because we were able to sit in the Crow's Nest and enjoy the company of other people as we sailed through beautiful scenery. It was not to be on this cruise. Although we voiced our concern, we never were contacted once on the cruise by anyone on the ship to acknowledge our problems. The Hotel Manager was completely unavailable the three times we asked to see him. We ate lunch in the Lido on a number of occasions. We were shocked to see a number of people grabbing food with their hands, tasting salad dressing with their fingers and other unsanitary actions done under the scrutiny of the staff. When questioned on this, the staff said they were not allowed to tell passengers not to touch the food. On one occasion in the Lido we got our salads and went to get our entrEe. We returned to our table to find that the waiters had cleared our table and seated someone else in our place. We had no where to go with our dinner!!!! The people just kept eating and the server disappeared.

In terms of entertainment, there is very little to do on the ship during sea days unless you want to pay. Playing board games is hardly shipboard entertainment. Trivia was well attended, but the rules kept changing and the staff doing it were less than enthusiastic. As for the daily quiz: It is available at 9 am and every day at 9:05 there was a typed answer sheet turned in with correct answers. Apparently someone had been on a prior cruise, had gotten the answers and typed them in and just submitted them. The person administering the quiz never got it and that person won every day. Frankly, the ship felt like a floating strip mall, not like the HAL we remembered. Read more