Woolley Family

In January 2019, we sailed on a one week cruise around the Mediterranean on the MSC Meraviglia.  The full account of our trip can be found by clicking here . Before we booked, we researched MSC as thoroughly as we could.  The cruise was cheap-ish and we wanted to make sure there wasn't a "gotcha".  We booked knowing that the atmosphere would obviously be more "European" than our previous cruises, whatever we thought that meant. As our departure date came closer, I reached out to others in a Facebook cruising community, asking for any specific tips for sailing with MSC.  Some of the answers that I received left me very nervous about our upcoming cruise.  Some said they would never sail with MSC again.  Many people cited the food as being sub-par. I am happy to report that post-cruise, we can say that we had a wonderful time, and we would consider MSC for a future cruise.  There were still some gotchas and we would be more aware of them next tim...

We undertook this trip with our two teenage children.  Megan turned 17 during the trip, and Reid had turned 14 right before Christmas.  For the first time we decided to try a bit of backpacking, because it seemed to lend itself well to a Europe trip, where the stairs and cobblestones could make wheeled suitcases unwieldy. Day 1 – 27 December 2018 Our flight from Brisbane to Taipei left at 11pm last night. The new security rules were confusing and Reid's deodorant was confiscated. We will know about it later. Luckily it is not hot. It was our first time on China Airlines. Out of interest, I thought their premium economy section looked better than the Virgin international premium economy. Sadly we had to walk straight past that section. If planes had nosebleed seats, we were in them. I found the food a bit hit and miss. They have a decent in-flight entertainment system but the sound in my seat was not working.   I had ordered the vegetarian meal.  Th...