We had a fantastic time on this cruise, visited so many wonderful ports. The Equinox is a beautiful ship, with the best service we've experienced on a cruise to date. This was our second time on the Equinox, and we did see some wear and tear in the 18 months since our first cruise in December 2009 (broken light fixture, stained bed skirt, frayed bath towels) but nothing that affected our enjoyment of the cruise. We enjoyed all of the food served on the ship, we never had a bad meal. We felt all the specialty restaurants were worth the extra cost, with our favorite being the Asian restaurant because the cuisine was so different from the main dining room. What we didnt feel was worth the extra cost was the charge for the high tea ($25 for tiny little sandwiches and the same pastries served at the buffet) and charging extra for orange juice at the sea day brunch. We had select (or anytime) dining and never had to wait more than 2 minutes for a table. This is the way to go if you like to eat dinner around 7 or 7:30 pm, because the main seatings are at 6 (too early if you do any all day excursions) and 8:45 (too late for us, you miss the shows.) Our cabin number was 9270, we had a "hump" cabin with a balcony that was double the size of the standard balconies. Our room was really quiet even though it was across the hall from the card room. I do have to say that if entertainment is important to you, this is not the cruise for you. We found the review shows to be on par with high school productions, not the same quality of entertainment that we had experienced on our first Equinox cruise in the Caribbean. The explanation was that Celebrity was trying to appeal to a more international crowd, but I think they missed the mark. There was not much night life on this ship as well, it was fairly quiet after 10 pm. This being a very port intensive cruise, we were not up late at night anyway, but something to consider if thats important to you.

The ports on this cruise were all wonderful, with Ephesus/Kusadasi being the biggest surprise of all. We took a private tour with EKOL tours (ask for Yelda) and loved visiting the ruins, we saw so much more than in Athens. The private tours I arranged were our favorites, with the ship tours being more convenient but very crowded. Our biggest disappointment was Mykonos -- the beach on the ship excursion was packed with way too many people and the sand was rocky and hard to walk on. If you can add on a few extra day to your trip, we flew into Rome four days early and were glad we had scheduled some extra time to see this beautiful city.

All in all we enjoyed this trip very much and would highly recommend the ship and this itinerary. We are already planning our next Celebrity cruise!