This was our "trip of a lifetime" to celebrate our 30th anniversary! First time for both of us to Italy and cruising in Europe. We have cruised a few times on Celebrity before, mostly from NJ to Bermuda. We liked the itinerary and the Edge looked like a fun ship.
What we loved: embarkation and disembarkation were the fastest we've ever experienced, having the Seapass waiting for you on your cabin door was great! We had an inside cabin (personal preference, I can get a little seasick) and it was well designed, quiet, and our room steward took good care of it. We appreciate good food and overall were really impressed with the quality and choices available. Most days we had breakfast and lunch at the buffet, dinners we tried all 4 of the main dining rooms and also Raw on 5 (enjoyed it), Le Petite Chef (really enjoyed it and recommend you do it once on the cruise) and Fine Cut (see below).
For entertainment and activities, we enjoyed trivia, game nights and hanging out by the pools. Overall we thought the service on the ship was excellent. We did 3 excursions through Celebrity - Climb Mt. Vesuvius and Pompeii tour (loved it but that was one heck of a climb!), Gaudi tour of Barcelona (enjoyed it, but tour guide was kept busy trying to take care of passengers who must have missed the description of the tour where it said it was "strenuous"), and the Tuscan Farmhouse tour (we didn't want to try to cram seeing Florence in a couple of hours so we picked this - it was great! A beautiful drive through Tuscany, then a family run farm where they sang, danced and served us lots of great food and Limoncello). We didn't attend a lot of the shows, but we loved the Elton John impersonator.
Loved it - quiet, well laid out, plenty of room for storage
La Spezia is a port city, we were there on Sunday so nothing was open. We did the Tuscan farmhouse tour and loved it! Nice 1/2 hour bus drive through the countryside to a family run farmhouse. They had tables outside, gave us great food, and homemade grappa and limoncello! Thoroughly enjoyed the excursion.
Notified by Celebrity the day before our cruise that we would not be putting in at Monaco because every year they have a Yacht show (was annoyed that Celebrity didn't make that clear when we booked the cruise because they certainly knew about it), but we docked at Villefranch and we loved it! Didn't do an excursion, we just walked around and had a great lunch.
Shuttle bus takes you to a downtown area, lots of tourist stuff and wasn't really impressed. Would probably stay on the ship if I went again
Nice port town with a downtown area, we enjoyed walking around