Semi-live review - Reflection 10 nights Malta and Greek Islands - 17 July 2023

[Les43]

Having benefitted hugely from others on CC who have written live / semi-live reviews of their cruises, I have decided to have a go. I have opted to call this a semi-live as I am not sure how often I will be able to update. Be gentle with me as I haven’t tried this before! We are still just over a week away from embarkation but we leave on Wednesday 12th for Rome. We will stay there for 5 nights before transferring to Civitavecchia on the 17th to start our cruise. I hope to be able to share a little of our visit to Rome and then some highlights from our cruise.

 

First a little about us. We live in Scotland and will be flying from Edinburgh to Rome Ciampino on Wednesday. We have cruised a few times before with Celebrity and we are particularly fond of Reflection, having sailed on her 6 years ago.  We haven’t cruised since start up so interested to see what has changed. This cruise was supposed to be in August 2020 to celebrate my 50th but we all know what happened then! That cruise was a Caribbean cruise but we moved itinerary a few times since then. We had initially rescheduled the cruise for a Baltic cruise in 2022 after start up but we moved it again after the disruption to Baltic cruises because of the war in Ukraine. We then settled on this Mediterranean cruise.  I am 52 (almost 53) and my DH is 56. We are looking forward to a relaxing trip and some time away from work. 
 

Over the next few days, I’ll say a bit about our plans for Rome and for the cruise. I hope some of you will follow and would also welcome anyone else on the same cruise who wants to chip in. Now off to do some packing! Exciting times! 😎☀️🍷

 

[Lastdance]

Les43,

Thanks for sharing your long-awaited trip with us. 😀

[horseymike]

Hope you have a great trip / cruise.  🚢   I’m looking forward to hearing all about is as you are able to post.

All The Best .🍀🥂

[Tipsy252]

Following as we will be on Reflection on 24 Aug 2023. Silhouette and Reflection are our favourites of the 'S' class ships.

[boykin]

We will be joining you on this cruise! We leave Thursday for Rome, so excited!

 

[Silkroad]

Looking forward to following your journey. Reflection is one of our favorite S-class ships (along with Silhouette). We had a lovely time aboard her in December 2019 which, unbeknownst to us, was our last cruise before the shutdown. Wishing you a splendid holiday. Cheers🍷

[ladylemondrop]

Sounds fabulous! We love Reflection, and Rome, last year we did a fantastic Segway tour there with Fat Tire Tours. Highly recommend. Alnd then we had dinner opposite the Colloseum at Ristorante della Salute. It was very good, if you can get a table outside. We booked ahead and got a discount online. 
 

Looking forward to following your report! Have a great time. 

[Les43]

1 hour ago, boykin said:

We will be joining you on this cruise! We leave Thursday for Rome, so excited!

 

Excellent! Feel free to add to this review!

[Les43]

1 hour ago, ladylemondrop said:

Sounds fabulous! We love Reflection, and Rome, last year we did a fantastic Segway tour there with Fat Tire Tours. Highly recommend. Alnd then we had dinner opposite the Colloseum at Ristorante della Salute. It was very good, if you can get a table outside. We booked ahead and got a discount online. 
 

Looking forward to following your report! Have a great time. 

Thank you! Rome is an incredible city. Looking forward to being back - temperature forecast to be between 34 and 36 degrees 🥵

[WrittenOnYourHeart]

1 minute ago, Les43 said:

Thank you! Rome is an incredible city. Looking forward to being back - temperature forecast to be between 34 and 36 degrees 🥵

 

I always forget other people use C. I see 34-36 with no designation and I think 🥶 because F is the default where I live.

Edited July 9, 2023 by WrittenOnYourHeart

[Les43]

Ok so packing is almost complete and doesn’t appear to be as stressful as usual - makes me wonder what I have forgotten. We have both finished at work for 3 weeks so feels very luxurious to be almost ready with 2 full days still to go!

 

We are flying with Ryanair from Edinburgh which is your typical budget airline where everything is an extra charge. We have paid for hold luggage to accommodate my multiple outfits! We wouldn’t normally choose Ryanair but they are the only airline that flies direct to Rome and direct home from Barcelona. Our flight is at 06:50 on Wednesday so we will need to leave home around 4am to drive to the airport. At least the traffic will be quiet. 

 

Will post tomorrow about our accommodation in Rome. 

[Ciaranaman]

Following with dreams of a med cruise sometime in the future!  And making lots of notes from everyone else's live reports along the way.  Safe travels!

Bernadette

 

[VitaminSea53]

Please make a note of any issues with vibrations in the cabin.  Another recent review found it quite disturbing.  I am heading out on the Reflection in September and will read your review with great anticipation.  

[Germancruiser]

I am sailing Reflection in late December- so I am also an excited follower of the Topic! Thx. for reporting back to us.

[Esprit]

14 hours ago, boykin said:

We will be joining you on this cruise! We leave Thursday for Rome, so excited!

 

Us too! But we fly out on embarkation day and hope to be on board by 3 pm.

It will be our third Reflection cruise with an itinerary we've done loads of times. The ship for us is the holiday with great weather and loads of booze!

