This was my boyfriend's 1st cruise and my 3rd and now we are both addicted to this way of travelling the globe!We decided to spend some time in Venice before the cruise so we searched on the net before deciding to stay in a really lovely B&B called the Ca Bonvicini in the Santa Croce area of Venice...we caught Easyjet flights from our local airport and we were there in less then 2 hours - impressive! We decided to get the public water bus from the airport to Venice (Which I booked on line) although it would have been far cheaper to get the bus but we figured it would be less hassle to get dropped off at the Rialto bridge and find the B&B which we did relatively easily thanks to the map provided by the B&B. Now going on a cruise does not limit your baggage unfortunately and we weren't sure how the weather was going to pan out... looking at advanced weather reports - it would be a mix of sunshine and showers (well monsoons in our case!)

We enjoyed Venice immensely and would love to go back there again and do some more sight seeing more thoroughly than what we managed to visit in one day but we were still happy with our efforts and one of the joys of Venice is just getting lost....soon it was time to be getting onboard the ship so it was onwards to the Piazzale Roma... getting there was easy but finding the free shuttle bus wasn't... it was only reading CC posts that we knew where to look!!! Anyway some people went past us with luggage labels so we followed them and found the bus!

Embarkation was really easy as we had checked in on line and before long we were on board and having lunch in the Windjammer before then finding our cabin... my boyfriend was very impressed by what he could see/eat and do on board so it was a good first impression of cruising for him. We booked the cruise fairly late ahead of departure and paid a really good price for an outside cabin... I did however miss having a balcony cabin as I had one on the Galaxy last year (maybe a balcony cabin for 2010!) You can tell that the ship isn't new but she is kept in good order....she just needs a little more updating for the 21st century such as having flat screen TV's in the cabins but we had more than enough space to sort out our clothes...maybe a bit more space in the bathroom for toiletries but not too bad.The outside window was pretty large and we were happy with the view. 6118 is right at the back of the ship and you will get quite a severe vibration coming into port at times but all in all a nice cabin.The ship has a gym and a spa and we never got to use these facilities, we did use the putting greens of 12 holes but we avoided the rock climbing wall and preferred to walk round the promenade deck 4 times = 1 mile! There didn;t seem that much to do on a sea day in bad weather which is what we experienced but it was nice to watch a few demos (towel folding lol! and a cooking demo and we attended a cha cha dance class too..... Read more