Our itinerary was great. We arranged many explorations to "explore on your own" and this worked well for us. There are strikes throughout Europe that may affect the plans you hope to have. We ran into it in Ville Franche, nice port to just walk around in, the trains were not running, so the local bus got us to Nice and then to Monte Carlo. Livorno (Pisa), is an industrial port so you need to get to Florence to see any thing, the trip to Pisa was O.K. not much else besides the tower. Rome was very crowded and our plans were adjusted since the President Bush was scheduled to arrive that morning. Mykonos was the problem for disembarking, the crew did not seem prepared for the amount of people trying to get off the ship. It did become a safety concern for all the people squished onto the stairs and unable to move one way or another. Mykonos was great we rented a 4 wheeler for 13 euros for the day and it was well worth it.. Kusadasi,our biggest surprise. We found the disembarking went well there, the tours were very organized the guides and buses were ready. There was a kind gesture of a gift given to all the passengers on board the bus. The free time we spent touring was great very friendly and helpful. Discovering Ephesus was incredible. Santorini, disembarking was a dream, we were the 2nd couple off and got taken over almost immediately. Rented another 4 wheeler for 15 Euro and again went every where. It would be great if we would have a longer day in Santorini. It was truly a beautiful place. We left at 6 PM and wished we could have stayed to watch the sunset. Athens was a big disappointment it would be hard to follow Santorini. Athens was very disappointing in the way the city seems very run down and dirty. Garbage strike in Naples didn't help create a great impression of the city. The workers at Pompeii the day we were there were on strike until10:30 AM they really didn't open until 11:45 AM.. Took the local train to Sorrento and that made the day very worth while. Missed out on discovering the Amalfi coast. We were very pleased with this ship. The Centrum is very open from the 4th floor on upwards. It creates a great meeting area. The colors and art work through out this ship are very nice. We loved the itinerary and thoroughly enjoyed our days at sea which gave us a chance to recoup. We would have loved another out door pool; for adults only. The solarium is beautiful but we wanted to be in the open air. Our cabin was lovely, nice balcony. We did have occasionally an intermittent sewage odor emitting from the floor drain in the bathroom. We chose not to complain about this since we were sure that our Cabin Steward would also be aware of it and try to eliminate the odor if it was at all possible. I read of another review that was very negative in regards to the food. We did not have the same experience. We also chose the My Time Dining and were very pleased, some nights we had made reservations and other nights we came in with out reserving and were very quickly seated . This My Time Dining is fairly new to this ship and they are working very hard at providing great service. We were pleased with the selections each night, although it would have been great to also have dishes available from the particular areas we had visited on the menu. For breakfasts we ate the Windjammer and found to food good, great selection and always fresh fruit. Last year we sailed on NCL and found the service and food a huge disappointment. Imagine cruising through Hawaii and NCL not having fresh pineapple for breakfasts. We did not see inexperienced Royal C crew members we found them to be very experienced. We found inconsiderate guests, taking far more food than they will ever eat. In regards to the hand sanitizing, they was always a crew member at the entrance with hand wipes, there were also stand with wipes available for guests. We saw some people just ignore this precaution. The guests on board were the culprits in regards to spreading bacteria not the staff.