Background Information. We booked this cruise before the pandemic, originally to take place in Sep/Oct 2020. Owing to Covid it was postponed twice and we eventually upgraded and re-booked for April 2022. The Emerald/Scenic staff we dealt with were excellent and really helpful.

Travel to Port of Embarkation. We booked a taxi to Heathrow (pity Emerald don't provide this as an optional extra) and upgraded our flight to Business Class (which was well worth the extra as we would have had breakfast in a cafe at LHR and lunch at Budapest on the way home anyway). The flight to Amsterdam was uneventful and pleasant – it was only a 45 minute flight and they managed to cram in a meal and a couple of drinks. A really good BA flight. On arrival at Schiphol we had a few minutes difficulty finding the Emerald courier (why he didn’t lurk at Arrivals like every other cruise company I don't know). However, once we'd found the courier we realised we were the only Emerald clients on the flight. Consequently, we were given a taxi (brand new Tesla, very nice) to take us to the dock. Unfortunately, the driver didn't know which dock but, as this was our 2nd trip with Emerald from Amsterdam, I had a reasonable idea of the ship's location - and I was right.

Stateroom. Our cabin was exactly as we’d hoped, being exactly the same as the staterooms on our previous trips with Emerald. Our cabin was neither the cheapest nor the most expensive (Panorama Balcony, top deck) but was, as expected, really first class and the housekeeper kept it spotless. That said, I’ll go back to the middle deck in future – the sailors made a lot of nice clumping around on the sun-deck at all hours of the night when we were docking, going through locks or they were lowering/raising the deck furniture – and you pay extra to be on the top deck (I don’t know why, the cabins are exactly the same as those on the middle deck, as is the service). Read more