My wife and I are US expats living and working in Romania and I've been wanting to get her into the cruising scene. I've been on HA (Baltic Sea) and RC (Eastern Caribbean) before, this was her first cruise. We are 27 and 25 years old. The price was killer, especially if you fly WizzAir into Rome!

I lived in Rome for 6 months during college so we stayed in Rome for 3 days seeing the sites before embarking in Civitavecchia on a Friday afternoon. Check-in was an absolute breeze, as we did the web check-in and thus received priority boarding. I was amazed by how many people were standing in a long line waiting to get embarked, as they did not do the web check-in. Boarding started at 2 pm for us in Civitavecchia.

Once on board, we were escorted to our room, an interior room, category 2, on the 8th deck. I never splurge for nice hotels/hotel rooms or oceanview/balcony cabins as we are never in the cabin except for sleeping and showering. The interior cabin was very adequate for our needs. The bed was quite comfortable and we drank plenty of tap water from the faucet in the bathroom which tasted fine. We drink tap water everyday in Romania too, if that makes any difference to you. The shower isn't large, but we don't need a large one. Our stateroom was situated near the very rear of the ship which was nice as we could take a relatively unused elevator up to the buffet for breakfast and/or lunch. Read more