I went on the wrong cruise (and still enjoyed it)

How I discovered cruising

My husband lived in Russia for four years and wanted to show me St. Petersburg. He had also told me some horror stories about Russian hotels so I refused to go if it meant staying at a hotel. A Baltic cruise was the compromise so in 2019 we boarded Norwegian Getaway, saw lots of amazing Baltic ports including two days in stunning St. Petersburg, and in the process discovered that we loved cruising. It's not as expensive as you think!

I've always enjoyed seeing new places, but I'm not a fan of airports, packing and unpacking, or finding myself stuck somewhere boring, so it was as though the world had opened up to me. There are lots of places I've always wanted to see - Gibraltar, Santorini, Petra - and now that I know I can cruise there it's become 100% more likely that I will actually visit them some day.

The pandemic meant that our plans for our next cruise were put on hold, but that didn’t stop me watching cruise YouTube channels, looking through brochures, and planning where I would go. Through the same travel company I had used in 2019 I booked a 12-night Mediterranean cruise on Norwegian Breakaway, the sister ship to Getaway, for September 2023.

Changing plans
In March we cruised to Norway on P&O Aurora, a much smaller and more traditional adults only ship. We found we liked it much better. There was much more vegetarian food for me, it was less noisy and frenetic, and we enjoyed things like enrichment talks and craft classes which we hadn’t experienced on NCL. (Yes, we did see the Northern Lights.)

In June I went on a cruise with my Mum to the southern Norwegian fjords on Ambassador’s Ambience, another small British ship. I liked it even better.

I checked back on the NCL cruise I had booked and realised it was much more expensive than I’d remembered (or could currently afford), and that I felt NCL wasn’t a cruise line I wanted to go on again having discovered better options. So I contacted my travel agent to cancel it. I was told that if I did I’d lose my £1,000 deposit even though this was several months before the sailing date.

That’s a really high deposit and it was the agency’s policy to keep it, not the cruise line’s, but the only way not to lose it altogether was to tell my agent to book me another cruise and switch the deposit to that. Something shorter, and cheaper, but still the Mediterranean and at the same time since I'd booked the time off work. He suggested MSC World Europa. At half the price it seemed a good compromise and I was excited to try my fourth cruise line and see how it compared.

MSC World Europa
First impressions were good. Embarkation took less than ten minutes and the muster drill was a breeze. It’s a beautiful looking brand-new ship. We ate lunch in the buffet that first day with a stunning view over the World Promenade. There's a really big pool deck (and we never had a problem getting a sun bed) and lots of big hot tubs and additional pools including an indoor one. There was virtually 24/7 pizza (including for breakfast) and it was excellent pizza as you’d expect from an Italian cruise line. 

View from the buffet

Breakfast pizza (cherry and white chocolate or chocolate and pineapple)

The pool deck

The cabin was spacious with plenty of storage and the balcony was also a good size. I loved that it had the lights above the door to let the cabin steward know when you were in. Corridors were wider than on ships I'd been on before which made for less awkwardness when walking past other people, and the lifts were those ones where you enter the floor you want on the panel in the lobby and it tells you which lift to get into, so no asking “what floor?” to people who don't speak your language, or awkwardly leaning past people to press buttons. Oh, and all the lifts worked all the time. I particularly liked the panoramic ones in the World Promenade.  

World Promenade inside the ship. No, I didn't do the slide.

Vegetarian choices in the dining room and buffet were sadly pretty limited. One evening the buffet actually had a vegan sausage casserole on offer. They were great vegan sausages! But I only saw them on that one occasion and they never got offered at breakfast. The pool grill would do a vegetarian burger if asked but it took a long time to cook and it wasn’t a good one (basically mashed potato and vegetables breaded and deep fried). I think I’ve been spoiled on P&O and Ambassador. On P&O a good half the menu is vegetarian or vegan, and Ambassador has a vegetarian section in the buffet and a full vegetarian menu in the MDR.

There were a surprising number of smoking areas. The entire casino. The Lanai bar at the rear of the World Promenade. Half the pool deck. We’d frequently find ourselves settling down somewhere only for someone nearby to light up and we’d have to move.

