Paul Gauguin Review

4.5 / 5.0
314 reviews

Sailing the South Pacific on Paul Gauguin

Review for the South Pacific Cruise on Paul Gauguin
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covinaCruiser
10+ Cruises • Age 60s

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Sail Date: Oct 2015

This was our first time on the Paul Gauguin, although we have sailed on over 30 other ships. We chose this itinerary specifically because it added Tonga and Fiji on to the typical French Polynesia route. Overall, we enjoyed our trip very much. There is a lot to like about the Paul Gauguin: intimate size, very good food, nice cabins, friendly staff,etc. There are three dinner restaurants, all were good to very good.The soups, sauces and bread were outstanding. The meats were mostly very good and the fish was also very good.

The ports were interesting and we enjoyed them very much. We visited Tahiti, Moorea, Bora Bora, Taha'a (Motu Mahana), Aitutaki (Cook Islands), Tonga and Fiji. The best features were the good food, and interesting ports, and comfortable, relaxed life aboard ship. It's pretty relaxed and stress free. The shore excursions were pretty good, if a little pricey. Not all was perfect, but in life, little is perfect. The air was arranged by PG, and it was fine. Not spectacular, but adequate, uneventful flights to Papeete and home from Nadi.(we went on Air Tahiti Nui and returned on Fiji Air) Embarkation and disembarkation is fairly simple with only a few hundred passengers. Tendering was also easy, no need to wait a long time nor ticketing for tenders like on big cruise ships. There was onboard entertainment, it was okay. Not great, but not terrible, it was okay. There were three guest lecturers on our sailing, we found one to be OUTSTANDING, one to be interesting, and one was an academic (college professor) who literally put us to sleep.

The major "complaints" would be: poor execution of pre and post hotel stays by Paul Gauguin (they give you NO information, and you have to ask around to find anything out), overpriced laundry service (they lead you to believe you must prepay for a laundry package--astronomically expensive), and if you are allergic to down/feather pillows like I am, you will suffer with hard bricks which they call foam pillows.

Cabin Review

Cabin E

Cabin 419 was spacious enough. It lacked drawer space. It was very clean. The mattress was very comfortable. It had a mini fridge, good for keeping water cold. It has a bar area too, which we didn't need. We would have liked more closet and drawer space. The a/c and ventilation were very good....easy to keep a good temp in the room. TV was very small and their programming was pretty bad. Lots of storage in the bathroom, hooray! The shower is in the very narrow tub and had low water pressure.

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