A week after getting back from Seville in mid September I went on a week long cruise to Italy and the South of France with my mum and dad. Yep that's the second cruise of the year. Packing in all the holidays this year.
This cruise had a lot better stops than the one we went on in May and 1 less sea day and better stuff on the ship to do so could have done with another sea day to make the most of it but I rather be out and about seeing new places so it suited me more.
We flew to Rome on Saturday even from Manchester. The flight was meant to be at 3:45pm but it got delayed to 6:15pm and ended up landing at 9:26pm. Why we had to stay a night in a hotel beforehand due to unforeseen circumstances like this.
We got a bus to the hotel and was 10:30pm by the time we got to the room as it was a nightmare trying to get into the building as it was a smart hotel so there was no staff to check in even though on the booking it said it was staffed till 11pm.
The room wasn't great smelt of smoke but it was alright just for the night.
We got up at 7am and I got a pistachio croissant on the way to the train station to head to the cruise port.
The pastry wasn't great but it did have a lot of filling at the bottom of it.
We got the train to Rome central at 9:06am for 2 stops then the next train at 10:16am to the port. The train was so busy and was running late. It was only meant to be an hour and got off at 11:40am.
We got lost so was just trekking around for ages but turns out there was a shuttle bus that took us right to the ship. It was 12:50pm by the time we got to the port. There was loads of people boarding the ship and was 2pm by the time we made it onto the ship.
I did have a bunk bed that came out of the ceiling but they didn't take it out and I kept forget to take a photo of the room when they put it down.
Went to our room and the room is mad. It doesn't have a bathroom. The shower and toilet are separate and the sink is just in the room. Just a curtain to block the doorway. Didn't like the set up at all it was so annoying trying to get a shower as it was just easier to tell everyone to leave the room and not come back because if someone was taking a shower you couldn't leave the room or come into it. It was such a bad design but this is the only ship like this and was done as a trial. The shower was bigger than a lot of showers I've had in hotels and the last cruise but don't think they saved any extra room designing the room like this. Luckily it was only for a week and we weren't staying on for two!
We went for lunch in the buffet after leaving our stuff in the room.
The food wasn't great.
They had soft serve ice cream machines but the ice cream was very icy and not great hence the really bad swirl! I did get better at it but think I only had 3as it wasn't good which was probably a good thing otherwise I would have been living off it.
Didn't go in the pools or the 3 slides - one of them you had a rubber ring to go down.
This was at the adults bit and it did show some sports on the screen.
There was a climbing wall. I did go to go on it but there was loads of people queuing for it then it shuts for a weird time in the day so didn't get the chance to go on it either.
The gym was huge! It had a spin studio, studio and downstairs with TRX. Such a shame I only got to use it once on the sea day late in the night.
There was a Cavern Club like the one in Liverpool. They had a tribute Beatles band The Epic Beatles. Think they played in there nearly every night. We did go to see them the first night. They were alright.
We booked dinner at Shanghai Noodle Bar for the first night. It was a 3 course meal you could choose from.
Got steamed and fried gyozas - they weren't great and definitely just frozen ones.
Got seafood udon soup noodles - the "seafood" - crabsticks and one bit of frozen squid and basically raw red onion and red pepper.
"Panda salad" - Fruit salad with cream I think it was.
It wasn't great but we had to try it.
The food options weren't great on this ship and the buffet wasn't good either. There seemed to be big gaps in the day where there was no food anywhere. Like you couldn't go and get a snack if you felt hungry. Where as the last cruise you could get freshly made pizza from 11am - 1am.
It had good stuff like the slides and pools, outside climbing wall and a giant gym but other than that didn't have much going on. There was barely any entertainment with only the 1 show a night in the theatre. There was no dress code so you didn't have to dress up and the ship was full of American's who all dress really bad. Definitely wouldn't recommend the ship but the only thing that sold it, was the stops. I didn't even know the room was going to be like this till I walked in and my mum and dad didn't know after it was booked. At least the stops made up for it.
First stop Salerno - Pompeii!
