I expected Queen Victoria to provide a superior cruise to the cheaper ones we had been on previously - not so!!

We arrived at Venice airport and were told we had a two hour coach trip to Trieste to board the ship. The Cunard staff at the airport appeared very helpful and told us to make sure to use the toilets before leaving as it would be a non stop journey. We handed over our cases and boarded the coach. Our journey turned out to be 3 hours because of traffic and there was not a drop of water available for the passengers - a fact the Cunard staff had not thought relevant to inform us of when speaking to us at the airport

After arriving, tired and thirsty, we then had problems getting our luggage. As we had personally handed the cases to the staff at the airport this was no delay caused by the airline and we were disappointed that after 3 hours these still had not been delivered to our cabin. We made two calls to reception as it was now past the time we were scheduled to go into early dinner and of course we had no clothes to change into. They said they would ring us back but another 15 minutes later we had still had no call. At this point we went down to reception and asked to speak to the purser, Ludwig. He seemed very disinterested and merely said the restaurant would be made aware and we would be allowed in wearing our travelling clothes. I told him this was not acceptable as we had been travelling since 5am and needed clean clothes and a very insincere apology followed. Read more