Azamara Journey Review

Fantastic 2 weeks at Sea

Review for the British Isles & Western Europe Cruise on Azamara Journey
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ajourney3025
First Time Cruiser • Age 70s

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Sail Date: May 2009

Beautiful ship and perfect for passenger count less than 700.  Ship size allows for entry into Ports of Call not normally available with larger ships.  Such as Parking up the Seine in Rouen and Greenwich UK. Allows for easier access to the main cities in Europe, i.e. Paris and London.Cabin was a special treat due to size and spaciousness for us.  Had chances for upgrade but due to the possible heavy seas, being on the lower decks proved a blessing.  Fortunately the Atlantic, Biscay Bay the English Channel, North Sea and Baltic were very nice for the entire trip. Room issues, The in room clock was hard to read during the day and impossible at night.  Also very difficult to deal with time zone changes as almost no one could figure out how it worked.  The cabin Butler knew , but had to be asked instead of realizing it needed to be changed. these need to be changes so as to see them in the dark.  Most night vision clocks are easy to read.  Not so here.Waste of paper.  On other ships, the trash had places for paper and separate places for everything else.  By having two types of recepticles allows for recycling of paper. Not so here. should be considered if space allows.FoodBy and large the food was very good. Excellent on the Acquilina C, but no different in their Beef high-end restauarant, Prime C.  Menu stated Rib-Eye Bone-In.  When ordered, no bone.  when asked what happened to the bone, waiter had no idea what i was talking about.  Very little in depth understanding of the menus.  He could repeat it but seemed to be doing it without comprehension.Windows Cafe Mostly, food was either cold, over cooked or dry.  This happend on a number of occasions, at lunch, when at sea or early morning breakfast, when needing to catch an early Shore excursion.  Very dissapointing.  suggestion to try to relocate the food service so that the constant opening and closing of the glass door to the outside seating area doesn't take the heat away from the food.  Perhaps make the food available at the other end of the room, so it doesn't have the effect of the door opening and closing. Observation of the machines cooking the waffles in the morning.  the exterior of the waffle iron didn't look like it had ever been cleaned. Also, with having bowls of butter available to add to the waffles or pancakes, perhaps a knife would be much easier to transfer butter to the place, spoons get to be really messy and difficult to work with on the pancakes.  Same for the butter and cream cheese near the toaster.  By the way, all toast seesed to come out partially burned.  perhaps it needs to be cleaned more frequently.Shore excursions,From Greenwich, the procedure with the dock and their tender made it very annoying as it seemed like their tender people weren't very adept at their job. The banged into the portible floating terminal a number of times.  If it is necessary to have a portable terminal between the ship and shore, then why not tie up the portable terminal to the dock and have the Cruise ship outside of it, thereby eliminating the need for their tender.  Saves money, gas, time, and reduces confusion.Suggestion:  Inasmuch as there was a tour to Leeds Castle in Kent, perhaps a much better trip would be to go to Warwick Castle.  A little further in getting there, and as there was a two hour trip to Paris, previously, the small time difference to get to Warwick Castle and the experience when you get there is far superior than Leeds Castle.  Also, the extra time doesn't really matter as the ship remained at Greenwich for 24 hours.CrewWonderful attitude and tried to be as attentive as possible.  The attitude came from the top down and it showed.Due to the smaller size of the ship, you actually saw people more than once, both on shore and aboard.Entertainment,John the Cruise director ,was delightful and very much a part of the experience.  The only weak performance came from the Comedian during the second week.  Slow to engage the audience and extremely dry pointed attempts at understanding his humor.  the The other performers were very good.Overall a great experience on a new ship for us.As we love the itinerary, We would travel again on Azamara.

Cabin Review

Review should allow for reviews of ALL the stops.  Especially when the trips are more than 1 week?????Amsterdam should have an excursion to the Windmills, only 45 minutes by local bus and 20 minutes by local train.Kiel, Germany, perhaps an alternative than one all day to Hamburg.

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