BACKGROUND This was our second cruise on Brilliance, with the first being in March of 2005. We love the Radiance class of ships. We are in our mid-30's and have been on many cruises across several cruise lines. THE SHIP Brilliance in our opinion is in fantastic shape, just the same as she was on our last visit in 2005. THE STAFF We found the general staff to be excellent. Our waiter, Amit and assistant waiter, Ian, were both fantastic and delivered dining service that was at the top of our list of favorites. Every evening Amit would bring out a multitude of other entrEe's and set them in the center of the table so that we could taste them. He also did this at dessert time. What a great experience! DINING We had late seating, table 460. The meals were absolutely wonderful. This is a very happy segment of my review, as we were on Serenade in October for a cruise to Hawaii and the food in the dining room was absolutely awful. There is no comparison between the two ships in regards to dining which is puzzling. We asked our head waiter about this and he said it has to do the head chef. Whatever the difference, I am just so pleased with the food quality and presentation. I even ordered several entrEe's that were the same as on Serenade and they came out very different (in a very good way!). The food in the Windjammer was also very good with no complaints at all. We ate at the Seaview cafe once and again it was good also. The one thing that I noticed in regards to this specific cruise was that they moved late seating to be at 8pm instead of 8:30pm. This was fine with us, but they never adjusted most of the evening's activities to match it which I found quite odd. For instance, when the shows were after dinner they were still held at 10:45, which is a long time to wait when you eat at 8pm and get out around 9:30pm. They also had a lot of activities such as trivia starting at 7:30pm which meant you could start them but could not finish them. WEATHER We were so pleased with our weather. It was cooler, in the 60's near Barcelona, but it warmed up as we went. The days at sea while doing the transatlantic were all fairly calm (6ft or less) and 4 of the 5 days we laid out in the sun and played in the pools. AN EVENING IN PORTOFINO Unfortunately, there was one poor part to our fabulous cruise. After having been on Serenade recently and thoroughly enjoying our experience at Portofino there I was very excited to make a reservation at Portofino on Brilliance for our group of 11 friends. Upon embarking the ship we made our way to Portofino and made our reservation with the dining room manager. The book was completely open and we sat and figured out which day we wanted, which was the first casual night at sea on our way across the Atlantic. The manager wrote it in the book and proceeded to show us where he would put our table or table(s) as it may end up being two tables, but he would try for one. We arrived at Portofino at our scheduled time, 8:30pm. Our group was all dressed and excited for the occasion. We were greeted by the manager who looked confused and asked if we had a reservation! We reminded him that we had made it with him upon embarkation. He flipped through all of the pages in his book and said it was missing somehow. He said he would take care of us went and set up two tables, one for seven and the other for four. We were kind of disappointed as one of our group members had talked with the manager just the day before and he said that he was planning to make one big table for us. The other odd thing is that our dining room waiter already knew about our reservation in Portofino before we told him, so somehow our reservation just disappeared. I was seated at the bigger table and we were promptly greeted by Annabelle, our server. After a few minutes of looking over the menus she asked if anyone would like to order wine, and one couple at the table said yes but that we need a wine list. She brought them one and she took their order and never offered the wine list across the table. After she brought them their wine I asked if I could please order a glass of wine however I ended up just having a glass from our friend's bottle. We were never offered cocktails at any point. We all placed our orders. At about 9:15pm we all received our first course. My partner had ordered Calamari. It was cold and dry. He asked for fresh Calamari, a reasonable request. It came minutes later, obviously the same Calamari had been stuck back in the fryer which made it very unpleasant but he did not want to say anything further to delay the rest of our courses. At 10pm we had not yet received another course, which seemed very odd. We expect a slow enjoyable experience, but this is now an hour and half past when we entered the dining room. Our second course came, which for me was a pear, candied walnut and blue cheese salad. Upon looking at the sad little salad I quickly saw some iceberg lettuce, and a couple pieces of blue cheese and pears but no candied walnuts. The server did not come back to the table until my salad and one other who also ordered it was eaten. I pleasantly said to Annabelle, "I have a question, what happened to the candied walnuts in our salads?" Annabelle quickly and snottily replied, "We are out of walnuts onboard and we only have pecans. The chef decided that the pecans would not work well and would not taste good as a replacement so we served them without nuts." Then she added, "I have a question for you. Is there anything that you don't miss?" I was in such shock at her