Review of Brilliance 12 Night Mediterranean Oct. 5 to Oct. 17. 2016

[margeecruiser]

Hi: I am finally getting around to writing my review of our Brilliance b2b, the 12 night Mediterranean from Oct. 5 to Oct 17, 2016 followed by the TA Barcelona to Tampa Oct. 17 to Oct. 31, 2016. This will be a long review, with details of our hotel in Barcelona, an incident with lost/stolen luggage in Barcelona and our experience on board and on our private excursions. I will break this up into sections, so it will be easier to read or ignore.

 

We are Bill and Mary (aka Margee) and our daughter Daphne joined us for the first leg of the cruise. We are Diamond Plus; she is Platinum.

 

We flew American from DFW to PHL to BCN and stayed 2 nights in the Hotel Jazz in Barcelona before our cruise. Daphne flew from LAX to CDG to BCN using British Airways. All our flights were arranged through air2sea and were uneventful. We had some fairly tight transfer times, but all went as planned.

 

Since we wanted a triple room, we had a suite in the Hotel Jazz. We enjoyed our stay there. The hotel was spotless and comfortable. The morning breakfast was great, and the welcoming bottle of champagne was appreciated.

 

I arranged a transfer from the airport to the Hotel Jazz through Spain Day Tours for Bill and I and had 2 fellow roll call members join us. The cost was 69 euros for a van. They were right on time and our transfer was perfect.

 

Our one incident: When we checked out of the hotel, we used the first taxi that was right outside the hotel for the short trip to the ship. The taxi driver began to load our luggage into his sedan taxi. I told him we had 3 pax and lots of luggage, he did not listen. When he saw the last 2 large suitcases that DH was bringing, he said - no, too much luggage. He then threw out all our luggage (I thought) and drove off. We then began to load our luggage into a van taxi. When we got to the port, we discovered one small tote was missing. It contained a pouch with all our electronics (2 Ipads, all charging cords, luggage scale and our car keys), DH's tux shoes, and our MEDICINES.

 

The port terminal staff was great with helping us with this problem. The port staff contacted the Guest Services Manager Flavia and she really helped us. She contacted the on-board medical staff to review our medical history and our medications needed. They arranged to re-supply all our needed prescriptions. The doctor on board gave us an exam, wrote rx and filled all our prescriptions except one heart drug they did not have on board. They emailed ahead to further ports, and this drug was located in Venice, 5 days ahead. They were extremely professional. The cost was $125 pp for the exam and the cost of the rx was $300 for a full 30-day supply. This was much less than the cost of the same service here in central Texas.

 

We finally were on our way. I will continue this long review in later segments.

 

Hope I'm not boring the dickens out of you all.

 

Margee

Edited November 9, 2016 by margeecruiser

[kernow]

Sorry about your bag.

 

Look forward to reading your review, we were on the TA with you,

 

Julie

[easyboy]

Glad you had replacement for your medications. More important than the others.

Will be following along.

[riclop]

Thanks for the review.

[rclibertygirl5]

We are also going on the 12 day Brilliance out of Barcelona next August and we are staying pre/post cruise at Hotel Jazz so I am really looking forward to your review!! Thanks for doing this!

[margeecruiser]

Hi, this section will detail the ship.

 

We were in room 1602, an aft junior suite for the Mediterranean portion of our cruise. With 3 in the room, we had plenty of storage and the room was great.We had to move at. This was the largest JS we have ever had. Our steward Roxanne was outstanding. We made up the sofa every morning so we had more room; she was nervous about showing DH how to do this, but we assured her it was not a problem. It was really easy. The bathroom had a tub with shower; this was great for tub users, but we are shower people. It was difficult to step into the tub because it was so deep, so we just took it slowly and were very careful. This would be a real problem for anyone with difficulty moving around. We had to move to cabin 1590 for the TA, which was fine for just the 2 of us. We kept Roxanne as our steward and the move was easy, but I will try harder to book the same room for other b2b's.

 

Brilliance was just beautiful. The sea views were great and the ship was in wonderful shape. We noticed some wear on upholstery in the public areas, such as the theater, but not too bad. The staff was outstanding, especially the Hotel Manager and the Food and Beverage Manager. We have never been on a ship with so much free food and alcohol around the ship. The nightly cocktail event for Diamonds and above was just over the top. They used both Lounges in Viking Crown as well as the entire Colony Club. There was so much food, dinner was almost an after-thought. They had a theme every night and the food and beverages reflected that, such as margaritas for Mexican night, for instance. There was also champagne offered several times for all the ship, which I thought was a nice thing to do. There was some grumbling about the Colony Club being closed off for the Crown and Anchor people, so the offer for everyone was appreciated.

 

We ate in Giovannis and Chops several times. The food and service were very good, except one meal in Chops where the veal chop was very tough. I sent it back and they replaced it with one that was very good. We ate breakfast in Giovannis most mornings, except when we had a very early shore excursion.

