This was about our twentieth cruise and the third cruise on Princess. This particular itinerary from Venice to Barcelona was the "Cruise of my Heart". It was the cruise we were supposed to do last year on Celebrity, but the day before the cruise we were informed the cruise had been cancelled because they broke the boat. I can't complain about Celebrity because they refunded all our monies and gave us a replacement 14 day cruise to the Baltic and that was wonderful, but it wasn't my cruise to Venice.

Immediately on return from the Baltic Cruise, we called our travel agent and said we still wanted to do the Western Med cruise, but because of the problems with Celebrity on the first cruise, we decided to change cruise lines to Princess and booked the Western Med Cruise for July 29th 2008.

We started our cruise by flying into Venice two days early and stayed at the Hotel Antiche Figure (cannot recommend this hotel highly enough). We loved our two day at Venice, but were ready to get on the ship. We walked to the Piazza Romalla and got the free bus to the port, that drops you off God knows where inside the port and the port is very poorly marked. We got off the bus, with what felt like all 200 pieces of luggage and went toward the building that was marked Princess. Once we got to the building, we were told that we were in the wrong place, our luggage had to go to another building to be placed on the ship and then we could come back and begin the check in process. It was after 2:00pm, it was hot, and the rolling luggage was heavy as the devil and I will admit I was getting a bit cranky. We finally found the building to drop off the luggage and proceeded to return to the original building to check it, It was a decent process, not the best I have seen but not the worst. Once on board, we were shown to our staterooms (we were traveling with another couple) and were thrilled to death with our Baja deck stern balcony cabins, I can honestly say we spent more time just relaxing out on the balcony than on any other ship. It was fantastic. We explored the rooms found our dining cards and discovered that even though we had booked our cruise a full year in advance connected all our travel with the other couple, we were not seated at the same table as we has requested. While our husbands relaxed, my friend and I went down to see the head Maitre'd...what a waste of time. We were supposed to have a table for 4 early dining in the Botticelli room, that is what we had requested over a year prior to the cruise..well we were wrong again, by the time we got to the Maitre'd he had already had a lot of mix ups and told us he could put us at large tables in areas that we probably would not like or he would give us a table in the DaVinci dining room that would be ours every night. That was our choice, so we took the table for every night in DaVinci and it turned out alright because we had a fabulous waiter and a Maitre' d who when he realized my husband was Sicilian could not do enough for us. We almost became family by the end of the cruise. But to book a cruise over a year prior to embarkation, state the preference you have, and then have them completely ignored is discouraging. Overall, cruise stops were wonderful, the excursions were great, and I was so glad to finally get to see the Western Med. What bothered me the most was the constant nickle and diming that the Princess Line did. When we went on the Baltic cruise on Celebrity last year I did NOT see it like I did this year on Princess. You pay for ice cream, appetizers, every time we turned around there was another charge. When we stopped in Marseilles, France, we had not booked an excursion and thought we would just go into the city on our own. Princess told us that we were not allowed to walk out of the marina and provided buses into town for $5.oo per person each way, that was put right on your card. We also had to go down and have the water taxi fee in Venice taken off our charge at the beginning of the cruise. We all arrived home saying that the destinations were everything we had hoped they would be, but all us feeling very disappointed with Princess Cruises overall. I had just finished unpacking and telling everyone that everything about the trip was wonderful, but was not thrilled with Princess and we would use other of our favorite line from now on, Celebrity, Holland-America, RCL, when my daughter called and said she just got a great bonus at work and had booked herself, her daughter, myself, and my husband on....wait for it Ruby Princess for over Thanksgiving this year. It was a terribly sweet thing to do, but truly wish she had picked another Line. We did try to call and change to booking to another line, but they were all filling up fast. I won't look a gift horse in the mouth, and I"ll go on this vacation cruise to spend the time with my daughter and my granddaughter. But this will be the last Princess Cruise for me, I prefer the Celebrity or Holland-America lines, that don't seem to nickle and dime you to death.