This cruise sailed from Trieste, although originally advertised to depart from Venice. Whilst the change of embarkation ports was understandable, the service provided by Oceania for embarkation was sadly lacking.

Upon arrival at Venice airport early in the morning, there was no ship's representative to be seen in the arrival hall to assist with luggage and direct us to the bus which would take us to Trieste. Other cruise lines had a representative immediately as we came out of baggage retrieval. After some considerable time a representative came round with a small sign, by which time more passengers had turned up. She had a list of passengers which was not in alphabetic order and couldn't find our names. We finally got on the bus at around 10.00 am, having come out of arrivals at 8.00 am.

The check in process in Trieste was also a nightmare, possibly partly due to Italian beaurocratic incompetence. Read more