We were looking for a winter vacation away from Chicago cold weather. Being numerous times in Caribbean we decided on an interesting itinerary- Spain, Portugal and Canary Islands. I found a good deal online, but it turned out, that the agent I picked was not helpful at all after I booked with her. We exchanged about 9 e-mail after I noticed the price of the cruise went down twice and had to ask her to take care of the refunds. This was not a service you get from a local TA. You get what you pay for! The Port of Embarkation was Barcelona, but because we traveled out of Barcelona on three different occasions, this time we didn't plan to stay any extra days there. We used Iberia airlines b/c of the best connection in Madrid and relatively good price. The layover was 1h15 min which turned out to be a serious problem on our return, when for unknown reason (certainly not the weather) the plane from Barcelona was delayed for about 40 min and we just hardly made the connection in Madrid. Our luggage was not that lucky and we had to wait for it for 36 hours.(Any attempt to contact Iberia to find out the approximate time of delivery failed)But we were at home and so this was just an annoyance.

Embarkation went very well, quick and smooth. By noon we were on the ship and had lunch. At about 1:00PM the cabins were ready and so were we to take a nap after the overnight trip. I tend to be very critical about the cabins, but I have to say that our cabin category E2 on deck 8 Midship was excellent, quiet, with adequate storage space, good mattress and pleasant bedding (duvet). The bathroom on the smallish side with an occasional unpleasant odor coming from undetected source. The room attendant not intrusive, did an excellent job.

Food: We decided on My Time Dining just because I like to meet different people every night. The food was mediocre at best, better some nights then the others. We dined exclusively in the Mistrel main dining room. My biggest disappointment were the desserts, which till now (14 cruises) had been the highlights on all the different cruises. The breakfast buffet was just OK, we were missing the variety of breads we experienced before. Service was very good, no complains. Read more