Our first cruise and it was great

Chose this as our first ever cruise as destinations and length of time ( 7 days) seemed to suit. I really cannot fault anything about our experience. We had a superior deluxe cabin on Deck 9, it was spotless and our cabin steward kept it that way for the whole 7 days.

The whole trip ran to schedule and the seas were smooth, which always helps

Guernsey was lovely, although it took an hour to queue for the tender

Porto is old and unappealing but Lisbon more than made up for it, fabulous city

Vigo surprised me as it was far more appealing and attractive than I had thought it would be

We had freedom dining and were lucky to sit with some lovely people every night and had some great banter

We also sampled the buffet dining on Waterside and have to say the varied menu every night was brilliant, breakfast is very good there but seats are hard to get hold of.

We saw shows in the Arena and Havana and were thoroughly entertained

A couple of downsides

1 The smoking rules are largely ignored, especially on the top deck and on the balconies. It needs to be enforced

2 On sea days the top decks get very crowded and sunbeds are hard to get hold of

However, all in all we struck lucky and had a great time