My wife and I recently cruised on Costa Serena departing Savona on October 7th 2012, returning to Savona on October 14th and calling at Civitavecchia, Palermo, La Palma, Valentia and Marseilles. We flew from Gatwick to Malpensa, Milan and were disappointed that we were not met at arrivals but had to make our own way from Terminal 2 to Terminal 1. The meeting point we were given at Terminal 1 was also lacking Costa staff and we had to enquire where we could find the Costa coach. Eventually we met a Costa rep and duly set off for the ship.

Embarkation at Savona was also not without incident because by the time we got off the coach (having filled in the obligatory health questionaire) the baggage handlers had already spirited away all our cases including our hand luggage which contained our tickets and all our other documents apart from our passports. The moral of this story is don't label your hand luggage unless you want it to be delivered directly to your cabin. However the customer service staff in the embarkation lounge could not have been more helpful and, in fact, they fast tracked our embarkation.

We had an inside cabin on deck 10 which also contained the Lido Pool and the buffet restaurant - a perfect location. The cabin itself was quite spacious and reasonably well appointed. Our cabin staff member was pleasant and helpful. Read more