I particularly enjoyed winding up the South African purser on reception by asking him where the clim

We had to look at the October half term, ( OH is a teacher), and so this would limit us to a seven night cruise; so the only real option is a European destination. With that in mind, and given the season of the year, the Mediterranean is the obvious choice. So I plumped for a western Med. cruise on MSC Sinfonia as this gave us four new ports of call as well as another of the MSC fleet to try out.
The original intention was to cruise from Salerno and return there for disembarkation, Sunday to Sunday, but MSC's pricing policy scuppered that idea by asking royal carribean cruises from galveston for £1500 pp, an Outrageous amount. However, James, our travel agent at Cruise dot, suggested that as this was a continuous circuit sailed by MSC Sinfonia we should book the same cruise but one day later. This would be embarking at Genoa and cost less than £450pp, but instead of disembarking in Genoa we should disembark at Salerno as originally intended. MSC accepted the booking as they tend to use their ships a bit like a bus with people getting on and off at most ports.
There was no real choice to be made. MSC Sinfonia has eleven grades of cabin (1 – 11) but the only grade to have a balcony is a grade eleven "Balcony Suite". royal carribean cruises from galveston This is in contrast to her sister ship MSC Opera, which has "Balcony Cabins" (grade 10) as well as a limited number (28) of grade 11 Balcony Suites.
The only choice was whether to have a deck 10 (104 cabins) or a deck 12 (28 cabins) cabin. No contest. Deck 10 is directly below the swimming pool and aqua park so we asked for and got a cabin on deck 12
We had travelled the previous day (Sunday) to Genoa, courtesy of BA rescheduling our original early morning flight to a late afternoon flight ( which would have arrived in Genoa to late to catch the ship). This turned out to be a blessing in disguise as the weather in the UK was appalling (Monday) and many flights from the UK were cancelled or rerouted which again would meant we would probably have missed the boat, literally.
As it was we had a short taxi ride to the port arriving at 12:16, dropped off our cases***, walked the short distance to the terminal building and were shown straight to a check-in desk. Here we showed royal carribean cruises from galveston our passports, each had a photo taken, signed for the on board account, picked up our pre-prepared cruise cards and emergency drill cards and invited to board straight away.
We were assigned to the upper smaller MDR, "Il Covo" on the 1 st sitting. There we met our table companions, , or so we thought, a pleasant couple from Scotland. They weren't happy with the 1 st sitting so the second night we were like "Billy No Mates", just the two of us on a table for six.
Fortunately for us we had earlier that day met a very nice couple, Richard and Tim, that we had previously met in the Yacht Club on Divina. In the course of conversations with them we were invited to join them and their table companions on 2 nd sitting. A quick word with the head waiter and it was sorted. From then on we had very enjoyable dinners on a table of eight. Most evenings we were last to leave the dining room such was the good company.
royal carribean cruises from galveston The theatre shows were the usual MSC offerings from an entertainment line up of seven dancers (5 girls and 2 boys), one male and one female lead singers, four flamenco dancers and the usual group of former gymnasts, royal carribean cruises from galveston juggler and hoola hoop artiste.
royal carribean cruises from galveston Well it turned out to be fairly average with five set pieces:- Rock and roll song and dance; ballet; flamenco ; a can-can routine; and songs from musicals. royal carribean cruises from galveston Each set was just too long at about 8 minutes each, there is only so much flamenco and can-can dancing royal carribean cruises from galveston you can take. The two solo singers were OK but no better than that
I was expecting excerpts from "CATS", but no, they had some of the typical "Cats" costumes but that was the only similarity. What was on offer as a succession of songs which were unfamiliar royal carribean cruises from galveston to me and I have to assume they all had some connections with our feline friends.
The other main problem is the design of the theatre itself. It only had around 600 seats and the double occupancy capacity of the ship is 1566 ( Full capacity royal carribean cruises from galveston is 2223) so was too small to accommodate everybody wanting to go to a show, especially 1 st sitting diners. Coupled with this is it was designed to allow waiter service drinks and features seating which had cinema style seats with drinks tables in front of them and swivel chairs in front of the tables royal carribean cruises from galveston on each level of seating. This arrangement meant that people in the cinema style seats had their view totally blocked by those in the swivel chairs on their level.
Besides the theatre shows there was live music nearly all evening in four of the bars / lounges. Daytime activities were largely based around royal carribean cruises from galveston the pool and organised by the animation team and professional dancers. So there were the usual line dancing, keep fit routines and party games (with prizes) royal carribean cruises from galveston which had reasonably royal carribean cruises from galveston high attendances particularly during the latter part of the cruise when weather had significantly improved.
I was very surprised at the picturesque nature of the town which was a far cry from what I had envisaged. I had expected a sea front similar to Cannes with a wide boulevard and long beach. royal carribean cruises from galveston But instead there were lots of expensive houses in very green and wooded countryside either side of a small fishing village.
We joined a bilingual tour which firstly had a rip by boat along the frontage royal carribean cruises from galveston then a walking tour of the town. As it turned out we were the only two English royal carribean cruises from galveston speakers on the English/German tour and as luck would have it there were two guides, one for each language. So we had what amounted to a private tour and managed to see a lot more than if we had been in a group.
The following day we visited the small marine land park. By comparison to Loro Parc in Tenerife it was very small and we thought we would get very bored, but were surprised at the quality of the shows. The first being a parrot show which we found to be very, very entertaining largely as a result of the two comic actors / birdhandlers . This was followed by a seal lion performance and a good dolphin display.
A USFUL TIP FOR MSC GUESTS:- The excursion tickets we used in the morning were valid for travel on the MSC shuttle bus into town, which others paid silly amounts of money for. We have been made aware of this on other cruises royal carribean cruises from galveston we've been on with MSC .
A tour of the island taking in the tallest hill and the monastery there followed by a stroll around the quaint town of Binibeca. A town designed by a young Spanish architect as a result of him winning a competition to design a holiday village building house with a maximum of three storeys. The result is a village of white houses connected by very narrow streets in which you can see inspiration of the famous Spanish architect Gaudi.
An interesting fact is that there are more than 16,000km of dry stone walls on the small island. This is a result of a law stating that anyone clearing the very stony land for cultivation must enclose the land with dry stone walling created with the stone removed to clear the land.
A tour of the north coast took in the very exclusive town of Porto Cervo which had a road train ride to see the whole of the area. This came at an extra cost and was not included in the price of the excursion. In essence it was an excursion within an excursion. A novel way of extracting even more revenue. I wonder if it will catch on in other cruise lines or ports of call.
I particularly enjoyed winding up the South African purser on reception by asking him where the climbing wall was, to which he replied we don't have one. So I took a photo of the signage near my cabin which just left him speechless. From then on it was a running joke about how fast I had climbed the wall that day. On day four I added in the Golf simulator, by now he just said this time I really was taking the Mick. So again I photographed the signage, and left him even more stunned than the first windup.
This went smoothly and as we were disembarking a day early we chose our own disembarkation time, the only hitch being we didn't meet up with our prearranged transfer as we were directed to the port entrance by port staff, who assured us the car would not be allowed beyond the port gate. How wrong they were, the car went to the ship, and I couldn't get through to his phone. As a result we had to use a local taxi to get to Naples airport