Being avid cruisers we decided to try a European cruise company, and picked Costa Fortuna purely because of the price (175 pounds per person)departing 7th June from Venice. The embarkation went smoothly, the terminal building was adequate with free cold drinks available. We boarded by numbers being called which went very efficiently, and we were in our cabin within 30 minutes and our cases were there waiting for us. First impressions were that it had the 'wow' factor, it was designed to imitate all the older ships of the Costa company, very different from the American cruise ships, but very well done. Although the ship was built in 2003, it had no signs of wear and tear and everywhere we went aboard the ship was spotlessly clean. The cabins were larger than normal, especially the bathrooms and had the usual hairdryer, tv and mini bar. The staff in all departments were all absolutely amazing, very friendly, couldn't do enough for you and were not pushy about selling you drinks like on the American ships. Our main restaurant waiter was especially friendly, he was from India and after we mentioned we liked curries, we went to the restaurant the next night and they had made a fabulous curry just for our table of 4. The food throughout the week couldn't be faulted, it was always hot and delicious with plenty of choices, we tried all the restaurants. The ports we visited were, Bari, Kataklon, Santorini, Mykonos and Dubrovnik. Even when having to tender it went efficiently with very little waiting.We didn't do any shore excursions, as we prefer getting around for ourselves. Our only gripe was that we never got long enough in port as we would have liked to. To sum it up we had a fantastic weeks holiday, even though we were very sceptical after reading some of the ships reviews, I don't know where these people get their opinions from, we couldn't have asked for better, and we have cruised with royal caribbean, crystal, P&O,Holland America. We will definitely be using Costa again.