We just returned from 12 wonderful days on the Emerald Princess cruising the Mediterranean and Greek isles so I thought I would provide a few comments about this new ship. We thoroughly enjoyed the Emerald Princess which is the same as the Crown Princess. These two new ships are much nicer than the other Grand Class Princess ships. The public areas are decorated in soft colors and are easily accessible and the only time we felt crowded was if we had to tender into an island. You just do not get a sense of the large number of people that are on the ship because of the way they have designed the public areas. The staff was great and our cabin steward was very helpful supplying us with everything we needed. Princess allows passengers to bring wine on board and since we were in Italy we brought 6 bottles on from Rome and then also brought more on from a couple of the stops. Every evening we enjoyed a glass or sometimes a bottle of wine on our balcony before dinner and then also frequently would have a glass or two on the balcony around midnight at the end of the evening's shipboard activities. We told our cabin steward that we would like wine glasses in our cabin every night and they were there every day. If you decide to bring wine aboard don't forget your corkscrew. Princess has totally revised their menus since we cruised last spring and they are new and exciting with lots of great new dishes to sample. Lounge chairs around to pools for the days at sea may be a little difficult to come by but if you get out early there should be no problem. One area that I really enjoyed was the Cafe International which is located in the Piazza on deck 4 mid-ship, where during the day they have a wonderful selection of small lunch foods and wonderful pastries all at not charge. Also the pizza on the Lido deck was very good.All in all this ship offers a lot of great new areas.

Entertainment: In general the entertainment was very good, the production shows were all new since we cruised last spring on the Crown Princess and they were we produced and the singer and dancers were very good. They had two different comedians both of which were very funny. The lounge entertainment was very satisfactory and played music that everybody including the older crowd could dance to. The cruise director and staff were very accommodating and helped make for a great cruise.

Shore excursions: We did several ship arranged shore excursions and most were good and well organized with good guides. Some of the all day tours were long and very tiring. However, some left to much time alone for shopping which I could have care less about and many of the areas which we were left for shopping simply were junk stores that were selling trinkets probably made in China for the particular city or country. However that being said a lot of people we talked to like the time for shopping. If you stop in Kusadasi, Turkey be advised that you are apt to be dropped off to see rugs being made and you will be met by extremely aggressive salesmen, much like timeshare salesman, and if you were not interested they could get a little nasty. In Katakolon (Olympia), Greece we took a tour to the ancient site of the original Olympics and it was one the highlights of our trip and was much better than we thought it would be. The tour of Corfu city was a waste of time and again 2 to 3 hours for shopping was simply too much for what there was to offer. We did not do a tour on Mykonos and it was very easy to just walk around, and get lost, but it was most interesting. Princess indicated that in many of the places walking was difficult and many people didn't pay any attention to Princess's guidelines and then when they were on the tour found it too difficult for them. They were very much up front about the degree of difficulty and you need to pay attention to their guidelines if you have difficulty walking because at many of the archeological sites walking was on very rough uneven surfaces and particularly at the Acropolis there were a very large number of stairs to climb. There in general was no accommodation for handicapped access to most of the sites. Princess had a wonderful 'historian' named David on board who gave very good information about the site to see at each stop and was very helpful in telling people how to get to many sites without taking expensive shore excursions. He was great and a wealth of knowledge.