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Louis Cruise Lines

MS Sapphire

Your Rating:
Reviewed by:Selma Star
# previous cruises: 2
Date of Trip: April 14, 2000
Itinerary: Mediterranean

My week aboard sapphire was the first cruise I have ever been on. My friend and I both enjoyed it very much. While on the Sapphire, I remember it being announced that Sapphire would be going to Australia in summer 1999. I would like to have took another cruise on Sapphire. I am sad to see this nice ship has left Thomson Holidays. I wonder where she is now if she has not been de commissioned. Sapphire is more then 30 years old.

We thought the seat in the Marco Polo Lounge were not too easy to sit in, but we realised that was largely due to space constrains and getting an entire half of all passengers ino the room at one time while one half of the travellers would be at first sitting for dinner and the others would watch the show in Marco polo Lounge and vice versa for the performance to be shown again during the second sitting of dinner.

My friend found the pool too small and very cold. I do not care for swimming myself very much. Bare no-one used the pool while we were there.

The outer deck-space was ample. being a relatively small ship there is a better ratio of outside deck-space for the number of passengers. I prefer it to be this way.

The food was excellent. Very good wide choice for everyone including vegetarians etc. The menu/waiter service meals were very good and the choice of self-service buffet meals was excellent which was ideal at breakfast time for people getting up at various times for tours etc. It is nice to pick and choose. It was good to have self service tea and coffee any time day and night.

Strangely enough for all the loads of food around, I never felt boated and surprisingly I did not put on any extra wight. That was mainly due to me having the healthier choices instead if filling myself with lots of chip, burgers and such.

I really enjoyed the 'pick-and-mix' salads on the lunch buffet.

The standard outside cabin we had was very comfortable and the shower was good. The cabins were were well kept.

We did not bother much with the shows we like to be out on the open decks instead.

We visited Rhodes, Athens & Create in Greece, Port said in Egypt and Jerusalem.

Rhodes is a nice place, we wish we could have seen more of it if we arrived on time. We got there two hours late because of a delayed flight the day before.

We took a half-day excursion to Athens to see the Acropolis. The tour was very good. Well worth seeing.

The half-day coach trip to the Palace of Minos in Crete was excellent although it was an extremely windy day.

It was nice to have a day's break just sailing out at sea in the *middle* of the holiday to relax from the bustle of the tour-visits.

We decided not to visit the Pyramids because of being cooped up in a coach for three hour getting there and as long to get back, which would mean 6 hour of the day sat in a coach. Instead we made our own way around the place of port. Port said was a very interesting city. The people there were sociable and pleasant and very down ot earth. We found many of the locals spoke good English. Good to see a 'different world'

On our last full day, we took a tour to Jerusalem and Bethlehem where we saw some of the most important religous sites sites in the world including the places of Christ's birth, death and resurrection, the Garden of Gethsemane and the wailing wall of Solomon's Temple. All of us on the trip were provided with a lunch in a restaurant in Jerusalem which we enjoyed.

Due to sapphire being a relatively small ship, we found other passengers were generally quite sociable, whereas on a much bigger ship people tend to be unsociable.

We did swap addresses with one other passenger. It was more then a year later before I got a reply and there has been no more contact all since then.