Our first Celebrity cruise was in early November 2007 on the Century. Until then RCCL (5 times) was our favorite of the 5 cruise lines we had sailed with but the Century blew them all away. We tried NCL this May but were disappointed with the quality of the food... plenty of choice but poor quality beef.

The cruise was booked in early October. We are flexible on dates and find prices drop significantly in the last 4 weeks before a cruise particularly in Europe in November before ships cross the Atlantic for winter. This is fine by us as we find the Med in summer to be too hot. We were looking at going on the Century again but preferred the itinerary on the Summit. The early November sailing was chosen over the mid November one as last year the weather we had whilst on the Century was completely dry whereas there were a few rainy days later in the month. Unfortunately the weather forecast immediately before the cruise was for rain in all our ports for the first 7 days.

We arrived in Barcelona the evening before the cruise and caught the airport bus to Placa de Catalunya near to our hotel. It was raining but we had missed the heavy thunderstorms of earlier in the day. We had pre-booked tickets for entry to La Sagrada Familia at 09:00 the next morning and following this we picked up our bags and caught a taxi to the ship for 10 Euro. Read more