No complaints - Azamara cruise staff was amazing and super to us. With no other cruise to compare it's hard to say anything but glowing comments. We were pleasantly surprised by the level of service and kindness from all the staff. We had a really poor experience with the website as they were in transition. Lack of response, inability to make any adjustments to our reservation etc. We were so happy that the issues with the website did not mean that we would have issues on the cruise.
Embarkation
5 out of 5
Embarkation was well organized and we enjoyed the small port in Dublin
Ship experiences
Food and Dining
4 out of 5
We mainly at in the Windows cafe. We did this because most days we were dressed in Active clothing and we didn't want to dress up. Plus we thought the ethic themed evenings in Windows cafe offered wonderful assortment. We never at in Discoveries, but we did have one specialty dining experience at Prime C that was wonderful.
Onboard Activities
4 out of 5
We participated in a few of the trivial pursuit activities on our at sea days. We also visited the spa one day for a hair treatment, and spent a couple afternoons at the pool. All experiences were nice. The crew did a nice job of organizing activities during our two full sea days to keep us busy.
Entertainment
4 out of 5
We were pretty uninterested in the evening activities. No fault of the cruise line - we just were tired most evenings from running around all day and chose not to attend to many things. We did participate in White Nights, and the Azamara amazing evening and enjoyed both. We also went to one show on the ship that was just okay, 45 minutes of entertainment was perfect for us. We were a little sad on the Azamazing evening that we were not taken to the St Olaf festivities that were going on in Trondheim while we were in town. Instead we went to a local venue where they put on a little show that didn't seem to have much to do with the festival going on in town.
Children's Programs
no kids for us
Service and Staff
5 out of 5
The dining staff in particular was always kind and went above and beyond to help us out. Jonathan, Daniel, Jose, Gizman (at the Windows bar) were so kind and helpful to us. On our 2nd day at sea we were both very sea sick and Jonathan sent us back to our rooms with a nice supply of ginger candy as well as some ginger ale. He went out of his way to be helpful. The other person that was always kind, courteous and super with us was our stateroom attendant Martin. He was ALWAYS cheerful, helpful and so good at making up our room each day and turndown at night with special treats left for us. All staff in these areas were fantastic. A+
Ship Quality
4 out of 5
We don't have a lot to compare to as this was our first cruise. The ship was always very clean we felt. The common areas were nice design and in good repair.
Cabin / Stateroom
4 out of 5
Our stateroom was adequate. It felt like a small RV, but in the end we had room for everything we needed. One thing is the furniture - the large table near the small sofa and the huge chair for the dressing table made it awkward to use that space. We never really sat on our little couch because the table was just to big to get around if the chair for the dressing table wasn't completely stowed. Both of those pieces were really heavy and made it tough to rearrange and also impeded our passage out to the balcony. The room would be just fine if those two pieces were smaller, more lightweight?
Ship tip
Our biggest tip would be - sail on Azamara is best only in places with calm seas. Our passage between Ireland and Norway particularly on the 2nd night was really rough. Lots of people getting sick us included in spite of medication. I won't probably sail on a ship this small if out on the ocean again. It was fine in the fjords but out in the open sea anything over 2 meters was very uncomfortable.
No shore excursion booked, but there was a really interesting living history museum with interpreters that we visited up above the town with great views and walking back into the town. Molde itself was very pretty and quite compact so it was an easy town to walk around.
Our favorite Port for the excursion we took. We did the BIrkdale glacier walk and highly recommend it. The scenery on the short bus ride up to the site to hike was just breathtaking and the hike up to the glacier was filled with waterfall views and the glacier along with a lake at the base of the glacier. Just stunning.
Sadly, we did not get to see much of Vik itself. We signed up for the FLAM railway tour. It was supposed to be only 6.5 hours long but ended up being 9 hr. We would not recommend this very over rated tour. I think we would have enjoyed maybe hiking around in Vik and getting to see the stave church more. This would have been the only opportunity to go into a stave church and we missed it due to the lengthy bus ride and delays. The Flam railway ride was over-rated as we could not see much due to the train car being packed full of people.
larger city that was very busy. We did enjoy going up the funicular and then hiking around up on the mountain once there. The ship docked right in the heart of this large city so it was fun being able to be so close to everything going on. We made our way up the funicular on our own and did a hike once up at the top.
Eidfjord was a beautiful tiny town deep in a fjord. We liked this stop the best. We didn't have an excursion but rather did a couple of hikes on our own. We wish that we'd have had time to go up to see the big waterfall there, but we missed the opportunity as the schedule to do it yourself from the TI is very limited. Highly recommend this stop for any nature lovers. The town is well laid out with mapped out walks that any average walker can get out and see and experience the fresh air. Simply gorgeous.
No issues with disembarkation. It was pouring rain that day and the port was set up well to allow us to get out to our bus (arranged thru azamara) to get tot he airport
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