In the review I tell my impressions about the ship and about the holiday in general. The itinerary was as follows: Dubai – Fujairah – Doha (Qatar) – Abu Dhabi – Dubai.
Duration – 8 days / 7 nights. But it would be more correct to count by nights, as we checked in to the ship around 18:00 and left around 10:00 on the last day. That is 6 full days and 7 nights. Pay attention to this when buying a cruise.
Cabin
We took a cabin with a balcony. There are no complaints – clean, has everything you need. Cleaning is done every day.
Food
Food on the liner liked. Varied buffet for breakfast, lunch and dinner, all tasty. A lot of meat, various side dishes, fresh salads, quite a lot of fruit. There was often fish, sometimes seafood. There were also exotics, such as fried snails.
Our tariff included a package of Brindiamo drinks – it was very useful (we took extra drinks at the buffet and sometimes ordered something at the bar).
I can’t say anything bad about dinner in the restaurant, but we were there only twice. The rest of the nights we preferred to dine on the tenth deck (buffet).
Entertainment on board
There was always something to do. In general, we didn’t spend much time in the cabin. The activities are well organised, there is animation.
Excursions
We took excursions to all three cities on the cruise. To be honest, we were not impressed with the excursions. I guess it’s normal for sightseeing excursions, but we didn’t see anything special there.
If it was a Mediterranean cruise, I would consider buying excursions on third-party services (like Tripster and Sputnik) – especially since they cost about the same as on the ship.
General Impressions
Overall, we enjoyed our cruise on the Costa Diadema. Everything was organised to a good standard (except that we didn’t really like the excursions).
I liked the cruise itself as a kind of holiday much more than the package tours. They are basically similar, but here you wake up in a different city or even country almost every day. Accordingly, it gives you more impressions in the same time.
We are already looking at where we can go on our next cruise.