The real problem
I’m not a party cruiser. I’m quite happy not to go to any entertainment venues ever during a cruise. I don’t need people singing and dancing or doing magic tricks or acrobatics, although occasionally I’ve been to an onboard show and enjoyed it.

My husband and I had brought our laptops hoping to get some work done. For him that means working on clients' accounts, and I am editing one book while writing another. This week off work was the perfect opportunity to make some headway on these projects. There was room for one person to work on a laptop in the cabin and since he was actually earning money Roderic got priority, so I took my laptop bag and went looking for somewhere with a table, a bar, maybe a power socket if I was very lucky, and some peace and quiet. 

On other cruise ships this hasn't been a big ask. Vanderbilt's on P&O Aurora, and Aces & Eights on Ambience fitted the bill well. But on World Europa the entire ship turned into a party venue in the evening. Everywhere there was loud music, some sort of show, karaoke, or a silent disco, and there were huge crowds of people and no empty seats. After wandering the ship looking for somewhere quiet I retreated to the sanctity of my cabin with a can of Coke Zero and tried to arrange cushions on my lap on the bed to find a comfortable working position.

Not that I don’t like loud music. I love it, especially heavy metal and rock. But I want it at a gig I have chosen to go to, not on deck when I just want to watch the wake or chat to my husband. It would have been nice if there had been a library or even a quiet coffee shop somewhere.

It wasn't just in the evenings that there was constant buzz and noise. On the one sea day the pool deck became a nonstop entertainment venue with the crew talent show (they were great though, bless them), dance classes, the “MSC Olympics” which seemed to involve seeing who could splash the most in the pool, and an aerobics class. Judging from comments around me I wasn’t the only person who wondered why they couldn’t just let us all swim and sunbathe in peace.

The ports

So far it might sound as though I didn't enjoy the cruise, but actually I really did. There are two aspects to a cruise: the itinerary, and the ship. We chose the wrong ship, probably due to my haste not to lose £1,000, but the itinerary was great. Genoa was beautiful and full of character right from the start. It's where they invented pesto and focaccia, so naturally we had some. 

A Focacceria in Genoa

We've wanted to see Pompeii for a long time and it was incredible, much larger than I'd expected, fascinating, and very moving.

This was a takeaway restaurant in Pompeii. They had 80 of them in the city. Sounds like a great place to live! (Until 79AD)

We did an excellent walking tour in Messina and enjoyed some real gelato, granita, and cannoli which were all delicious. And Malta was stunning - I enjoyed the craft village and Roderic enjoyed the aviation museum.

Malta

The weather was also perfect with not a drop of rain and temperatures in the mid-20s throughout. It was very windy in Marseilles but we had fun exploring on the land train.

What I learned

Don't book in haste! In my excitement to experience a big, new ship I should have stopped to ask myself whether it's really for me. I should probably also have asked my travel agent whether I could "bank" that deposit until a more suitable cruise came up. I won't use that particular travel company again.

Christopher Columbus's toilet, Genoa

We flew to Barcelona the day before our cruise but our boarding time was early so we actually didn't get enough time to explore Barcelona. Next time I'd fly in two days before so that we can have a full day to explore. On the whole, though, fly cruises are not my favourite thing. A 20kg luggage allowance might just about be fine for a warm-weather destination but isn't going to cut it for anywhere cold or for longer itineraries. My cruise on Ambience was from Tilbury, 20 minutes from home, and with unlimited luggage. It was amazing to be at home and half-an-hour later be on the ship. (Ambience also had a laundry - on World Europa I was reduced to washing clothes in the sink which is not how I want to spend my holiday.) I will look for cruises from Tilbury or Southampton in future.

In front of an iconic building in Barcelona - Primark

There's no such thing as a bad cruise. The ship might not have been right for us, but sitting on the balcony watching stunning scenery drift past is still one of my favourite things to do, and World Europa had the biggest balcony we've had.

Sunset on the balcony

What I've mostly learned is that I am not a party person. I need a sedate, small, probably British cruise ship. Maybe, having celebrated my 55th birthday aboard MSC World Europa, I am finally old.