Our first cruise had taken a year to plan and execute, stacks of homework done on research, ploughing through endless cruise reviews and background information. 

Hence it's only right that I include my review for any other potential first timers out there doing the same as we did, I can say in the first instance - we had an awesome time and hope this review will be of some benefit to someone out there.

We started by determining the criteria we would use as our basic requirements, eg ship size (passenger numbers), ship's facilities, ports of call, must have good general reviews etc etc - you need to know the answers to these questions to find the right ship and cruise for you. We did this homework and came up with the Azamara Journey, sailing out of Venice in early May 2009. Read more