Photo Review: Celebrity Reflection - 29th May - 11 Night Western Med Cruise

Hello Fellow Cruise addicts. I'm Nick and here's our review of our recently concluded (:loudcry:) 11 night Western Mediterranean cruise on the gorgeous Celebrity Reflection. As one can see from my signature below, DW and I have cruised quite extensively in the Med, so we were initially in 2 minds if we should book this cruise. Initially, our friends were booked on this cruise, and in April we finally decided to take the plunge and go along with them on this cruise. And we were not disappointed.

We chalked out the following itinerary and quickly got to work on getting our visas in place.

27th May - Mumbai to Dubai to Rome

28th May - Rome

29th May - Rome to Civitavecchia (Cruise starts)

30th May - La Spezia, Italy

31st May - Nice/ Monaco

1st June - Barcelona, Spain

2nd June - Barcelona, Spain

3rd June - At Sea

4th June - Malaga Spain,

5th June - Gibraltar, UK

6th June - Cartagena, Spain

7th June - Ibiza, Spain

8th June - At Sea

9th June - Civitavecchia (cruise ends) - Rome to Dubai

10th June - Dubai

11th June - Dubai

12th June - Dubai to Mumbai (and back to work :eek:)

Those who have read my reviews of cruises done earlier will know that we usually do a lot of ports on our own, preferring to walk and really soak in the ports. So lets get this review started!

Nick

Looking forward to your review, Nick, as we are completing the same itinerary in July ;).

Ready to enjoy the review!

Wow - looking forward to your review and pictures!

Hi Nick, DH and I were on your Silhouette Italy and Greece in 2014...looking forward to this review!

Cathy

Hi Nick,

We are doing this itinerary in August so will be very interested in your review.

Woodards.

Will be following along.

Sorry guys, this is taking longer than expected. There are some issues with attaching images, which I am trying to sort out. Promise to make up for this delay by some really detailed updates.

Nick

27th May 2017

The day we were looking forward to for a long time was finally here! Our bagswere packed, hotels booked, and we were raring to go!

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We took an early morning flight from Mumbai to Dubai on Emirates. We had a 3hour layover in Dubai and the airport is big enough to while away some time in.We sat in the Marhaba lounge where we had some wine and food. The flight fromDubai to Rome was much better. The aircraft had newer TV sets and plenty ofentertainment to keep us busy for our 6 hour flight to Rome.

Since this was a day time flight, the views flying out of Dubai were alsoamazing. I think this was the residential project titled 'The World' which is aseries of private islands shaped like our continents.

Our flight to Rome was excellent. We landed in Rome at around 7:30 PM and wehad collected our bags by 8:15 PM. We had booked 3 transfers with this companycalled ROME AIRPORTER. We were trying them for the first time and their priceswere alot cheaper than many of the others we checked out online. We booked withthem for the airport to Hotel (40 Euros); hotel to Civitavecchia cruise port(99 Euros) and after our cruise - Civitavecchia to FCO (Rome airport), again 99Euros. This worked well for us since if they didn't land up, we knew that wecould use the train and get to our hotel easily.

These guys were absolutely brilliant. Each time we had a Mercedes Sedan whichwas clean and driven by a professional driver who could converse with us inEnglish. I was very impressed with their service, they were always ready earlyand Marco responded promptly to all my email queries.

We checked into our hotel, UNA Hotel Roma, which was just off Rome's main trainstation Roma Termini. The hotel was excellent, the rooms were modern and wellsized for European standards and felt safe. The beds were comfortable, but theonly issue was noise from the tram woke us up early in the morning, as did theopening of the shops opposite the room. The breakfast was ok.

After a quick walk around Termini, we retired early for the night since we knewwe had a long day ahead the next day in Rome. We wanted to take in all thesights, even tho this was our 5th trip to Rome, we had not seen everything. Wewalked from our hotel to key landmarks via the following route:

UNA Hotel - Piazza della Republica - down the Via ****onale - Trevi Fountain -Spanish Steps - Piazza Barberini - Piazza Venezia - Piazza Navona - St AngeloBridge. (Pictures coming up)

Here's the first one at Piazza della Republica.

Sunday 28th May 2017

DW and I decided to get up early and head out to explore the city. We were celebratingour 7th Wedding Anniversary on that day, and we were both reallyhappy to celebrate it in Rome, where we had visited on our honeymoon as well.Rome is a really beautiful city with amazing buildings at every corner, so youreally have to be able to walk a lot to really appreciate the beauty of Rome.And I think we did walk a lot, over 16 kms as per the Health app on our phones.

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Aftera leisurely stroll down the main street (via Naazionale), we made our way backto the Trevi Fountain (Fontana Trevi). I guess what they say must be true,since we have been throwing a coin into the Trevi Fountain each time we’re in Romeand she has brought us back everytime – 2010, 2011,2013,2014 and again in 2017.There seriously is no better Fountain that we’ve come across. There are alwayscrowds here, so one has to be careful with your belongings.

Afterspending some time around the Trevi Fountain and the multiple shops around it,we started walking towards Piazza Barberini and the Triton Fountain. This was amuch smaller Piazza and Fountain, but really enjoyed this one as well. The walkfrom Trevi was short, took us less than 10 minutes, I believe the distance isless than 0.75 Kms.

From Piazza Barberini, we started walking towards Piazza di Spagna or the Spanish Steps. This is a really wonderful piazza which should not be missed. Although we had been here twice before, we wanted to spend some time here on this trip as well. One big change that we noticed this time, was that there was A LOT of security – armed police and soldiers.

