We have enjoyed great cruises in the past on both the Azamara Quest and earlier this year to the Caribbean on the Azamara Journey so we were delighted to see a new 4 day cruise advertised which would enable us to enjoy another cruise without having to take too much more leave from work. This was originally scheduled as a 7 day cruise which changed to 4 nights when the first 3 days of the week were chartered for a wedding party.

We embarked at Nice and were slightly later boarding than usual as there was so much activity with equipment being taken from the ship. We had a continental suite on deck 8 which was very comfortable and conveniently located. We sailed at 5 pm and were at our first port of call (Monte Carlo) at 7.30 pm where we stayed overnight. During the four days we also visited Bastia and Elba before disembarking at Civitavecchia.

As before, everything was outstanding. The service, the food, the helpful and willing crew and staff. We ate in all four restaurants, our favourite being the seafood in Aqualina but we also had excellent meals and service in Prime C, Discoveries and Windows. We also love the Mosaic cafe with its excellent coffee and tasty snacks. One of our other favourite spots on the ship is the outside deck on Windows which is great sitting in the sunshine at breakfast time or sitting under the stars with a drink after dinner listening to the guitarist. We found in Europe that this was a very popular spot and sometimes quite hard to get a table, whereas in the Caribbean we were often one of the few tables in the evenings. Bearing in mind it was such a short cruise, Azamara did their best to fit in as much as possible! There was a really excellent Jazz brunch in Discoveries one day complete with live band, ice carvings and great displays of everything you could want to eat for breakfast or lunch! There was also a White Night party on deck one evening with a fantastic barbecue, stir fry, seafood etc together with band and dancing. A couple of evenings there were cocktail parties for Le Club Voyage members, meet the Captain, cheese and wine to learn about future cruises - it was very hard to fit everything in in just 4 days! Read more