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The first thing that immediately captured my attention was, while the ship holds many passengers (4800), the way the ship was engineered with the layout, you rarely felt crowded. Carnival did an excellent job of that. I've been on other cruise ships that carried approximately the same number of passengers and you always felt a little claustrophobic. The decor of the ship was simple, yet elegant and the feature in the middle of the ship (looked like a giant lava lamp) reached up 2 floors and was stunning. There were 2 of them, that had a different pattern in each of them which changed several times a day, very pretty.

I cannot say enough about our cabin steward, Zoran, he was so attentive and gave superior service. Also, our sitting for dinner was @6PM and Alex, was such a great waiter. We traveled with a party of eight people and by the first evening he had each and every one of our names memorized. Very personable and memorable employee.

As for the itinerary, I fell in love with Italy and have found 2 places I've added back into the bucket list to spend more time. One location was Sorrento and the other was San Gimigiano in the Tuscany region. In France we visited Aix en Provence which was very nice. Greece was also great but when all was said and done, Italy was the gem. 

Sailing 2 months after the maiden voyage of this ship, we figured that most of the bugs would have been worked out, which wasn't exactly true. We had a nice balcony room 10216, which was a great room. Was never noisy and a great location. However, the A/C went down twice which was a little annoying. After the 2nd time it had to be repaired I worked with customer service who gave us a credit on the account. That did help repair the annoyance factor a bit.

The food on this ship was very good. The specialty restaurant Ji Ji was fun, tasty and reasonably priced. The 555 steak house was a little more expensive but certainly worth it in the end considering all they offered. Fabulous ship, exceptional service and great employees. There was only one sourpuss that we ran into the entire cruise, in customer service and she should not be working that position. Her name is Irina. They need to find another position for her, perhaps behind the scenes. She was rude, unfriendly and not helpful.

One other note, the Mediterranean, beautiful area, but July is not exactly the best time to go as it was hot, hot, hot and not in a good way. I've heard that April and May are better choices. 

All in all, I would highly recommend the Carnival Vista.