My wife has never fancied a cruise. She was seasick on the Isle of Man ferry. However, so many of our friends have talked about how much they enjoyed theirs I managed to persuade her. I did listen to stories of cruising from friends with great interest. Dining at 6pm with the same people every night; 15% added to a $2.50 bottle of water; tipping for just about everybody; long queues on arrival at ports; ships docking 5 miles away from the actual town etc. etc. the list goes on. Enough to put us off completely until I heard of a great experience on a Silversea cruise. I investigated further. It looked a great ship, small number of people, no tipping, all food and drinks. It sounded just what we wanted even if it was more expensive than we wanted to pay. I investigated further and found 3 more cruise lines which tempted me besides Silversea:- Seabourn, Regent and Crystal. How did I decide? By producing a speadsheet with all the good and bad points (sad Aren't I?). Which cruise line won? Well I narrowed it down to 2 actually - Silversea and Seabourn. Both ticked all the boxes but in the end Seabourn won as our choice of cruise was the Baltic and whilst both did this area Silversea's was 7 days and Seabourn's 12.

We went in July on a cruise with flights and transfers included and managed a decent discount off the brochure price. (A regular cruiser on board said aim for half the brochure price). We flew to Copenhagen and were collected at the airport and taken to the Admiral Hotel for the first night (we paid for this ourselves). A very wet Copenhagen meant no sightseeing and had to even stay in the hotel in the morning as the rain was torrential.

On embarking on the ship which was docked very near to the city centre and easily walkable from the Admiral on a dry day, we were welcomed with proper champagne and canapes and following a very quick check in we were soon in our suite to be welcomes by a full bottle of champagne on ice, a bowl of fruit and flowers. We also received a free gift of some premium soaps as well as the more ordinary Molton Brown in the bathroom. Read more