Italy and Croatia

My husband and I flew to Venice in June this year and had a wonderful cruise. The itinerary was great, sailing out of Venice was my dream sailaway – it’s certainly a wonderful way to see Venice from high up on the ship. We visited Slovenia, Zadar, Split, Dubrovnik, Kotor, Naples, Sicily, Ravenna, then back to Venice for two nights, leaving us plenty of time to explore this beautiful city on foot.

Slovenia had many narrow winding streets, bars/cafes, shops – lovely just to wander round. In Zadar there is a very impressive Roman Forum amongst other ruins and in Split we walked round the old town with so much to see. We did a great trip from Dubrovnik stopping at amazing viewpoints after having traditional local dishes and wine at Konavoski Dvori, then a stroll round the old town. Next was Kotor – we went ashore by tender and had a very pretty journey along the coast on a hop-on/hop-off local bus, headphones with local information and music was appreciated. We thought the old town was an amazing place, has to be my favourite. From Naples we did a trip to Capri, once again it was absolutely beautiful. Next was Catania, Sicily – we did a coach trip to see the craters of Mount Etna, the amount of lava is amazing. Also stopped at Taormina, very beautiful village with great views. Our next stop was Ravenna, where we got the shuttle bus to town. Many churches to visit here, and good shops too. Back in Venice we had a whole day to see Doges Palace, Rialto Bridge, gondola ride etc. A fantastic place, busy but not too bad.

We were very impressed with our ship. We had Aqua class cabins so we could use the Blu Restaurant – we love the intimacy of this restaurant and the food is magnificent, can’t praise it enough. Celebrity entertainment was generally very good, we loved it all.