As a Francophile, I wanted to be able to experience as much French as possible. I enjoyed the sites we saw, the tour guides were excellent, but the thing I enjoyed the most was getting away from the ship and going out on our own to see what we could discover. If you are an adventurous person, this might not be the cruise for you. It was mostly older Americans, and since my cabin mate was in her 40's, we started calling it "The Senior Citizens' Float Trip." I was disappointed that I couldn't speak French on board, as most of the staff were not Francophone, even though they were lovely young people from all over. We actually did very little cruising, which I also should have anticipated, since Normandy is not that far from Paris. Overall, I would recommend this cruise if you want someone to do all of your planning for you and you want to be well taken care of.