We chose this cruise as seeing the Northern Lights and Norwegian Fjords were on our bucket list. We never thought about cruising before, but having come into a little money this seemed the best way to fulfill our dream. The ship was delayed arriving into Tilbury from it's previous trip, but we were notified by CMV via text message the day before and advised to call our travel agents. Our embarkation time was put back by 5 hours, but as compensation we were offered free wine or beer at the first formal evening meal. The delay did mean that it got a little crowded at Tilbury, and despite the British supposedly being good at queuing some people's impatience did cause problems.

Once on board everything was good, we were shown to our cabin straight away, and introduced to our cabin steward. Because of the late departure the dinner sittings were suspended for the evening, and we ate in the Waldorf restaurant due to our allocated one (Kensington, which is smaller) being full. Overall we found the quality of food to be good throughout the cruise, with only one or two menu choices being not to our taste. The waiting staff, who were excellent, were only too happy to change any items we'd ordered but didn't like. The Raffles bistro is the informal buffet, and it can be hard to get a seat for breakfast lunch or afternoon tea there (they moved afternoon tea into the larger Waldorf restaurant towards the end of the cruise) but was emptier for evening meals. We ate in all three restaurants during our trip, and found Raffles to be nicely relaxed once seated.

Our cabin was on deck 4, and did suffer with engine noise, however we were soon used to this, and found ourselves sleeping very well. The twin beds had been made up as a queen sized double (maybe because we had mentioned we were celebrating our 3rd wedding anniversary on-board) and were very comfortable. The bathroom was a decent size, and the shower was good (better than our one at home). Read more