REVIEW Spirit 12 Day Grand Mediterranean 5/7-5/19

We just returned from the trip of a lifetime on the Spirit! This will probably take me some time to get the whole review posted since it’s a long cruise and we did a LOT. I will start with my overall impressions by category then do it day by day with the detail for those that don’t want to read a ton. But before that I need to shout out a HUGE thank you to all the members of CC who helped me with my planning! I learned so much and got so many tips and suggestions-it’s crazy. I don’t know how folks cruise without using CC.

Background and who we are:

This cruise has been 5 years in the making! My aunt got married in 2011 and went on the Ruby Princess Grand Mediterranean for her honeymoon. When I heard all those ports (Hers: Barcelona, Nice, Florence, Rome, Naples, Mykonos, Ephesus, Istanbul, Athens, Venice) I knew I wanted to do that cruise for my 50th birthday and our older son’s high school graduation. We even went so far as to sail the Ruby over Thanksgiving in the Caribbean to make certain we liked the ship and Princess (best cruise ever!).

Fast forward and DS graduates high school but plans to start college in the summer (very common here-the kids learn to “go to college” while only taking one or two classes and before Rush and football season starts). That meant by the time he actually graduated there was no time to do a cruise of this length.

Then last winter (2015) it seemed like every day I was getting a brochure in the mail from Viking river cruises with what seemed like great offers and everybody I knew was going on a river cruise! So I started researching. I found one itinerary that was very appealing: Paris-Normandy-Paris so I called Viking to price things out. Once we chose a cabin and date that worked with mine and DH’s schedule that good deal wasn’t quite so good anymore and this was only going to be an 8 day cruise! So I decided to check out my old standby Princess cruise for comparison. Unfortunately, Princess doesn’t sail that itinerary anymore but NCL was pretty darn close! So I priced that out and lo and behold, even with paying our airfare and our excursions it came out less than Viking and was for a longer trip. I successfully made my pitch to DH and we booked this cruise.

This was to be a combination his 60th birthday and our 25th wedding anniversary celebration. And I chose these dates because we’d be on the ship on Mother’s Day and my birthday and we’d be in Turkey before Ramadan and before the Med gets too hot and crowded. The negative was we’d be in Florence on a Monday so no Accademia or Uffizi.

I hurried up (only mistake I made in all the planning and arrangements) and booked airfare through an online consolidator. There was NOTHING from Tampa to Barcelona that didn’t involve ridiculous layovers or prices so I booked it out of Orlando which is only 90 minutes away. I booked the tickets to get in on Friday with embarkation on Saturday. Of course, then everybody I spoke to said “Barcelona is so wonderful!! You should definitely plan on a couple of days there plus you’ll get over your jet lag before the cruise!!” Unfortunately, those nicely priced plane tickets were nonrefundable and non-changeable. Grrrr. Then about two months later, Lufthansa opened up flights from Tampa to Frankfurt. Sigh. I tried every which way from Sunday to change those tickets without losing our money but no joy. Turned out to be a blessing though! We started talking about the cruise a lot to our two boys (both now in college) and they said they really wished they could go with us. Hmmmm. Turns out DS21 finished exams the week before we were to fly out and had the time off and DS19 had his last exam the Thursday we left and neither one are taking summer classes. We were able to get an inside cabin for them just a few cabins away from our balcony and we were able to get them seats on that same stupid flight!

So the passengers for this trip were DH (60), DS21, DS19 and me (53). We live in Florida, have cruised many times before but this was our boys first time anywhere in Europe and everybody’s first time in the Med.

Cabins:

My aunt mentioned how wonderful it was sailing up the Grand Canal in Venice and based on all the reviews on CC I knew we needed a starboard cabin. I need a balcony. I get a little claustrophobic if I can’t get fresh air. We booked cabin 10020. It’s a balcony, starboard, forward. We originally booked with OBC as our promo but as sailing got closer we were able to get price drops and change our promo to UBP and SDP. We did have to pay gratuities on those items but still ended up paying less in total than we initially booked so were happy. We booked the boys in 10011 and they were able to get the SDP. We transferred our reservation to a TA and also got some OBC from her and she did all the sitting on hold with NCL getting our price drops for us! NCL tried to give us “upgrades” in cabins but the locations they wanted to “upgrade” us to weren’t as favorable. This ended up being a great location. Easy access to forward staircase-two floors up for the gym, buffet, and Galaxy of the Stars. Three floors down for the Promenade, Blue Lagoon, Shanghai Bar and Henry’s Pub. The ship is small enough you didn’t feel like you were hiking a zillion miles to get to the buffet or anywhere really. We had a very smooth sailing and rarely felt much motion in our forward cabin.

