We are first time cruisers and first time to Europe. Taking this cruise achieved our goal of getting a "sample" of cruising and of Europe. The ship is well maintained, clean and have very good staff. the balcony stateroom was a good choice even though we were on the sea only at night.

The embarkation was a little confusing for us, but went quite well. Arriving in Rome early in the morning we were able to start our check-in early and have lunch in the Windjammer while we waited for our room to be available around 1 PM. Debarkation was even more confusing as we were told several different instructions by staff. Since we had a private driver pick-up time before our assigned debarkation time, we were unsure if we needed to do Express Check-out and wait for two hours in the holding tent or just go when we wanted and pick up our luggage any time. Guest Services gave us a flexible method to do this and it worked fine.

Food is good with a lot of variety but it tends to get monotonous later in the week as food is re-purposed in different dishes. We selected My Time Dinning and had our dinners at a time of our choice. We had to prepay our gratuities to make this selection. Those meals were good most times, but we did have two bad dinners. We ate at the Portofino restaurant one night ($20/person extra) and that was the best meal we had. It was five-star quality and worth the extra money. The Italian wines were good for the price. Read more