 

We enjoyed Vintages very much. We ordered our Caymus Special Selection (6) and Belle Glos Pinot Noir Las Alteras (6) the first day, so we knew we would have enough for the entire 26 nights. We have been on other ships where these 2 can be out of stock. We also liked the R Bar, but it can be noisy when events are happening in the Centrum.

 

We had traditional late dining. Our waiters were very good and tried very hard. We brought our own bottle of wine and they supplied the proper large glasses without any prompting. Our table-mates were a wonderful group of people; in fact, one night the whole table went to Chops to celebrate one of the group's birthday. Very fun group.

 

I will detail our excursions in the next segment. Thanks for reading all this. If you have any questions, please ask.

 

Margee

[Merion_Mom]

Hi, Margee. Thank you for doing this review. I am doing the same in 2017.

 

Would you please list the itinerary for the 12 night Mediterranean cruise? Thank you.

[margeecruiser]

Hi,again.

 

I will list the itinerary in the next section listing our excursions.

 

I forgot to include the condition of the beds. Hard as usual. We brought the air mattresses made for back packers and they worked great. I slept better than any other cruise I've been on. We blew them up and Roxanne put them under the bottom sheet. This idea came from another poster here and it's the best hint I've ever seen.

 

Margee

 

 

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[George C]

WE were on 9/11 cruise next door in GS 1600, Roxanne was great always had a big smile. Loved the concierge lounge entire staff was by far best we ever had.

[margeecruiser]

Here I am again, with details of our excursions.

 

The Mediterranean began in Barcelona and went to Nice, France (Villefranche), Florence/Pisa (Livorno), Rome (Civitavecchia), Dubrovnik, Croatia, Venice (2 nights), Bologna (Ravenna) Italy, Kotor, Montenegro, and back to Barcelona.

 

We had been to Barcelona several times before, so we just walked around. We went to the big shopping center Diagonal Mar Mall and bought large containers of shower gel and hand gel because we did not pack those. We went to the big store there which is similar to our WalMart. We enjoyed seeing what the local people actually buy and the prices they pay.

 

We did not do any tours in Villefranche since we had been to Monaco and Eze before. We walked the pretty little town and just enjoyed the day.

 

In Livorno, I had booked a private tour with Romeinlimo. There were 7 of us, 3 in our family and 2 other couples. We used this number for all of our tours and it worked really well. We had a large van with lots of room for all of us. We booked the Lucca and Vinci tour which cost 600 euro total or about 85 euro pp. This was an all day tour. They picked us up at the port and drove to Lucca. This is a charming little Italian town, with several historic and ancient churches and a central square. We found an electronics store here and replaced our charge cord for our Iphone and bought a battery operated clock for the cabin. We were pleasantly surprised at the prices and service in the little store. We had lunch on our way to Vinci. We then drove to Vinci, which is the birthplace of Leonardo and there is a museum with large models of his mechanical inventions, such as the helicopter, diving suit, cranes, canal lock system, paddle boat, tank, and other fantastic items he invented. We drove a short distance to the farmhouse where he was born.

 

In Rome we booked romeinlimo's Alternative Tuscany tour since we had been to Rome several times before and had spent a week in Rome before our last cruise. We again had a large van with 7 people. The cost was 650 euro or 92 euro pp. We drove to Pitigliano, which is a stunning medieval town built on a ridge with vertical drop-offs. It is amazing how they were able to build the town on the ridge of the valley. There were many tunnels and caves with tombs. We also visited Sorano and Solano, two quaint small towns. We were simply enchanted. Again, we ate lunch between towns, but I forgot to note where we ate.

 

In Dubronik, we booked Ston and Peljesac Peninsula tour with wine tasting. This cost $549.57 for the full van, which we paid through Viator. Ston is a little town at the end of the bay or fjord. They grow mussels in the bay and have several restaurants featuring the local seafood. We ate lunch overlooking the beautiful bay. Some of us had the local speciality, risotto with mussels, mussel stew, salad and bread. The portions were huge and we did not know when we ordered that there would be so much food. We then went on to 2 wineries in the Peljesac region for tasting and purchase (ha ha).

 

We were in Venice from 3 pm and overnight (only 1 night instead of 2 as I mentioned earlier). We walked around the town the first afternoon and I had booked the Secret Doge's Palace tour through Tickitaly for 64 euros for 3 of us for the 10 am english tour. This was a walking tour of the Doge's Palace concentrating on the jail, dungeons, court rooms and civil offices. I researched this tour as much as possible, but really made a mistake because of the 7 floors of steps from the bottom to the attic. These steps were uneven, with some areas with no hand rails and very steep. Two of us had real trouble keeping up with the group because of the many steps. I would caution anyone with bad knees to beware of this issue. There were no warnings on the website when I booked this.