Ports:

Our itinerary when we booked was very close to that Princess cruise. Barcelona, Toulon (Provence), Florence, Rome, Naples, Mykonos, Ephesus, Istanbul, Athens and Venice. Then ISIS struck and all Turkey ports were dropped. Really, really made me mad as those two ports were part of what appealed to us. Those two ports were replaced with Kotor and Dubrovnik. Not awful but I gave up the David to be in those two ports when it wasn’t Ramadan and now I’m not getting those two ports OR the David. Grrrr. However, I don’t think the boys would have been able to go with us if we were sailing later so again, it worked out for the best.

Our Roll Call was the most active I’ve ever been on and we had over 90 people signed up for the informal M&G we were doing on embarkation day and the official M&G with NCL. With that many people we were able to fill several private tours for each port! I added up how much we were paying for our private tours (where we got to do everything we wanted to do with the time allotted) vs the canned ships tours and it was more than HALF as much!

Ship:

When we booked this cruise we had never sailed NCL and had a low opinion of it based on what I heard from other people. We just planned to use the ship as our floating hotel with some edible food thrown in. We ended up doing a Getaway cruise back in August and liked it so most of my trepidation about the Spirit was gone by the time we boarded.

I liked the ship though. Yes, it’s an older ship with none of the bells and whistles of the newer ones. We all decided that the Spirit was great for such a port intensive itinerary but we would have lost our minds with boredom if we had been on the transatlantic! The ship is in good condition though. The Asian décor is fairly heavy handed and looks a little out of place in some of the spots around the ship. I loved the true Promenade though. I loved that the Casino was in the front of the ship and you didn’t have to walk through it to get everywhere else. I thought the gym was O.K. Lots of cardio machines that looked out over the water but the weights were very limited and cramped. Every time I went to the gym (and I admittedly only went on the sea days) it wasn’t overly crowded but it was hard to lift weights and there was always a “seminar” of some sort going on in the group exercise room so you couldn’t even use that space for stretching or abs. I really liked the Garden Dining room. Loved Galaxy of the Stars-really nice place to sit and watch any sail outs when there was bad weather or it was cold. HATED the bathrooms!! They seriously need to be re-done. The inside cabin had a bigger shower than our balcony cabin too! The hair dryer will dry your hair but forget about trying to style it! We had plenty of storage for 2 in our balcony cabin but can’t begin to imagine how you’d fit 3 people in it. As mentioned previously on CC the TV works but had limited channel options. We did use it to keep up with some of the World News and watched Spectre in German one night! I also did not find our bed to be comfortable. The first night it was like sleeping on a granite countertop. So I asked at Guest Services for a mattress topper and that helped but I never did sleep well.

Overall:

This was hands down the best family trip we’ve ever taken! It’s an exhausting itinerary but we saw so much. As a parent when your kids thank you for taking them somewhere, you know it was good! Looking at my children’s faces and watching their mouths drop open in awe was a wonderful feeling.

Now on to the Day by Day stuff.

Day 1/Day 2 May 5 leaving Tampa, May 6 arriving Barcelona.

Our flight from Orlando was at 8:05 Thursday evening. DS19 finished his exam, came home, we finished packing up everything and loaded up the car. We left early since I-4 can be a nightmare and I knew I’d be stressed until I was actually in the airport. We got there early and hung out in the airport lounge until it was time to head to the gate. That was a lovely place and nice spot to start our trip!

Luckily somebody on CC mentioned in some post that Lufthansa had a very restrictive carry-on policy. You’re limited to one small bag that has to weigh less than 17 lbs.! Thank goodness I saw that or we’d have shown up in Orlando with 4 roll aboard carry ons and had a HUGE excess baggage fee. This meant tight packing (which we do NOT excel at). I’d paid extra for us to have extended leg room seats at the bulkhead. I usually hate bulkheads because I don’t like having my purse in the overhead and I like having that seat back pouch to put my water bottle and my iPad in. But we are tall people with long legs so the leg room was necessary on a 9 hour flight.

