I had often talked of cruising the Greek Islands so for my 60th birthday, my husband booked us on the Queen Victoria, Rome to Venice, with stops in Santorini, Izmir, Istanbul, Samos, Athens, Zante, and Dubrovnik from 9-23 Sept. 2011. While we have never been on a cruise before, we had heard many stories from friends, one of whom referred me to cruisecritic.com. We booked with Cunard because we hoped to avoid some of the more sophomoric antics we'd read about with other cruise lines and also thought dressing for dinner might be a treat - since we have spent most of our lives in sweatshirts and jeans.

Ron and I are very independent travelers, so chafe at the idea of being told when you are going to be in what port and how long you can stay, but we were open minded and ready to enjoy ourselves.

We booked into a hotel in Rome a few days early to allow for time adjustment (good thing because we slept 15 hours!) and do some sightseeing, then took a taxi across town to catch the cruise line sponsored shuttle. Aside from a lengthy wait at the pick-up hotel (coffee would have been nice) we had no problems checking in. Once at the port we simply got off the bus, walked through the terminal building and onto the ship. Easy. We found our cabin with no problems. Read more