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While wandering through the shops around Spagna, we came across this amazing shop selling Murano glass clocks, among other pieces. DW and I are not all that into art, but we really liked this one piece which resembled Van Gogh’s Starry Night painting.

See the resemblance?

Since this piece was heavy and we didn’t want to lug it around, we decided to walk back to our hotel, store it and head out again. Along the way, we enjoyed the various views that Rome has to offer.

Hi Nick, DH and I were on your Silhouette Italy and Greece in 2014...looking forward to this review!

Cathy

Hi Cathy, the Reflection was just as good as the Silhouette. Celebrity's S class ships are our absolute favorite ships and we're already looking forward to cruising on the Eclipse, Equinox and Solstice in the near future (fingers crossed)

Hi Nick,

We are doing this itinerary in August so will be very interested in your review.

 

Woodards.

Hi Woodards, I am certain that you will really enjoy this itinerary and the ship. Our Cruise Director Maarten will be on this ship till September, so you will have an absolutely brilliant time. I will be covering the ship, shows, etc in detail soon, so stay tuned.

Hi Cathy, the Reflection was just as good as the Silhouette. Celebrity's S class ships are our absolute favorite ships and we're already looking forward to cruising on the Eclipse, Equinox and Solstice in the near future (fingers crossed)

 

 

 

Hi Woodards, I am certain that you will really enjoy this itinerary and the ship. Our Cruise Director Maarten will be on this ship till September, so you will have an absolutely brilliant time. I will be covering the ship, shows, etc in detail soon, so stay tuned.

Did Maarten say that he was definitely leaving in September? We were looking forward to having him on our 12/8/17 cruise.

Did Maarten say that he was definitely leaving in September? We were looking forward to having him on our 12/8/17 cruise.

I'm pretty sure he will be there. He mentioned that his next move would be to the Celebrity Solstice for the Australia/NZ sectors and that only starts in mid-end October 2017. He's an amazing cruise director, one of the most memorable we'd had. And its clear that there are many who feel the same way, I remember him being a Celebrity Life Activities Manager in 2013 and telling DW that he was just as funny as our cruise director on that sailing (Alejandro who is yet our #1 favorite cruise director)

Without actually being in Monaco, I can't think of a better place to watch the race than Rome. Go #5!

Thanks in advance for review.

Without actually being in Monaco, I can't think of a better place to watch the race than Rome. Go #5!

 

 

 

Thanks in advance for review.

Yeah, I'm a huge Formula1 fan, I've attended most of the Asian races multiple times, and my original plan was to fly to Nice & attend the Monaco GP on Sunday and then fly back to Rome on Monday for the cruise. But DW has no interest in F1 & it didn't feel right to drag her to a 'boring' race on our wedding anniversary. So saw the highlights on the tele. [emoji4]

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So, thank you.

I'm Nick and here's our review of our recently concluded (:loudcry:) 11 night Western Mediterranean cruise on the gorgeous Celebrity Reflection. Nick

Looking forward to your review, Nick, as we are completing the same itinerary in July ;).

And we are doing this itinerary starting June 19th.

So, thank you. :)

Interested to read your views on Reflection as we disembarked on May 29th and I've just recently completed my review of what I believe is one of our favourite ships to date.

Enjoying so far & looking forward to the rest! Thanks for sharing :)

Enjoying your review.

Been to places in Rome you were in. But I appreciated them more with the choice photo shots you made, than how we did it. Very nice photos!

After dropping off our new clock back at the hotel, we headed right back out, and headed to Piazza Venezia. We had been here a couple of times before and we always looked at this place as the centre of Rome. It is really spectacular and pictures cannot do justice to how grand this place looks. Thw walk from our hotel to Piazza Venezia was around 1.8 kms and took less than 20 minutes.

From Piazza Venezia we started walking towards Piazza Navona which we hadn't seen on our previous trips to Rome. This was again a short 15 minute walk (1.2 kms). As it turns out, this was one of the best Piazzas in Rome. It was a huge open area with 3 fountains (The Fiumi Fountain, the fountain of Neptune and the Fontana del Moro) and a line of open air restaurants along both sides. The Fiumi fountain was very impressive.

Fontana del Moro was small but quite nice as well. By this time, the sun was at its peak and it was starting to get quite warm, so we decided to try and grab a drink and bite to eat at one of the restuarants here. What an amazing view!

For lunch, we decided to start with some drinks to cool off. DW had her favorite Cosmopolitan and I needed a chilled coke with plenty of ice. In the background you can see the Fontana del Moro.

For lunch, we ate a Quatro Formagi pizza and a 4 cheese Gnocchi. The quantities were HUGE and we felt guilty for wasting half of it. Both dishes were good and we got our legs some well deserved rest. Damages for 2 drinks and 2 dishes was 50 Euros.

We then started to walk to our final destination of the day, the St Angelo's bridge & Castle over the River Tiber. The bridge is lined with amazing statues which leads up to the castle. The walk was a quick 10 mins (1 km) and helped digest our heavy lunch.

After spending some time here, we decided to Uber it back to our hotel, since we needed to conserve some energy, before heading out again at night. Walking back to the hotel would be a 4 km walk (40-45 mins) which we were not in the mood for since it was really getting warm. The Uber ride took 10-15 mins and cost us 15 Euros.

Been to places in Rome you were in. But I appreciated them more with the choice photo shots you made, than how we did it. Very nice photos!

Thank you for your kind words. Rome is really beautiful and just about any picture that one takes comes out really well. :)

Lovely photos of Rome . Husband and I were on the same cruise. We went direct from airport to ship and did not spend any time pre cruise in Rome . Looking forward to seeing your cruise pictures .