Turns out it wasn’t a true bulkhead after all. We were in the first row of seats in economy right behind premium economy and they had “screens” over the seat backs to keep the premium folks shielded from us peasants. This meant we had seatback pouches and under seat storage! Whoo-hoo!! I kept saying to DH “this can’t be right, we have TOO much room”! Lufthansa also gives free alcohol! And movies! And hot food! While I didn’t truly sleep it wasn’t a bad experience. We got to Frankfurt and had to schlep to another gate area for our flight to Barcelona. No customs, just a brief passport check and on we went. Unfortunately the lounges were either in another terminal or were outside the secure area so we had to hang out in the gate area. Our flight to Barcelona was called and we arrived as scheduled. We gathered our checked bags and grabbed a taxi to our hotel. It was a flat fee to our hotel (I want to say around 30 euros). Traffic was a nightmare and it took about 45 minutes to get to our hotel.

I used Marriott Rewards Points (thanks CC members for the idea!) and booked two rooms at the Cotton House Hotel near Playa Cataluña and the top of Las Ramblas.

The Hotel was BEAUTIFUL! So charming! Strange bathroom layout but lovely room and public areas, comfy beds and great service. We dropped our bags and headed out to dinner. It was around 6:30 on a Friday night so we figured we’d be seated fairly quickly but we were wrong. We went to Cuidad Condal on the advice of a CC’er and our cabbie. It was about 5 short blocks from our hotel so an easy walk. The wait for a table was close to 30 minutes and we stood in a line and as tables became available they seated folks. No wait list with beepers or anything. We were not in Kansas anymore! The restaurant is a tapas style place and the food was delicious. We each chose one thing that sounded awesome and shared then ordered a few more items along with a pitcher of red Sangria. So. Darn. Good!

After dinner, DH and DS19 were really tired so they walked back to the hotel while DS21 and I strolled Las Ramblas for a while. I never felt unsafe. I had a travelon purse/bag and clutched that thing expecting roving bands of pick pockets but never saw anything. In fact, I dropped a 5 Euro note that I had in my pocket when I went to take a picture and somebody picked it up and handed it to me! We strolled for a while and found the whole scene really charming. Then DS21 noticed a side street that looked like Diagon Alley so we had to go exploring and came upon a Jamoneria.

He was in hog heaven (pun intended!). He’s at that growing college boy phase where there isn’t enough food on the planet so he needed a snack. We bought a sandwich and he ate that as we walked back to our hotel.

Day 3-May 7 Embarkation Day

Our hotel had free breakfast for us. We could have paid 5 euros and gotten a hot American style breakfast but we had limited time since we had a tour scheduled with Barcelona Day Tours so ate their Continental breakfast. It was quite good. Lots of different Iberian ham selections, cheeses, granola and yogurt and super yummy coffee.

I was glad I had brought my own Splenda with me though. We ate up, packed up our bags and checked out of the hotel.

I had arranged the tour with Barcelona Day Tours for 6 people with a guide and specifically requested going inside Sagrada Familia. They let me know ahead of time that this would limit what all we could see in the city but I just couldn’t imagine not going inside the church! Through our roll call we had another couple join us for this tour. They did the transatlantic so BDT picked them up at the port then came and picked us up from our hotel. It was a rainy gloomy day but we didn’t let that deter us. We hopped in their very nice van and off we went. The 4 hour tour ended up being a Gaudi tour with visits to Sagrada Familia, Parc Guell and Casa Mila. We drove around a little bit more than that but between the weather and the traffic didn’t get a chance to see much else. Guess that means we will have to go back!

The guide Xavier was great and really told us a lot about Gaudi, the city, and a history of Barcelona. I would love to visit the Parc when it’s not raining because it was something to behold in the rain and our views were really limited. The church is one of those mouth dropping things to see. I highly, highly, highly recommend getting tickets ahead of time (which BDT did for us) and going inside. WOW. Our pictures can’t do it justice!

Too soon our time was up and the driver took us to the port for embarkation! They dropped us off at 1:00 and since we had done that Getaway cruise we were able to go to the short Latitudes check in line. Even the other line was moving quickly though. We had a brand new person (seriously-2nd day on the job) checking us in but it still went fairly quick. We handed over our passports and credit card, got our room keys and on we went. Our rooms were ready so we went straight to our cabins to check them out and drop our carry-ons and then to the buffet for lunch.

