We chose this cruise strictly for the itinerary & only 3 sea days. This cruise is the 24 Day Greek Odyssey & Mediterranean Empires from July 28th to August 21 2022.

By way of background about us. We are in our early 70's. We have over 15 ocean cruises, 3 Riverboat trips, & several land tours. The towns & ports are our destination not the ship. Our expectation is simple... a clean room & shower... which we enjoyed on this sailing with great cabin attendants Seno & Drama. That's it... Everything else is subjective.

When we arrived at the airport on the morning of this sailing, we found the Holland American representatives & within a few minutes were checked in & escorted a bus waiting to take us to Civitavecchia & the ship. All went well until we entered the port building for embarkation. We were the first bus to arrive at 10:20 am. At this time about 50 people were trying to get their boarding pass. Things were very confusing & were received many different answers from the staff. All of our documents were in order & we had paper back up as to the Covid testing & all other documents required. After about 40 minutes one of the staff came got us in line, to receive our boarding pass. Still we were not allowed to board. The issue was over the 72 hour required of a valid Covid test being negative. We took ours in the USA at 5:00pm on August 25th allowing for the 72 hours including the 9 hour time change when arriving on the 28th. Someone came & rounded up about 50 passengers with us & stated we would have to take another Covid in a different building with a 45 minute wait for a result before we would be brought to the first building & allowed to board the ship with a negative test result. We also had to sign a document that stated we would pay for the test, before receiving it. Finally after testing negative will still waited another 25 minutes to board the ship. This whole ordeal was very frustrating & time consuming lasting almost 3 hours. Not a good start to our 24 day adventure. I must add that Holland American did later in the trip wave the fee for Covid test at the port. Read more