My friend and I decided to take this cruise as it hit all the sights we wanted to see (and then some) and fit into our budget. The cruise did not disappoint. We booked a balcony room and were lucky enough to get the drink and upgraded food packages for free. I am so glad we did, especially the food package. I had never eaten at one of the specialty restaurants. With so many nights on board, having only the 3 free options would have gotten boring in my opinion. The food package allowed us 5 more options which was nice. All the restaurants were good (including the free ones) with the exception of Windows which we only ate at once for breakfast as it was awful. We had breakfast at the buffet daily which was okay but by the end of 14 days became almost unbearable due to repetition.

The ship itself was in pretty good shape and was kept quite clean. The staff was extremely nice and very helpful. I have no complaints here.

The ports were amazing. We did Venice, Istanbul and Toulon on our own. What a great experience. All were easy to navigate and we saved a bunch of money. For Athens we used PK travel. Our guide Tolis was wonderful. We toured the Acropolis and some surrounding sights and then went up the coast to Cape Sounion. We really enjoyed this tour. In Kusadasi we used Ephesus shuttle and did the House of the Virgin Mary, Ephesus and the Terrace Houses. We had asked not to do the rug demonstrations but were taken there anyway. Thankfully that we were not forced to go inside and left shortly after we got there. In Mykonos we did a Kayaking tour which was a lot of fun. Read more