The MDR might have been open but my men folk aren’t keen on waiting for breakfast or lunch so we ate in the buffet for the majority of those meals. The food was tasty. I made the mistake though of thinking both sides of the buffet were the same and they aren’t so DH didn’t get a burger or pizza until the next day lol.

We had the UBP so it was time to start trying all the drinks that I had been reading about. First one was a Mango Meltdown. Yum! I imagine this would be wonderful in the Caribbean on a hot day around the pool.

DH went back to the cabin to rest while I explored the ship. I went back to the cabin to get him for the muster drill at 5:00 and Yay! The luggage was there!

For the Muster drill we had to go to the Promenade deck and stand outside while they did the drill. No need for life jackets but I was kind of hoping we’d be inside sitting somewhere. After muster, DS21 and I headed up to the Raffle Terrace for the informal CC meet and greet. We’d arranged to get together and give all the tour organizers the money for the tours we were doing so they could put the envelopes together ahead of time. I was the organizer for most of our tours and wasn’t thrilled with having all that money on me but it really ended up being no big deal. I went back to the cabin afterwards and divvied the money up into an envelope for each port and made a note on the outside of what port it was, who was with us and what time we were meeting then just stuck them all in the safe. For each port I’d just pull out the appropriate envelope and put it in the locked compartment of my Travelon purse.

The bar on the terrace was busy but I didn’t have to wait long for a drink. I switched from the Mango Meltdown to the Rebellious Fish and my heart sang. I had found my drink for the week! It was really nice meeting everybody and putting faces to names I’d been “talking to” for close to a year. We stayed out there for about an hour then headed back to our cabins to get ready for dinner.

This is where I love NCL. I’d been touring all day, drinking and I was able to do a quick clean up and go to dinner in very casual clothes and have a lovely sit down meal in a beautiful restaurant. I LOVE the freestyle casual concept!

We ate in the Garden Dining Room that night. Our waiter was fine but nothing special. Other nights we had some truly excellent service and specifically requested those servers. We never had a wait for a table either and usually ate between 6:30-7:00. Food was quite good. Can’t remember exactly what we had each night (I do have some food porn) but I certainly never went hungry on this cruise! Most of it was good. Some of it was lick your plate good. A few items were pretty bad and a few items were kinda ho-hum. My jeans can attest to the fact that I never felt deprived.

We ate in the Garden Dining Room that night. Our waiter was fine but nothing special. Other nights we had some truly excellent service and specifically requested those servers. We never had a wait for a table either and usually ate between 6:30-7:00. Food was quite good. Can’t remember exactly what we had each night (I do have some food porn) but I certainly never went hungry on this cruise! Most of it was good. Some of it was lick your plate good. A few items were pretty bad and a few items were kinda ho-hum. My jeans can attest to the fact that I never felt deprived.

New York Strip loin Roast

Pappardelle with duck confit

crab cakes

lasagna

After dinner we just went back to the cabin to go to bed! We were still really tired from the flight and the day’s tour and knew we had 4 really big days of touring coming up. We had told the boys to not stay up late since we had an early tour scheduled and we needed breakfast beforehand. So they went off to their room and we went into our room.

We went to bed and about 2 hours later there’s knocking on our door. Of course as parents of college kids we immediately thought the worst! DH went to the door and opened it and it was DS21. He came in and goes “Aren’t you guys up?!?!” And we answered “uh, no, it’s 1:30 a.m.!” He had forgotten to change the time zone on his phone (and they were all disconnected from data and we didn’t have wifi) and thought it was morning! They had both showered and were ready to go tour!! Yeah, we had a little chuckle about that one.

Day 4-May 8 Toulon

Our ship docked in Toulon right on schedule. This was the one port I was not in charge of our tour. We had made arrangements to meet in Henry’s Pub 15 minutes before the tour pickup. (This was the plan for each day) But the ship was running late in docking and getting cleared. This was a repeated problem. We had several days where we wasted time waiting for the ship to clear and our drivers/guides were outside getting antsy as time ticked away! Every day we got up around 6:30-7:00, showered, called the boys to make certain they were up then headed to the buffet for breakfast. The buffet food was decent. It's buffet food. I had eggs cooked to order every morning, bacon, bangers and either a pastry or toast with peanut butter. The guys mixed things up.

