lisiamc

Thank you, that’s good to know! I’m looking for a particular set of earrings, so I will be visiting the shops on Rotterdam.

On a few different cruise lines, I’ve seen Coeur de Lion jewellery sold in the shop on board. It’s a great favourite of mine - is it available in any of the shops on Holland America?

You’re just as likely to experience a “sick” shopping centre, church, school or workplace. There’s nothing special about a ship that spreads illness other than people in proximity to each other.

Sometimes we have seen a guitarist in addition to the house (dance) band generally playing in the Living Room, the Azamara orchestra playing for the shows with the singers and dancers, and the pianist in The Den. The selection of live music is pretty good for a small ship, IMO. edited to add: I do remember the harpist, but I only remember them playing in the afternoons or early evenings at the Mosaic, or occasionally for a brunch, not often as an after dinner thing.

I read the list several times, and didn’t see hair dryers on it either. However, the hairdryers provided in the cabin have been great, and I won’t be bringing my own with me.

When I was in the queue, I could see the people ahead of me handing over their card to the person at the till, who swiped it and handed back one or two pieces of paper. For the people who were paying for a beer or whatever, they got handed two slips, one to give to the bartender, and one as a receipt for the charge to their account. I had the good drinks package, and I just got the one slip to give to the bartender. I’m not sure where the Easy Plus package would fall in that spectrum. I guess if they got a bottle of water, they’d just get the slip to hand over, and if they had something not included, they’d get a receipt for the charge?

We were very unhappy about the hair on the floor! The steward was a really nice person, and very overwhelmed by his job. We did not speak to the Head of Housekeeping, and instead just tried to make it easy for him to do a good job. We had eight friends in total on this cruise, and the ones in the other three cabins did not report any problems with housekeeping. Service for everything else, like coffees, cocktails, meals, etc. was good to very good. Many of the servers we chatted to had worked for other cruise lines, and said that MSC was a good company to work for, and they liked it better than their previous companies. They might have been spouting the company line, but they seemed happy with their jobs. One thing that really impressed me was that no one pressured us to give them a good evaluation on the post-cruise surgery. In fact, no one even mentioned a post-cruise survey at all. When it arrived in the email, we were very happy to name and praise the people who had looked after us so well. At busy places like the Pool Bar at lunchtime, they were using the traditional Italian method of queueing up to pay, then taking the slip to the bartender to pick up the drink. It may lack a certain panache, but it’s efficient for serving a lot of people very quickly.

I remember a big to-do about MSC not serving tap water some years ago. There is a thread from 2010 that talks about it here. The upshot of it was that bookings from the USA and the UK (maybe some other countries also?) include bottled water at meals.

We cruised with a group of eight, all booked from a UK travel agent. We had bottled water brought to us at meals, and were asked to show our cards to verify any drink we requested. Half of the group had the top package, and half had the much more basic (just bottled water with meals?) package. No one ever came to our table with a jug of tap water, and I never saw anyone visiting any nearby tables with tap water either.

We were on Armonia, and they did the drill two different ways. We boarded in Ancona, and we assembled at La Fenice Theatre for a life jacket demonstration, then were briefly taken to our life boat stations. We were not required to watch the video, although it played on the tv every time we turned it on. Our friends missed the drill, and were required to watch the video and then phone in the verification number to the front desk, and visit the life boat station. The (many) people who boarded in Venice (Marghera) the next day were also required to watch the video and visit the life boat station.

You’ll be pleased to know that we thought the food was generally very good, and frequently excellent. We eat low carb, and there was at least one very suitable item on the menu every night. The cheese plate was great - the selection varied every night, there was not too much, and it was served at exactly the right temperature. The wines were lovely, as they should be on an Italian ship sailing from an Italian port. Brewed coffee was served at breakfast in the dining room, but not at lunch or dinner. The coffee in the Bar del Duomo was very good, slightly better than in the San Marco Cafe, although somewhat expensive. One of our friends was paying €4 every morning for a cappuccino. I’m not sure what they charged for our espressos, since we had the drinks package. We found that the waiters tended to be a bit formal at first, but thawed pretty quickly when they discovered we were friendly. They were good at remembering who liked what on our table of eight, and did their best to provide great service every evening. We were delighted to discover that the Main Dining Room was open for lunch every day, even on port days. It was an oasis of calm from the total zoo at the buffet.

For most of the cruise, I had severe trouble with the internet. It would only stay connected for a few minutes at a time, and I lost the momentum of trying to post on a daily basis. Our second port was Kotor. Again, we had great weather, and we elected to just walk around the town for a little while. We waited for about an hour and a half after docking to try to get off. We thought we’d let the excursions and the people in a hurry get a head start. By the time we joined the queue, we still had to wait an hour and a half to get off. We got on shore at about 16.15. We were not going to be on shore long enough to eat at a restaurant in town, and we had early assigned dining, at 18.45. By now there was also a long queue of returning people. So our visit to Kotor was disappointingly short. I am surprised that getting everyone off was such a disaster. By the third day, I realised that our steward was just hanging our used towels and bathmat back up, even though we had put them in the bath or on the floor to be replaced. (I figured this out when I drew a little X on the towel and bathmat labels.) I had to run them under the tap to get them pretty wet before he’d change them. We had met him, and he was nice, but seemed pretty overwhelmed. I just tried to make it as easy as possible for him to do the right things, and we decided not to mention any of this to a more senior housekeeper.

