My honest review of Costa Smeralda
we booked a cruise with my girlfriend from a travel agency for Costa Smeralda. Our trip was 9 days long. On the first day after arriving in Rome, we spent the night there in a hotel. The ship's departure was from Civitavecchia the next day.
After arriving on the ship, we got our cabin and the first impression was that it was absolutely fantastic compared to Finnish cruises. Our cruisers have insanely small cabins and this blew my mind. This was like a hotel room and it smelled fresh, was clean and the bed was really soft.
After exploring our cabin for a while, we decided to go to lunch. Honestly, I've never had such heavenly food in my life as on a Costa cruise. In Finland, eating on board is, first of all, outrageously expensive, and secondly, the food is absolutely tasteless compared to this. You couldn't take the food by yourself, but the waiter asked and put as much as you wanted. In my opinion, it's a really good way compared to us on Finnish ships where people mess around with the food.
Unfortunately, we came across this same phenomenon, which is also in Finland, that people take food and leave food an outrageous amount. It hurt my heart that too much food is wasted. I enjoyed myself as much as I could eat. There was so much food on board that I really didn't get to taste everything. One minus I would give about the buffet is that there were unfortunately too many people, so there were few places to sit. But that didn't discourage us, we just waited until people got up from the table. After lunch, of course, there was dinner, where fine dining food is served. There was a different menu for each day from which to choose an appetizer, first course, main course and dessert. every food I chose was mouthwatering. Except one was a disappointment, but it didn't spoil my trip. If you were still hungry late in the evening, you could order directly to your cabin or pick up hamburgers. they were absolutely heavenly good. the meat was medium, a lot of cheese and salad and mayonnaise. heavenly good.
So what about the bars? There were a lot of them. It was sad that I didn't get to see every of them there. I'm not terribly interested in alcohol and partying in general. The beers were good. the cocktails are really good. The live music was really good. There was a trivia quiz, a music quiz and a program for all ages.
Many destinations where the cruise went were really nice. I didn't really care about Cagliari because there wasn't really anything there and secondly it was a rainy day. it was a pity.
From the reviews, I have been surprised by the reviewers' complaints about the staff. I never received bad customer service on board. They were always so friendly and I even made a friend from a ship worker. In my opinion, this has only been about the attitude that you have not received perfect English in your own language. These workers come from many different countries and in these countries the English teaching is not perfect. Try to understand that not everyone can speak English properly.
I would like to give 5/5. This minus was not due to anything on the ship, but to Cagliari, the destination where the ship visited. That place was really boring.
I definitely recommend Costa Smeralda to everyone! I will go on a Costa cruise again in the future as soon as I can.