Finally we were cleared and we headed outside to meet our driver Veronique who drove us to Aix en Provence and later to Cassis. Aix was a charming town and it took about 70 minutes to drive there through the French countryside. I would imagine it to be stunning when the lavender is in bloom but we were too early for that. It was still pretty though. The driver told us about the area on the way and set a meeting time and place and we were off. We didn’t want to spend any of our limited port time having a leisurely sit down lunch so we did some shopping (some necessities that had been forgotten and some souvenirs) and wandered around and took pictures. We grabbed some takeout sandwiches from a sandwich shop and went back to the central square to people watch while we ate. We all had an enjoyable time trying out the public pay toilets too! I looked like an extra in candid camera. DH finally had to give up since it took a good 5 minutes between users for the toilets to do their whole sanitation thing and we had to leave!

It took us about an hour to drive to Cassis. Before going into the town Veronique took us to an overlook that offered spectacular views. We didn’t have time to ride the boat over to the calanques (and it was too cold and windy to do so anyway) but we were able to kind of see them from up top. We then went into town where we were dropped off to wander around again and get some gelato. We ate that then wandered over to the beach. A little too cold for my Florida blood but still pretty. Veronique showed up on schedule and got us back to the ship well before all aboard time.

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We had the 5 night SDP and dinner that night was booked for Cagney’s. I swear I thought I’d booked Le Bistro for our France night but I nope, I had a blonde moment. We had reservations at 7:00 so plenty of time to have a cocktail and shower before dinner. We were seated right away and had great service. DS19 and I both ordered the 8 oz. filets. DH ordered the 16 oz. ribeye and DS21 ordered the 32 oz. porterhouse. We ate our appetizers-decent but nothing OMG worthy and then our steaks came.

My baked potato was like a hockey puck. I really don’t think NCL does a great job with potatoes. I tried many different ones during the cruise and most of them weren’t calorie worthy. The filets and the ribeye were perfectly cooked and tender. A little under seasoned but that’s where those yummy caramelized onions come in. Unfortunately, the 32 oz. porterhouse was seriously over cooked. He had ordered it med rare and it came out closer to med well. It wasn’t good at all. When he told the waiter they offered to make him another steak (as they should). When that steak came out it was way under done. Almost purple in some spots it was so rare and again, inedible. But by that time it was getting late and the rest of us were completely finished with our meals so he didn’t send it back again. It was almost painful to see these really nice expensive cuts of meat go to waste! We didn’t get dessert because it was a little uncomfortable. DS21 started his nightly tradition of going to Blue Lagoon and getting wings and fries as a bedtime snack. I may have had a wing. Or two. Then it was off to bed.

We had yet to see our room steward (he was like a ninja!) but we had our first towel animal that night. Unfortunately, the picture is on a memory chip I can't get to upload right now! It was a cute frog though.

Our boys had a different steward (poor guy- 2 college kids in a cabin by themselves?! Gross!) and they got a really cute little chick. DS21 liked it so much he hid it in his safe so he could keep it.

Day 5: Florence

I must admit, this was the port I was most looking forward to! We had a little mix-up about the meeting place but eventually we all met our guide on the dock at 8:30. I had booked tours with RomeinLimo for Florence, Rome and Naples. Each tour was 600 euros for a party of 8 for a driver. Any time we needed a guide it was extra. For Florence we had booked the Florence/Pisa with climb the tower tour so no guide was needed. I had also told RIL that we didn’t want any leisurely sit down lunches. Our time was so limited that I was more than happy to grab a sandwich or slice of pizza in each port.

Our driver Simona took us to her nice van (with wifi!!) and we all loaded up and were on our way to Florence. Jany in the RIL office had told us to get our Pisa tickets for the afternoon and it was good that I mentioned to Simona what time our climb was since she had planned to go there first thing. I also let her know about the lunch thing.

TIP: Tell your guides important things like this!!

The drive through the Tuscan countryside was beautiful and she gave us a lot of information about what we were seeing, what was growing, etc. We made a pit stop at a gas station to use the rest rooms and get some tasty cappuccino and pastries. Our first stop was the Piazza de Michelangelo overlooking Florence. Wow. It was a scene I had seen a zillion times in books but nothing compares to seeing it in person. Simona gave us 15 minutes to walk around and take pictures of Florence and the “Green David”

We loaded back in the van and drove down into town. Simona did the first of many “parking” stops where she’d park the car (illegally!) and get out and walk with us to see something of interest. She acted a little more like a guide than just a driver and it was nice. We drove around the old part of Florence for a while with these hop out/hop in picture taking stops. Finally she stopped a couple of blocks away from the Duomo and gave us 90 minutes to stroll around and see things. She walked with us a while to direct us to the Ponte Vecchio and told us how to get back to the Duomo from there.