Our cabin steward exists, apparently, but we have not seen him, and he isn’t doing a very good job. I noticed that the bathroom floor was dirty last night, and today, the same crud is still there. A small pile of someone else’s hair is behind the door. Last night there was also a hair pin on the floor on the other side, but I put it in the bin, where it remains, since the bin has not been emptied. It’s getting quite full now. On the bright side, we did get two bath towels. I am of two minds about whether to say anything until nearer the end of the cruise, in case I feel I have to hide my toothbrush for the rest of the week.

Venice (Marghera) is our first port of call, and the weather is much better than the forecast promised a few days ago. Although most of our port calls are a decent length, today is somewhat short. We arrived at 7am, and we will depart at 2pm. MSC have laid on a free shuttle boat into Venice. Four of our friends went into the city, and the other four of us have stayed on board. Our sightseeing friends were still in the queue for the shuttle at 8.45, and the last boat will leave Venice at 1pm or 1.30. That makes for quite a short time for sightseeing, and since we’ve seen a lot of Venice over the years, we elected to stay on board. Today is another embarkation/disembarkation day. Lots of passengers have disembarked, and I’m sure loads more will embark in their places. Scenic Marghera!

We left the house a little before noon to go to Ancona. We arrived at just about the time they were switching over from disembarking passengers to embarking new ones. Perfect timing. Parking the car was somewhat complicated, since we had to check in, drop the bags, get a car parking reference number, move the car to the appropriate area, and then had in the key. It was much easier to accomplish in the end than it sounds like it would be. Checking in was easy and quick. We had realised a few days ago that the four bookings in our group were not connected, so our first task was to fix that. We were able to get a dinner table for eight, although it was a temporary table, and tomorrow night we will have a different, more permanent table. We wish we could keep the initial waitstaff team, as they were very good. I’m sure the team for the permanent table will also be very good. This is my bag beside the car, proof that I was ready before the appointed hour!

Let me know if there’s anything I can check out for you.

Interesting to hear! I’m taking a pretty skirt and top, and heels, DH is taking a blazer and tie, but really, I think Gala nights may have peaked on all/most cruise lines. I can’t remember the last time we cruised on a line that had one. I’ll report what the Europeans do, in a few days.

Hi - I thought I’d do a “Live from…” thread for Armonia, MSC’s oldest, and joint smallest ship (with Sinfonia.) Some background: We (DH, 73 and me, 67) are avid cruisers, but this will be our first MSC cruise. We are sailing with six friends. Four of them are also experienced cruisers (although they are also MSC virgins) but for one couple, this will be their very first cruise on any line. I’m so excited for them! The first cruise is always special, I think. My first cruise was in 1992, on a Princess ship, with my mother, and I still remember it very fondly. The newbies are Italian, about five or six years younger than the rest of us, living a little bit inland from Ancona. The rest of us are British ex-pats, from the same area. We have arranged parking at Ancona port, although that was a bit of a challenge. The website was set up to charge per person rather than per car. In the end, we did it by email with the actual parking facility, and that worked well. I’m looking forward to getting on board tomorrow, and exploring a ship that is new to us. DH and I have previously cruised with Azamara, Princess, Royal Caribbean, Celebrity, Costa, Silversea, Seabourn, Viking, and Cruise & Maritime Voyages, so a reasonable selection. Our ports on this cruise are Ancona and Venice in Italy, Kotor in Montenegro, Mykonos and Santorini in Greece. It’s also being marketed as a round-trip from and to Venice, since MSC does interporting. I’ve read/watched every review of Armonia that I could find, and I’m interested to see how what I’ve learned compares to what we will experience. I hope you enjoy seeing a familiar ship through new eyes.

That may be an Italian thing, and MSC are reaching back to their roots? We often find the pillows just a tad flat in many B&Bs in Italy.

Thank you for checking that!

I used to be a loyal Celebrity cruiser, but they have changed a few things, so they are no longer a very good fit for us. However, of those two, I’d still much rather take the Celebrity cruise. There are just too many people on that NCL ship for my comfort! The town we live in doesn’t even have 4000 people. I think there is enough happening on Constellation to keep your kids happy, and you don’t have to worry about the time it will take to get all those people on and off the ship.

Thank you. And yes, Royal Club is horrid, I agree! We’ve been known to bring our own tonic on board on Azamara, because they don’t mind. I hear that MSC is pretty strict about not bringing anything drinkable on board, so we will try to make a good first impression by not doing anything like that.

I know that most people love it. Sadly, I’m one of the few exceptions. Do they have any sugar-free tonic of any kind on board that you’ve seen? We will be boarding Armonia in Ancona, so fingers crossed for Schweppes Tonica Zero!

@Beamafar, thank you for these menus, they look great! We board Armonia on Friday, and I would guess that we might see some of these menu choices on there. It’s great to have a sneak preview. I’m enjoying your review very much.

Oooh, I like this! 🤣 I’m stealing it.