My wife and I have sailed on Carnival once before, on the Carnival Valor on a Caribbean cruise to Belize, Honduras, Cozumel, and Grand Cayman. We have also been on several Royal Caribbean cruises, and my wife has also had a few extra Carnival voyages of her own. This was our first European cruise, our longest to date by far, and it was quite an experience. We were traveling with my wife's parents, so each of us two couples had our own cabin. There is a six-hour time difference between the East Coast of the USA and this cruise - the USA is six hours behind.

Embarkation: We had flown into Rome three days prior to our cruise. The flight was smooth, and getting through and out of Rome's airport was a little chaotic but not terrible. After spending a few days on our own in Rome, we took private transportation to the port city of Civitevacchia which was booked online through Viator. Our shuttle arrived at the hotel in Rome about 45 minutes early, which was a pleasant surprise to us since we were already set to go. It took about one hour to drive from Rome to Civitivecchia, and our driver made us feel like we had just been on Mr. Toad's Wild Ride from Disney World. He navigated several Rome traffic jams and traversed various winding roads at what felt like high speeds - of course, they were kilometers per hour and I couldn't convert easily on the spot - before arriving at the highway and taking us to the ship. It is quite simply an industrial port city with next to nothing other than the harbor and a few small restaurants for the locals. We were pretty early in terms of embarkation, arriving somewhere between 11:00 AM and 12:00 PM, which helped us quickly get through the lines and onto the ship. We had all of our documentation ready, so the process went very smoothly and quickly, and we were on the ship within ten to fifteen minutes. Later on, we heard that the Carnival Freedom computer systems had a little "glitch" where people's security photos were not being stored properly and needed to be taken and stored manually. Luckily, we were on board before that problem surfaced, but our cruise director's announcements seemed to indicate that the lines to get on board were much longer and more frustrating than anticipated. (He later joked that they had thrown their entire computer system overboard.) Once we were on the ship, we hung out on the Lido deck and had some lunch before going to our cabin.

Cabins: This trip was not inexpensive, by any stretch, so we had to settle for interior cabins rather than a balcony. However, upon entering our cabins on Deck 6, we were quite surprised and very satisfied with what we saw. For comparison's purposes, our cabin on Royal Caribbean's Sovereign on the Seas was so small that I could sit in the middle of the bed, stretch both arms out (about a six-foot wingspan), and touch both walls without any problem whatsoever. This cabin was significantly bigger, with enough room on both sides of the double bed for nightstands and plenty of space underneath for suitcases. There were also three large closets, several drawers, and a decently-sized bathroom. We had a flat screen TV with about twenty channels, which were mostly ship-based, news channels, or in some cases repeating movies that changed daily. The cabin definitely surpassed our expectations and was plenty roomy enough for 12 days. We did have some issues with the bathroom. About halfway through the cruise, we noticed that the bathroom would flood every time that we took a shower. It seemed to happen no matter how we angled the shower head, no matter how tightly we tried to draw the curtain, etc. My opinion is that there may have been a problem with the drainage, but we didn't think that it was important enough to call into maintenance. The next folks to enjoy our cabin can handle that (hehe). Read more