Our group hung together for a while but eventually all split up. We walked over the Ponte Vecchio and looked at the really expensive jewelry then started back towards the main thing I’d come to see! On our way, we ran into Simona and she directed us to an old church where you could climb to the top and get great views over the rooftops and see the Dome. After that we walked to the Duomo.

Words fail me. Pictures do not do this building justice. The marble cladding is absolutely stunning in person! We didn’t have a ton of time so we ran to the line which was pretty short and just strolled right in. We walked around and looked at things and took pictures of the frescoes in the dome but we didn’t have the time to climb to the top. We left the church and went across the piazza to check out the bronze doors on the Baptistry. There was quite a crowd so getting up close was a bit of a challenge. Then it was time to meet the group.

Once everybody was back in the van we drove to a market where the locals shop for their food stuffs and we all planned to do some quick retail therapy. We all made use of the rest rooms (you had to pay to use them) then had sandwiches made at one of the stalls in the market. Outside the food market was a street filled with vendors selling leather goods. Two purses, a backpack and a leather jacket later it was time to meet up with the van for the drive to Pisa!

Pisa was a quick ride and Simona did another of her quick parking jobs. She escorted us to the head of the line, had a rapid conversation with the ticket taker and we took our places in line. It was about a 10 minute wait for our turn to climb the tower. You first get an introductory speech while waiting for the previous group to come down the stairs then it’s time to climb.

It was quite an experience! The tilt is very noticeable. It wasn’t too strenuous and there were window holes where you could step off the staircase to catch your breath and take in the views. But boy the view from the top is worth it! We spent a little bit of time on the very tip top taking pictures and then it was time to descend. We wanted a little bit of time to check out the Basilica which is included with your tower tour. I’m sorry to say we did NOT take the obligatory hold up the tower photo. I wanted to but got voted down. The Basilica was absolutely lovely (of course, I don’t think I saw one ugly church the whole trip!) but then we had to meet the van for gelato and the drive back to the ship. There was a little tourist shop right outside the gates to the tower so we killed some time buying some tchotchkes.

Simona drove us to another spot in Pisa to her favorite gelato spot. I tried the pistachio but while it was good, the boys had better flavors. We finished our treats and piled back into the van for the drive back to the port.

Once on the ship we grabbed a cocktail and just chilled for a bit before dinner. That night we ate in the Garden Dining Room. I can’t remember what all we ate and when but here’s a list of some of what we had during the week:

Starters:

Crab cakes

Escargot in puff pastry

French onion soup-a lot!

Mediterranean orzo (I could have licked my plate)

Potato leek soup

Entrees:

New York strip loin (a couple of times-delicious!)

Veal Cordon Bleu (meh)

Chicken Cordon Bleu (good)

Baked Ziti (good-but very different than mine!)

Turkey scaloppini with gnocchi (delicious!)

Linguine with clam sauce (very good)

Sirloin steak with chimichurri sauce

Chateaubriand

Desserts:

Warm chocolate volcano (the best!)

Bread pudding (it was more of a quiche texture than a bread pudding and really needed some crème anglais)

Sachar torte (meh)

Hazelnut Cream Puff (bland)

A weird lemon custard/flan type thing. BEWARE!!! Tasted like air freshener!

DS19 is not a very adventurous eater and doesn't like seafood of any type. He ate a lot off the "staples" menu. Steak frites a couple of times, the spaghetti etc. I'd convince him to try different things throughout the trip but it wasn't always successful!

Most evenings we went to dinner between 6:30-7:00. We also mostly ate in the Garden Dining room. I loved being casual! Dinner would usually take around an hour to an hour and a half and by then we’d be pooped. (I’m quite sure the cocktails before dinner and the wine at dinner had nothing to do with this!) So we’d head back to the cabin to get ready for the next day and read for a bit. The boys had movies on their laptops so watched movies in their cabin.