verbal attack on me, in front of all of my friends! I somehow managed to reply, "I am noticing that there are a lot of things wrong in here tonight!" She whisked away. Our next course was the pasta course, which has been a true highlight in Portofino in the past. I ordered the mushroom pasta, which came out cold and tasteless. I took a couple of bites and left the rest. What a true disappointment. At five minutes to 11pm, our final course of the evening finally arrived. It mainly consisted of filet mignon steaks and two people had the seafood skewers. Our friends that ordered the seafood skewers were very disappointed in that not only did they not offer to remove the lobster from their shells but when the lobster was very dry and salty. I ordered my filet medium rare. It looked wonderful until I cut into it. It was all but still mooing! A couple of others ordered their medium rare as well and theirs were cooked to perfection although one person's steak was cold. Due to the already stressful evening I tried to just eat the outsides of the steak but it was just too raw. The dining room manager was walking by and I flagged him over and asked if my steak could be cooked more and he took it away. One of my table mates commented that the steak looked more like a raw piece of tuna than a filet mignon. A few minutes later another filet arrived and it was great. The others were completely done with their meals and yawning as it was now well after 11pm. Annabelle came over and asked if it was alright to remove everyone else's plates while I was eating and I said that was no problem. That sparked a funny story with one our friends about how his mother would never let plates be cleared from a dining table until everyone was finished. Annabelle took off towards the kitchen and screamed at the top of her lungs something to the effect that she could not take it anymore! The other table in there with us turned around in disbelief as it was truly shocking to hear. We all had decided that we had enough and would like to just go to bed and forget dessert. I went and told the manager that it was time to end our embarrassing evening early, and to just bring our checks. I told him that we were all through with the stressful evening and that I just could not believe the behavior of our server and the lack of quality coming out of the kitchen. I went into the details of the evening, and he responded that he knew that we had a bad experience and did not want to charge us for the cover charges and would like to offer to have us all back later in the cruise at no charge as well. After going back to the group we all unanimously concurred that we would definitely not have any interest in returning but thanked him for his gesture. PORTS BARCELONA We flew in one day early and stayed at the Hotel 1898, which was absolutely wonderful. The hotel is situated right on Las Ramblas in a great central location. We spent our first day walking all around and enjoying the city. I would recommend arriving earlier to not only help get acclimated to the time but also to enjoy this beautiful city. We embarked Brilliance of the Seas around 10:45am and pretty much walked right on. ALICANTE After walking through town a bit we took a taxi up to the fort. It is a very short trip, and offered magnificent views. We decided to walk back down to the town and our ship, which was a great choice and was really not that far. GIBRALTAR We had booked a private tour with other Cruise Critic members to see the rock. It was a great experience, and we thoroughly enjoyed all of the views as well as the monkeys that inhabit the area. Seeing the cave with all of the stalactites and stalagmites was also wonderful. After our tour we went shopping a bit and also had the most expensive fish and chips that I could ever imagine eating! LISBON I had secured a private tour through Tours For You. Our day was fantastic! One of the highlights of the day was going up to visit the castle. It is a tough drive up to it (tight windy roads), so it was something that ship's tours do not offer. We also had a wonderful lunch at a local restaurant, which was fantastic. MADEIRA We joined other Cruise Critic members for another wonderful day. We started by visiting the botanical gardens, and then went up to the second highest peak which was above the clouds. We also shared a wonderful meal at a local restaurant. At the end of the day we had time to shop a bit and visit the local market. TENERIFE After looking for a long time for a private tour and not having any luck we finally booked one through the ship. We chose the one visiting Mt. Teide. This proved to be one of the very best ports. Our bus tour went up, and up and up finally making its first stop at an overlook well above the clouds. After some great pics we all boarded the bus again but it was dead. The driver decided to empty it out and then had some of the passengers give it a push start (now we are talking about a greyhound style bus!). It started as he popped the clutch and had us all board again. He started down the windy little road and it died again after just a couple of minutes. He then made a good choice to call for another bus for us. After about an hour or so another bus came and we continued our tour. We continued to climb up to heights that were amazing. All in all a great day! ANTIGUA We took a tour with Antigua Adventures and had a great day on their Eco Tour. SUMMARY All in all, it was a fantastic cruise! We truly enjoyed our ports, the days at sea and of course the ship and staff.