Costa Victoria
Sail date: September 01, 2009
Decent base price, but read the details
Our cruise began in Venice, stopped in Ancona, 4 stops in Greece, one in Dubrovonik Croatia and then back to Venice.
Rather than writing a full narrative, I'll just list the +s and -s
Positives:
Courteous Staff
Good excursions (but they cost $$$ and you should really plan the cost of these ahead of time)
Decent room (we thought it would be tiny but it was okay)
Food was good, but not great
Pool was spacious, but it was quite windy some days. There were enough chairs usually for everyone, but not always.
A decent choice of activities, casino, etc.
Negatives:
You have to pay for Cokes... I hear this is normal, but it was unexpected to us
many of the Italian people were rude and cut into line, invaded personal space a lot... if this bothers you, do not take this cruise line as it's an Italian line and most passengers are Italian
The "shows' were not very good, in fact, they were bad in some cases, I didn't expect a ton but was still disapponted
TV - not much on, and sometimes, it's nice to stay in the room, I would think they could add some more channels, especially English speaking for a minimal cost
Stops were not long enough in some cases, I know that they could have given us much more time, the one stop that let us stay later in the day was great!
Excursions -
Greece was the Best! On Santorini, we did the "Oia Village" excursion and it was the one that gives you the amazing picturesque moments... we also heard that the "Black Beach" here was good.
In Ancona - do the excursion that takes you to the caves, otherwise, there's NOTHING to do there (it takes you there on a Sunday, when everything is closed)
The Athens "Acropolis" excursion was great... you get a lot of good stops and a bit of time for shopping.
Other -
Venice is great, but hard to get around, very expensive and not easy to carry bags around in... keep all this in mind, it's a water city, so there are NO ROADS... only water taxis, and oh, by the way, they're expensive as heck... the water bus is cramped and terribly hard to move around in with bags.