We chose a Baltic cruise on the Costa Pacifica since it stopped at more places than other available Baltic cruises. The cruise started and ended in Kiel and around half of the passengers were German with a large contingent of Italians. There were a few hundred each of English, French, Spanish and Portuguese speakers and a sprinkling of others. I had read bad reviews of Costa's ships and service and my expectations were low, especially after getting no co-operation in obtaining a Russian visa. However, I was pleasantly surprised.

My first impressions were that the ship is huge. It's 260 metres long so some parts of the ship involve a long walk. The ship is decorated to Italian tastes - a little garish for English reserve. Until you get used to it, it can be difficult to get your bearings. This isn't helped by the fact that one of the formal restaurants takes up the middle of two decks so the route from one end of the ship to the other often involves changing deck. Costa has a number of ships built to the same design so I suppose regular customers get used to it.

We had a balcony cabin on Boheme deck. It was a reasonable size with plenty of storage space. It would not be particularly comfortable for people who like to sit in their cabin all day, but it was perfectly adequate for sleeping, washing and dressing. The TV was up near the ceiling in continental fashion. It had BBC News and Eurosport so we were able to watch Andy Murray get kicked out of the French Open in German. Read more