Dear Gloria,
 

The trip was great! The kids absolutely loved it. We were a bit tied down with little Benjamin so we didn’t enjoy the cruise as much as we could have if we didn’t have him. However, we did have a good time. The service is excellent and so is the food. We did have one or two instances of having to wait for the buffet to empty out a little, once for breakfast and once for lunch. Dinner worked out fine. We accompanied the kids while they had their dinner at 7:30 pm and then had ours at 9:30 pm. The maître was very good about it and always gave us a nice romantic table for two. It was fun to dress up for the gala dinners although we didn’t take very fancy clothes with us.

Things we didn’t like: the pool area was beautiful but packed with people most of the time. When I say packed I mean REALLY packed. As you can imagine, the pools got pretty disgusting after a couple of hours. Sometimes all you could see of them were heads bobbing in the water. I avoided the pools like the plague… but the kids weren’t so squeamish and enjoyed themselves.

Another thing that was shocking was the amount of food around. People would pile their plates with all kinds of food (just because it was “free”) and then either stuffed themselves (lots of obese people around) or worse yet, left most of the food to waste. This has got nothing to do with the cruise itself but the attitude rich society has towards food these days. There’s no respect for food anymore. There’s too much abundance.

Another form of wasting was in the photographs taken and not sold. The price of the photos was far too steep so we only bought one photograph because it was so nice. All the others – and there were lots – got thrown away. I would have bought more if they were cheaper. The one photo cost us about 30 dollars!

We didn’t leave the ship at every port. Sometimes we were put off by the queues. The good thing was that the pool area improved enormously when everybody left for the excursions. We enjoyed Santorini and Dubrovnik but hated Athens . The other ports we simply didn’t visit.

The kids had lots of fun. My six year old managed to get lost once but eventually he found us and we hadn’t even realized he was lost!! The two older girls (15 and 12) went dancing at night and they all went to the theatre together.

I am sending you a picture of the family taken in Venice where we spent 2 days before the cruise. Venice is beautiful. It’s our second time there and we mean to return.

Thanks for all your help!

Ana

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