I have seen many sculptures and atrium centrepieces on other ships, but these balls were unique.

The first thing that I was greeted with when I entered the ship was a stone ball which was in fact a water-feature.

The on-board currency is Euros.Įmbarkation at Tilbury only took about an hour to get everyone aboard. The average age on my cruise must have been around 65. Internally she looks five-star!Īstor is an adults only vessel and does not have facilities for the disabled. She is a notch above the rest of the CMV fleet in terms of décor. The 2010, 14 million pound refit clearly removed just about everything that looked 30 years old. Her only prominent feature is her oversized three-pipe funnel, however this design should ensure that soot is kept of the sun deck.Īstor’s external appearance is a little uninspiring and it does not prepare you for just how stylish and immaculate her interiors are. The ship has quite a utilitarian profile with a rather bland white superstructure and hull and touch of anchor rust.

Given the fact that she is only around 1,000 gross tons smaller than the Marco Polo, which carries over 800 passengers, she is the more spacious of the three smallest CMV vessels. Columbus is the biggest in the CMV fleet, being 3.5 times bigger than Astor.Īstor’s passenger capacity is only around 600. She can easily dock in relatively small ports.Īstor is a little bigger than the Astoria, very slightly smaller than the Marco Polo, but not as big as Magellan. She is almost identical to the 1981 built Astor, now ‘Saga Pearl II’.Īt just 20,606 gross tonnes, Astor offers an intimate experience, compared to today’s mega-ships. Surprisingly her original name was Astor. Astor was built in 1987, in Kiel, West Germany, as a combined ocean liner/cruise ship for the Southampton-Cape Town route.

Celebration river cruises jumers casino