We choose Princess cruises as we had a previous cruise still in our minds, the Diamond Princes sailing out of Sydney heading to Perth April last year and everyone of our party had a great time, we have cruised fourteen times prior and on many different cruise lines, NCL, Royal Caribbean, Holland America, Thomson, P&O, Celebrity and MSC although our very first cruise back in 2005, the Coral Princess Vancouver to Anchorage and probably the best cruise ever until this recent cruise and certainly the cruise that started our passion for cruises. We wanted to try different ships and cruise companies to compare.

We were looking for a seven day Mediterranean cruise and found the Royal Princess sailing Athens to Barcelona, not only were the destinations inviting but the ship just three years old and one of the largest in the fleet but still only 3,000 passengers.

As always the weather does have an impact however, the destinations were all sunshine and the ship was fabulous, food plenty in the Horizon buffet as expected and a great variation, quality second to none. We did not dine at any of the theme type restaurants as the main dining room 'Symphony' had good choices and great staff, why would we try elsewhere. We did anytime dining which allowed us to opt for early or late shows depending on the day we'd had, there were four in our party but six before end of the week. Read more