We have sailed on Valiant Lady once before, on the inaugural sailing down to the Canaries in March. As many of the reviews have alluded to, it was blighted by several issues, not all of which were Virgin Voyages fault. Despite these issues, we thoroughly enjoyed that voyage and were very pleased to be offered a 'free' Mediterranean Cruise in compensation. Based around the itineraries on offer we decided on "Spanish Obsession'. Before and after the cruise we stayed in Barcelona and would thoroughly recommend both the Hotel Andante (3*) and the H10 Casa Mimosa (4*) - both have rooftop pools a bar and are conveniently close to Metro stations.

Valiant Lady was extremely quiet on this voyage and was only operating at around 25% capacity. Whilst at times this meant that some of the public areas could be a little lifeless at times it meant that the ship did feel much more spacious.

Overall we had a wonderful time! Some of the niggles from our first voyage have been improved - the App is now far more robust and could actually be used to book restaurants and the 'at sea' wifi, whilst still basic, was good enough for internet browsing (that may be down to the fact that there were lower numbers of people using it though). Read more