I first read about Europa in Berlitz's 2017 guide, fantastic, by the way, in case you're looking for in-depth research about individual ships not on CruiseCritic. I am an American who went on this amazing ship for just over a week, albeit that it was quite difficult not knowing any German prior, but I felt interacting with fellow passengers who spoke at least some English or Chinese (which I ...

SHORT VERSION: I greatly enjoyed the outstanding food, service, and classical music on this luxury small ship cruise and plan to return soon. Details: I am an American who did this two-week luxury small ship cruise solo from Nice to Bilbao. I chose it primarily for the intimate classical music experience it offered with its Ocean Sun Festival. To compare, I have done various other mostly ...

This was my first cruise with Hapag-Lloyd’s “most beautiful yacht in the world,” the MS Europa, 13 nights, Lisbon to Nice. I had previously cruised with my husband on the more modern, and advertised as bilingual, HL Europa 2 on a Christmas/New Years cruise December 2015 (see my CC review, Cape Town to Cape Town) and had greatly enjoyed that, which led to my interest in the Europa. I am comparing ...

Background Hapag-Lloyd is not a generally well known cruise line for British passengers. It has only 4 ships ranging from small expedition ships (such as the Hanseatic) to its flagship MS Europa which, shortly before our departure, was awarded for the 11th time the accolade of "Best Cruise Ship in the World" by the Berlitz Cruising Guide (by a comfortable margin). The company caters mainly ...

It was with some trepidation that we embarked on this cruise aboard MS Europa, a ship primarily designed for German speaking passengers. Not that the language concerned us as the cruise was "Bilingual" and my wife and I have a reasonable working knowledge of German. Rather I had read a fellow member's review shortly before we left and it was lukewarm at best. On the other hand Douglas Ward (a ...

However I did many cruises i was very nervous to join ms Europa as German is only my fourth language and it was a complete new challenge : going to a cruiseship mostly catering to the German speaking market. So after a punctual flight and a long taxi drive - the traffic was hectic- i did arrive at the terminal where my hand luggage was taken over; only my electronic ticket and my passport was ...