I had been looking to do a cruise for the past 5 years and finally decided on Azamara Quest for the 18 day Greece-Dubai tour. I had compared and looked at many cruise lines and was intrigued by the ports of call as I had been in Athens 20 years earlier on a backpacking journey using Eurail. I did not want to do this again and really loved the idea of being able to unpack and be on a floating hotel seeing locations I had never been before.

I am inexperienced in luxury travel. But to my standards, Azamara went above and beyond with their ability to make me feel like I was a welcome guest on board. Many staff learned my name and would always call me Miss Debbie. It was sweet as I had left my significant other at home for 3 weeks while I experienced the joys of traveling solo.

The welcome at boarding was great and I began enjoying the service right away. I was supposed to be in an interior room. Somehow the tv had been broken the previous voyage, so they upgraded me to an exterior stateroom on the 4th level with a great big square window. I felt quite special and all was right in my universe. Due to the area we would be sailing through, there was to be a 4 day watch for pirates in the gulf of aden area. i requested to be moved back to an interior room as none of my newly found friends in the smoking section had one. I would therefore become Safe Haven if worse came to worse. The room was a wheelchair accessible up the hall from my upgraded room. It was spacious with a huge bathroom compared to the previous room. So once pirate watch was over I stayed in my lovely coccoon where I could sleep when I wanted:) This also meant I got to keep Raymon and Julius who were my stateroom attendants for the entire 18 days. The job they did was Fantastic! Read more