From Swarovski crystals to spas and gourmet food, cruise ship MSC Seaview offers attractions and fun
ONE minute I’m in a gym where a machine tells me I am overweight, the next in a shop full of melt-in-the-mouth Venchi chocolates and ice cream. It’s clearly karma.
At least that’s what I tell myself as I tuck into the choccie samples. It’s my holiday and the diet can wait.
I’m on the new cruise ship MSC Seaview. It isn’t quite the biggest — that title goes to Royal Caribbean International’s Symphony of the Seas — but it’s not far off.
Stand her on end and she’s the same height as the Eiffel Tower, she has 20 decks and room for 5,331 passengers.
On the outside she’s a curious Miami condo design, but inside she is a shrine to all things sparkling.
Staircases are packed with Swarovski crystals and the atrium’s mirrored surfaces gleam under the lights.
You can also be rubbed down with Tuscany-grown grapes in the spa — with a Cabernet facial at €109 (£97), I’d opt for a bottle of wine instead — and walk over a glass-bottomed walkway 130ft above the ocean.
It’s called the Bridge of Sighs after the one in Venice. That got its name in the 1600s as prisoners had to cross it getting from the courtroom to their cell and were thought to sigh as they got their last glimpse of Venice before being banged up.
Hopefully the only sighs from the folk crossing the bridge on Seaview will be of delight at the view of the wake below.
If you crave the celebrity lifestyle, Seaview’s swanky MSC Yacht Club has your name on it.
This all-suite bolthole comes with butlers, free drinks, its own restaurant, and a private deck and pool where you can sunbathe away from the hoi-polloi.
MSC’s UK boss Antonio Paradiso told me, proudly: “The Yacht Club is our best-kept secret.”
Not any more, it isn’t!