We are from New Zealand and had 2 nights in Singapore before boarding the ship, so this gave us the opportunity to start acclimatizing to the heat and humidity. At 2pm on Saturday 5 September we checked in at the Singapore Cruise Center, opposite Sentosa Island and boarded the ship. Check in and boarding went very smoothly with plenty of Costa staff in the terminal available to assist. Our cabin was on deck 4 (Lautrec) near the front (cabin No 4007). It was quite basic but comfortable (single beds despite requesting a double when we booked). We had chosen our room location so we would have no engine noise/vibrations to worry about. The sound proofing between cabins is almost non existant and we could hear every word spoken in the ajoining cabins which was annoying. The shower leaked onto the cabin carpet and we had wet and smelly carpet throughout our trip. We complained to the information desk 3 times about it but nothing was done to fix it.

We were soon sailing from Singapore and enjoying the amazing views of the skyline and harbour. Oddly there had been no lifeboat drill prior to leaving port (we had become accustomed to this on our two previous Star cruises out of Singapore). As we were soon to discover, this was an Italian ship and they did things a little differently! We eventually had an emergency "assembly" drill 2 days into the cruise, but we never went near the lifeboats and to this day I still have no idea which one was ours! Fortunately we didn't need them.

First impressions of the food on board looked promising and were proven so over the next 2 weeks - it was just superb - I would rate it 4-5 star, especially the service. We had pre-purchased the X1 drinks package (NZ$300 each) when we booked the cruise, as we had heard drinks were very expensive on board (NZ$15 per glass of wine or beer). Everything on the boat was in Euros so very expensive for us Kiwis! We also brought a bottle of duty free booze each and cans of soft drink on board so we had no need to buy any additional booze on board. The drinks package gave us unlimited softdrinks, bottled water, tap beer and house wine by the glass at meal times and turned out to be the best deal ever! We certainly got our money's worth out of it and it had paid for itself by the 3rd day! Once the waiters got to know us they just brought us a continual stream of drinks (wine by the bottle in the end!). After dinner we always ordered a fresh bottle of wine each and then took it to the show or up on deck. Read more