This cruise cam up on the site of Passion for Cruises, a firm that I have used before as a solo passenger & whop have always given me good honest assistance but this time fell foul of others shortfalls. The travel details were from Gatwick to Madrid & then on to Havana. Got to Gatwick early using the train which was far cheaper than travelling by car & paying parking fees. Through Customs & waited for the plane. A Bowing, thats o/k I thought until I got on, cramped wasn't the word for it. No room for any movement at all. Not long on this plane though, 3 hours & I can manage that. Then change at Madrid, Easy I thought from one EEC Country to another. In the end after going through 2 more controls just got to the next plane in time for take off. Not impressed, what it will be like when we finally leave I hate to think. Getting on to the next plane a wide bodied jet also run by Europa Air, the space was less than the first one & I thought that 9 hours on this leg was not going to be good & how right was I! The food was worse than normal airline fayre & in fact the sandwich served approximately 1 hour before landing was inedible. I will never travel on this airline again.

Getting to the ship was relatively straight forward. The boat is old but very comfortable. A 3 day stay in Cuba was excellent & followed by visits to Jamaica (disappointing), Cayman Isles (Brilliant), Belize (Good), Honduras(Good), Mexico(restricted) + others. The trip was good, the boat adequate, dont go on an Italian cruise unless you love Italian food as there is little or no choice. The crew work extremely hard & more hours than I have ever encountered before. It is no wonder that they have a very high turnover. The cruise on the whole was good at a reasonable price but because of the problems with the airline & lack of variety of food on board its the last time with MSC & certainly never again with Air Europa.