Overall impressions

We only have 3 days more of our cruise to go before we disembark at our originating port of Savona, so it’s time for some overall impressions of our cruise.

 

1)       It’s an incredible experience – not only to be travelling all kinds of places with my 95-year old father and an intimate family group but also for a beautiful ship to become our home for 12 days and to participate in an amazing operation like this.

2)       11 days is too long (for us) – at least in relation to the amount of visual stimulation we’ve had on this cruise – in retrospect I’d have preferred a cruise with more interesting ports of call and more scenery en route. I found what we saw of Morocco disappointing and I wasn’t bowled over by the Canary Islands either….but then we are spoilt. I’m no great fan of organised shore excursions (see separate item) but they are fairly classic touristic fare.  There are passengers of many nationalities (the somewhat noisy Italians are the biggest group) and there are 5 official languages on board. English speakers are definitely the minority.

3)       The service is excellent – efficient, pleasant and courteous. Most of the client service personnel (waiters, chambermaids…) are from South and South East Asia and all speak English well.

4)       The food is good – not gourmet but good with a lot of variety and unlimited quantities. This includes pizza and pasta as you’d expect on an Italian line.

5)       The cabins are above average in size, very roomy and well appointed.  Décor and furnishing throughout are modern European and pleasing.

6)       Costa is a family cruise line – there are lots of activities for children of all ages and prices for children are very attractive so accordingly many European families (especially Italians) came with children. We liked the atmosphere but it might not suit an older, more couple-oriented cruising clientele.

7)       The entertainment and activities for adults are adequate – probably deficient by the standards of American cruisers.

 

Overall, I’d give it 4/5 which is more than the Fodor’s cruise guide gave the Costa line. We’ll have to try one of the good American cruise lines to compare.

 

Suggestions to Costa for improvement:

• The library (although or maybe because it has books in 5 languages) is rather poor.  The cost of getting a wider selection of books would be peanuts
• Internet on board should be cheaper, faster and more accessible (e.g. Wifi or LAN cable access for laptop users – I was not the only one….)
• Films!  I was surprised that there were no movies shown on board.  There is an almost unused conference room that would serve well. Alternatively install DVD players in the cabins and set up a DVD library.