It fit our schedule, and started in Rome, important to us, and included Malta and Barcelona at the finish, also something we wanted to spend more time in. The downside, bad weather, common at this time, which prevented us leaving dock in Rome for 8 hours, cutting our shore visit in Malta short, then the bad weather canceled the stop at Valencia and made us at least 8 hours late getting into Barcelona.

Also, shore excursions in Tunis and Algiers were awful, and should be avoided by anyone taking in this area. In Tunis, the brochure had pictures of ruins supposed to be Carthage. In fact, none existed and were blamed on marketing people in LA who had never been there. We did see Roman ruins of an aquaduct, which was exceptional. We saw no other ruins as they either did not exist or were a long way off in the distance and we did not stop. Our tour of the old Quarter got canceled by security, so we stood around quite awhile waiting for that to unfold to no avail.

In Algiers, which was even worse, the bus rode around and pointed out numerous interesting sites, but none of them were we allowed to stop. The only stop was a war monument dedicated to the communist-supplied irregulars who killed off the French until they were granted independence. Not much for those from the good old USA. The city itself is mostly white wash, pretty in old movies, but none of the building have been repainted after they kicked out the French in the 1950s. Pretty shabby looking. Read more