 

[Les43]

1 minute ago, Esprit said:

Us too! But we fly out on embarkation day and hope to be on board by 3 pm.

It will be our third Reflection cruise with an itinerary we've done loads of times. The ship for us is the holiday with great weather and loads of booze!

 

Great! Feel free to join in this thread once we are onboard! It’s always good to get others’ views. 
 

[garyl62]

Looking forward to following along, we will be doing this itinerary next July, but on the Equinox. It will be interesting to read about your experiences. Many of our friends tell us it will be to hot in July to enjoy the sites.

[Esprit]

Just a "heads up" @Les43.

According to the Santorini port schedule we will be joined on the Sunday by Enchanted Princess, Viking Sea, Celestyal Olympia and one small ship. 

Edited July 10, 2023 by Esprit

[Les43]

53 minutes ago, Esprit said:

Just a "heads up" @Les43.

According to the Santorini port schedule we will be joined on the Sunday by Enchanted Princess, Viking Sea, Celestyal Olympia and one small ship. 

Thank you. I did see that Santorini is going to be busy when we are there. We have visited before (on Reflection) and we went on a Celebrity tour to Oia and to the wine distillery. The narrow roads were so busy with traffic that we spent longer in the coach than anywhere else. This time we have no tour booked and will just wait and see what takes our fancy on the day. 

[Les43]

Two sleeps to go until we leave - can you tell that we are excited?! 
 

So a little about our Rome plans. We will fly in to Rome Ciampino airport on Wednesday and our accommodation has organised a private transfer in to Rome. We expect to land around 11am if there are no delays so we should be in Rome around noon or thereabouts. We are staying at the Terrazza Marco Antonio Luxury Suites. We have booked an executive suite which has a terrace and they serve breakfast each day to your room. They appear to get very good reviews so fingers crossed! They are located not far from the Trevi fountain and the Spanish steps so looks like an ideal location to explore.  When we travel, we like to stay in boutique style hotels / apartments which offer something a bit different. 
 

We have no concrete plans for our time in Rome. We love to wander, see the historical sites and pause now and again to cool down and take in the atmosphere. With very high temperatures forecast ( compared to Scotland), we are glad that there is air conditioning in our accommodation and we plan to have regular stops to enjoy the local delicacies of Rome. 
 

I will post a little about our adventures each day along with some photographs - I need to work out the best way to upload them. 
 

Thank you for the encouragement thus far. Hope you will continue to follow along on our trip. 
 

Lesley 
 

 

[SUESEABE]

Following your adventures, we will be on the Reflection in October. Safe travels!

 

[Les43]

Well, we are all packed and ready to go. Two large suitcases and two carry ons……a girl can never have  enough dresses 🙄! It will be a red-eye start in the morning. We need to get up around 3.20am and we will leave for the airport before 4am. It will take us around 40 minutes and traffic will be quiet. It always amazes me how busy airports are at that time but hopefully it will be straightforward! 🤞🏻

 

So a little about the planning for the cruise. It’s been a bit of a marathon. As I said in my first post, this should have been for my 50th birthday and we have changed itinerary a few times and finally settled on the Greek Islands / Malta trip on Reflection, 3 years later. We have sailed on her before in 2017 and we visited some of the same ports. We loved it.. We have also sailed on Eclipse and Silhouette. I have also sailed on Princess many years ago. We are Select and normally sail in a Balcony stateroom. We did try Aqua when we were last on Reflection. Although the room was very nice, we didn’t really see the benefit of the additional perks and we weren’t too keen on Blu.

 

So now to this cruise…….ahem……. So we started off booking a Sunset Veranda having heard a lot about the lovely views of the wake. We were quite pleased with that and the location but spending lots of time reading these Boards tempted me to look at suite class as that was new to us. I did a fair amount of research and watched the prices fluctuate and eventually in March, I decided to upgrade us to a Sunset Sky suite. It was part of the 70% off the 2nd guest at that time and therefore was a really good deal IMO. I kept telling myself that it was for my 50th after all. Now you would think that would be the end of the story but alas there is another chapter……..

 

Fast forward to the end of May and in came the Move-Up email. At first we protested loudly that we couldn’t really justify it and then before we knew it, we had talked ourselves in to a few bids after-all we are never successful with these kinds of things! Ok……..so you have worked out the last part of the story? Yep, we bid on the Celebrity Suite, the Signature Suite and a Royal suite and the CS was successful 🥳🥳. I know that the CS is marmite to cruisers on these boards but remember we have never sailed in suite class before so this is all new. 
 

So, we are all set and really excited about this trip. I do plan to add photos once we are on our way so hopefully you can bear with me. Onwards to Rome tomorrow! 😎☀️😎🥵

[horseymike]

You must be very excited , hope you have a great trip and will look forward to your posts along the way.

Bon Voyage ⛴️

[Azulann]

Looking forward to reading  your trip report.

You excitement  comes through so clearly in your posts.

 Happy that your  vacation and cruise is  beginning at long last. 

 

[di T]

We are also followed along! We will join the Reflection in Barca for 19 nts in September. We were last on her last September almost identical itinerary and had a great time.

Interested to hear if this vibration is still causing concern. Hope you have a lovely time, enjoy the sunshine and bring some back with you! Dianne