The War Office and I cruised around Scotland, Iceland, Greenland and Norway late last year on the MSC Virtuoso.    It was our first time with MSC and I was quite happy with the Ship.   On MSC, they charge for virtually everything.   Whilst your fare includes your accommodation and the buffet style meal area plus the pools etc, everything else is user pays.    For us, it was perfect as the fares were quite low compared with the same cruise on other lines.  However, all entertainment, kids activities, and lots of other things that are usually free on other lines were very expensive.

I would cruise with them again though.  The ship itself was magnificent!

Jasin wrote on Feb 28^th, 2024 at 10:31am:


Yes Jas, that is true.   If you are just a couple and not interested in water slides, kid’s bowling alley, ice rinks, drinks packages, ability to go to entertainment everynight, speciality restraunts etc, then MSC are the cruise line to look at.     The actual “fare” is very good value because you are not paying for that.    The ships’ themselves are like works of floating art - very impressive.

We have cruised with Princess and Royal Caribbean and whilst good cruises, you are paying for things you probably don’t use a lot.   As I wrote, we would use MSC again

My first “cruise” was on a trooper, “New Australia “ under hire to the Aust. army.
Korea to Australia, 1954.
Previous to that was a short over nighter across the Sea of Japan on the SS “E-Sang”,
So small that her engine’s three cylinders were above the deck.
Thankfully ‘sea of glass’ sailing.
But back to the “New Australia “, very pleasant trip with no discipline other than shaving every day and a bit of an exercise session daily to keep the lazy ones fit.
Biggest thrill was running into a typhoon in the South China Sea, we were headed 90 deg.to the enormous swells and she buried her bow into each successive one and rode over the next, she was ‘yacht hulled’ [no well deck] and the promenade deck was closed off by a steel wall with armour glass windows,
When she buried her boow a wall of green water ‘washed’ the windows.
Being a troop ship we were allowed on deck, half way to the stern the deck was 4 fett deep in the wash. FUN!!

The next day was relatively calm and about midday we passed a small fishing junk, with two men on board; they held up a sign “TABAC” and the First Officer had a quick whip around and threw them cigarettes in a, hopefully, waterproof bag [of course they’d been seen well ahead by the lookout or radar]
He told us that the distance we were from land that they had to have been out in the
‘blow’ the night before.
Their boat may have looked funny to us but it was a real little ship.

Sir Eoin O Fada wrote on Mar 5^th, 2024 at 11:32pm:


Dang! I’d love to see the pics!

If you are on your phone posting in here,
Go to “choose file” below this window and emoticons.
Then choose a smaller photo size otherwise it won’t accept larger pic format.

Have a practice to try that out

Sophia wrote on Mar 7^th, 2024 at 8:34am:

Pictures Eoin?