When I read cruise reviews, I often find them to be too descriptive narratives which provide little more than a discourse on personal preferences and end up with little in the way of useful information. The fact is, a cruise vacation is a wonderful experience and unless you booked an inside cabin on the lowest deck of say, a Carnival ship, you're guaranteed to have a good time. So, for those who complain about the quality of the cuisine and the fact that there are, God forbid, children on the loose around the ship, you might be better off holing up on some deserted island with an all-inclusive package that allows you to stare at your significant other for the duration of the vacation.

My wife and I had the privilege of taking our fifth cruise with each other's mothers, my sister and her niece, and some neighborhood friends. It our 35th wedding anniversary and was aboard Celebrity's one-year-old Equinox, the newest of the Solstice class of cruise ships. All I can say is what an incredible experience. The biggest complaint was what many others have said....the cruise had to end. We enjoyed ten days of visiting such paradises as Naples-Capri, Santorini, Ephesus, Athens, Corfu, Dubrovnik and Venice. Each stop featured its own special delights, whether it was the joy of the people, the shopping, the weather, the awesome sights or all of the above.

I'll leave it to others to comment on the individual stops because each provides a different viewpoint based on the activity. I was traveling with two women over 80 so naturally accommodations needed to be made for their comfort, especially at places where the temperature hovered near 100 degrees. I actually enjoyed the tours in the hot weather because it allowed me to forgo my daily workout in favor of climbing up a hill, for instance, with the reward being the Acropolis, at the top. At the end of the cruise, I actually LOST two pounds even though I enjoyed the ship's food and beverage service to its fullest. Read more