I chose this ship because she was sailing from Dundee (not on this websites list of ports) to Iceland,the Faroes ,Orkney and Shetland (again not on this website's radar). That in itself was a mistake because the cruise had started in Newcastle and we had a day sailing back there, plus a day berthed opposite a mountain of scrap iron before we got back to Dundee. The staff are attentive but there are only ten native English speakers in a crew of 558 .The majority are from the Ukraine and their personalities were forged under Communism.

The ship is greedy. We paid over £4500 for the twelve days but (a) it was forbidden to take alcohol aboard and it cost £2.20 for a bottle of unknown Welsh water in our cabin. Drinks were very dear. The food was good but too artistically presented for our liking. Two or three squiggles of green and red jam round a hard boiled egg sized mound of whatever.

The ship may have had a refit but the tenders hadn't. Noisy and smelly. One pair of lifts didn't work throughout the trip. Read more