We've been on over twenty five cruises and this one is our third with Thomson. We have been on Celebration (Spirit’s sister ship) and Spirit previously. We chose this cruise because of the itinerary; Thomson cruises tend to have very interesting itineraries due to some of their ships’ relatively small size (in comparison to the huge modern ships we usually sail on), meaning they can call at different ports.

We embarked at Maramis, a pleasant port area, and it is just a short walk into the local town. We had not booked a specific inside cabin (this costs extra) so only found out what it was (cabin 518, deck 3) when we arrived at the port. We had a cabin for four as we were taking our grown up children with us. Cabin 518 is in the absolute middle of the ship and had an abundance of wardrobe and drawer space for the four of us. Our Cabin stewards, Abu and Samir, were very pleasant and were happy to comply with our various requests (including removing the soda cans and snacks from one of the table tops; these are expensive to purchase and take up space). Over the holiday they made us some fab towel animals; my favourite being the huge crocodile which took up the whole length of the bed. Due to Spirit’s small size, we were minutes away from everywhere.

We had our evening meals at the Compass Rose restaurant and so enjoyed the very good service of our waiters on the first night, Adam and Ahmed, that we returned to their tables every evening. The food was usually quite plain and small portions but pleasant enough (lamb was very, very good though). The bread basket on the table had at least five different types of bread on offer, our water was refilled regularly. Read more