We embarked Artemis on Monday 1st September, having dropped our car with CPS. Embarkation was painless and quick and we were soon having a well earned lunch at 2.30, having driven for 4 hours.

My first impression of the ship was spacious and airy, nice atrium and for us, she seemed a large ship, as we having only been on much smaller ones before. The first evening we had friends to meet, so went up to Horizons Lounge for drinks and to watch the sailaway down The Solent. It's a lovely bar and will be even better when there is no cigarette smell from the other side!

Our itinerary was Palma, Athens, Istanbul, Sochi, Yalta, Odessa, Constanza, Nessebar, Kusadasi, Santorini, Cadiz. Unfortunately we missed both Sochi and Nessebar due to a big swell preventing the use of tenders. I wasn't too worried about Sochi, but was really looking forward to Nessebar. Constanta should be dropped - a terrible dump, although we enjoyed the archaelogical museum which was well worth it.

The theme of the cruise was Civilisations. There were lectures on the subject nearly every day which my husband enjoyed, but I'm not one for lectures in a dark room when the sun is out, so I joined the Deck Quots competition and sat up on deck most of the time. I enjoyed the Port Lectures though.

We only did one ship's excursion and that was to Yalta and was excellent. In Istanbul we used the services of Viator and there were only 8 of us in an air-conditioned mini-bus with an excellent guide. He was warned by a friend that the Blue Mosque was heaving with cruise ship passengers and so we did Agia Sophia first and then went to the Mosque. One of the advantages of a small group. The tour included lunch at Topkapi Palace, was all day and cost us £31 each instead of £58 if we had done the ship's tour. We were picked up from the port and brought back well in time for departure.

We took the Tourist Bus in Palma which stops right outside the terminal building and you can hop on and off when you please. We did the same in Cadiz. Both were excellent.

In Santorini, we took the cable car to the top and then caught a local bus down to Akrotiri for 1.7 Euros. We then came back and wandered around the town - enjoyed it immensely and now have a hand-painted plate taking pride of place in our collection.

In Odessa, we took the free shuttle bus ashore and wandered around. It's a lovely city.

Athens was so hot, that we walked into Piraeus and I came back after half an hour. I think the temperature was 35 degrees!

We had the cheapest cabin on Artemis. We were on C deck forward starboard. We had our bed in Kingsize and we had plenty of cupboard and drawer space. Our suitcases went under the bed nicely and I found the cabin perfectly fine. Also, it was advertised as Fully Obstructed, but the lifeboat only covered the top half of the window and we could easily see the horizon and forward from the window.

I have given the staff a 4, because although all the staff below the senior ones were terrific, I thought the Cruise Director was awful. He was never seen during the day and only arrived to start and end the shows. Surely a CD is there to wander around and make sure everything is going well. We never saw any of the Assistant CD's either.

The food was pretty good, although there were some nights when I actually didn't fancy anything which is unusual for me. A couple of times were went up to the Conservatory and had the Indian Buffet (excellent) and also the Trattoria.

We had a fantastic time and now looking forward to Artemis again next October for Eastern Med and Egypt.