 

In Bologna, port of Ravenna, I booked with Tours by Locals with Cinza Fabbri as our guide. This was 620 euros total for the 7 of us. We began our tour in Bologna where we drove through very fertile farmland. We visited the largest cathedral in Europe and walked around the marketplace. We had lunch in a little restaurant that was cafeteria-style. Very good food and reasonable prices. We then drove to Ravenna where we visited 3 of the famous mosaic churches. Our guide got our tickets and went into the churches with us. We had plenty of time to view the magnificent mosaics and she told us their history.

 

In Kotor, Montenegro we booked with toursbymilo. This was a 4 hour tour in a large van for 160 euro or 23 euro pp. We drove up the coast with fantastic views. We ate lunch in a little town at the end of the bay, where we ordered local cheese, bread, beer and wine. We took a little boat over to the Church on the Rock for a quick visit. Our driver was Mladen and he was great.

 

I will continue this review with an overview next.

 

Thanks for reading.

 

Margee

[rclibertygirl5]

Do you have any pictures of your hotel room at Hotel Jazz?

[Merion_Mom]

Here I am again, with details of our excursions.

 

The Mediterranean began in Barcelona and went to Nice, France (Villefranche), Florence/Pisa (Livorno), Rome (Civitavecchia), Dubrovnik, Croatia, Venice (2 nights), Bologna (Ravenna) Italy, Kotor, Montenegro, and back to Barcelona.

 

 

Margee

 

Thanks. It will be a different itinerary next year. :)

[margeecruiser]

Sorry, I do not have any pictures at all from our trip. We stopped taking pictures quite a while ago. There are pictures on the internet from Hotel Jazz and all our excursions. We found the hotel and the excursions exactly as described and pictured on their websites.

 

Margee

[tonto524]

Loving the review, Mary! We mss our wonderful and fun table 205 with you and Bill on the TA !!

 

 

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[Saab4444]

Thanks. It will be a different itinerary next year. :)

This is not the Transatlantic cruise but the 12 day Med cruise before.

 

 

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[Merion_Mom]

This is not the Transatlantic cruise but the 12 day Med cruise before.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Forums mobile app

 

Yes, and next year there is a 12 night Mediterranean cruise before the TA, but it has a different itinerary.

 

Why did you assume that I wasn't writing about the 12 night Med cruise which is the topic of this thread? :confused:

[Saab4444]

Yes, and next year there is a 12 night Mediterranean cruise before the TA, but it has a different itinerary.

 

 

 

Why did you assume that I wasn't writing about the 12 night Med cruise which is the topic of this thread? :confused:

 

 

Ups, sorry, my mistake!

 

 

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[margeecruiser]

Hi, Everyone

 

Thanks for reading my review.

 

As an overall summary of our experiences on this cruise, all I can say is that it was the best cruise ever for us. Although we had the disaster with the lost luggage, it was a minor setback that was resolved.

 

We liked the Hotel Jazz very much, but would not stay there again unless we had the need to book a triple room. It was very pricey for the suite we needed. We have stayed in other hotels in Barcelona that we like as well.

 

Our tours were all wonderful. I will book my own tours again. I liked the ability to customize the itinerary and the small group. We posted the tours here on Cruise Critic for others to join us. We made some great friends on these tours. Everyone showed up on time and knew exactly what to expect on the tours and what their costs would be. We never waited on people and we each could explore some at our own pace. We ate in restaurants where we wanted as an individual activity.

 

The ship and staff were just wonderful. I cannot stress too much how well run this ship was. Just an outstanding job done by the Hotel Manager and the Food and Beverage Manager. Their professionalism was really evident. We were blown away with the food and alcohol service in the Colony Club and around the ship for those without high loyalty levels. Why can't all the ships have this lavishness of food and beverages?

 

We did book our air arrangements through air2sea (Choice Air) for the good prices on the open jaw tickets. These flights went just fine, but I would have liked to have a little more time to change planes from domestic to international, but it was really not a problem. We had plenty of time, but I was a little nervous. We will book through them again.

 

If there are any questions, I will try to answer.

 

Thanks for reading all this.

 

Margee

[margeecruiser]

Hello, Again

 

I have just realized I have been talking about the lavish food and beverages for the following cruise, the TA from Barcelona to Tampa. This cruise was so port-intensive, we did not go to the Diamond Lounge at all. We did go to Vintages and the R Bar.

 

I'm sorry for the confusion. I will write a review of the TA soon, detailing our excursions and the fun we had during all the sea days.

 

Margee

[Merion_Mom]

ups, sorry, my mistake!

 

 

Sent from my iphone using forums mobile app

 

:) :) :)

[easyboy]

You did seem to make the most out of your stay in the ports. We have been to those ports but was not able to see some sites you mentioned. It's probably better to customize next time our own tour like you did. Thanks for sharing.