We pretty much got towel animals every night. Between 2 phones and 2 cameras I don't remember what we got each night so here are some pics of some of them:

Still not sure what that one was-dinosaur maybe?

Day 6: Rome

Our RomeinLimo tour today was Rome highlights with inside the Coliseum and inside the Vatican with guide. We met our driver Nick on the pier and got in his really nice, large Mercedes van. DS21 was so impressed he could actually stand up in the van and he’s 6’3”! Nick wouldn’t turn the wifi on until we were on the highway because he wanted us listening to him lol. We drove through Civitavecchia and he gave us a history lesson on the roads in Italy-they all lead to Rome! It was about a 90 minute ride and we spent the time looking out the window or catching up with the world (and email) but soon we approached the outskirts of Rome and he turned the wifi off again.

This was a crazy, fast day driving from place to place. It felt like a scene out of Vacation! We went to the Pantheon; the Trevi Fountain; The Coliseum (and went inside); drove around the Forum and the Wedding Cake; went up to the top of a hill for a nice overlook; saw aqueducts; grabbed a slice of pizza before heading to St. Peter’s to meet our guide. Traffic was horrendous and Nick did a great job of getting us around. At one point, he even got out of the van and physically moved a scooter that was blocking the turn he wanted to make!

We all visited a souvenir shop around the corner from St. Peter’s to buy some tchotchkes and use the rest room then off we went. Our guides name was Laura and "Andiamo" was the word of the day! She gathered our tickets and took our boys with their student id’s to the ticket window and got us inside. We spent a lot of time on the sculptures until I asked if we were going to see the Raphael rooms. She didn't think we wanted to do that since it would be cramming a lot in in a short time but I said yes and off we went! We raced through the tapestry and map rooms to the Raphael rooms before heading to the Sistine Chapel with what seemed like 500 of our newest friends. Laura had sat us down before going in and gone over a picture of the ceiling and pointed out what to look for and where it would be located since she couldn’t really speak inside. "Silenzio!!" was heard a lot too! We only spent a little while in the chapel until it was time to go to the Basilica.

We went in a side door and immediately in front of us was the Pieta. I admit it, I cried.

I was just overwhelmed by the whole place. Laura talked about some of the things in the Basilica but I don’t really know that I heard her. I just soaked up the whole place.

We left out the main doors and Laura returned us to Nick for more gelato. (Are you sensing a theme here). We had our gelato and then drove back to the port.

I was pretty tired when we got back to the ship so decided to go get a cocktail and sit in the hot tub. I went to the rear hot tub near the kiddy pool but there weren’t any kids around so it was a nice lovely view. I hung out there for a bit before heading back to the cabin to shower and get ready for dinner. Dinner was a repeat of the previous night.

Day 7: Naples

If Florence was the port I was most looking forward to, Naples was the ONLY port DH was excited about. It has a volcano. And rocks. He LOVES volcanoes. And rocks. So I told him he could pick what we did. I looked at what RIL had to offer and he chose to do the Vesuvius/Sorrento/Herculaneum tour.

Our guide Diego picked us up in the morning and the weather was awful! Rainy and just depressing. Diego said he wasn’t sure if we’d be able to hike Vesuvius because they often closed it when they were having bad weather but we’d go straight there and see if it was open.

The drive up was really cool-lots of interesting rock sculptures along the way and the views would have been spectacular with better weather.

Lucky us-- it was! We drove all the way up to the parking area before the walking path (this is important); we hopped out of the car, grabbed our rain gear and started hiking up the volcano. Of course this was after the obligatory potty break. This was the worst-we had to pay for a porta potty!! A girls gotta do what a girls gotta do though.

The hike up wasn’t bad-very, very windy and pretty darn chilly but the rain had stopped and even with the clouds the views were incredible!

We all made it up to the top

(where of course there was a gift shop and of course DS was in there!) and they were selling limoncello and selling shots to try. Holy cow, I could feel that in my toes! We slowly walked back to the parking lot. Diego had given us 90 minutes to do the hike and take our pictures and we were ready to move on to the next thing. DH took his time and got back with seconds to spare but he was a happy man.

Remember when I said we got to park in the parking lot? Well, between the time we got there and the time we wanted to leave the parking lot was PACKED! You couldn’t have squeezed another car in there. So we started wending our way through all the buses and cars and hordes of students and tourists walking up the road to find a bus had not made one of the hairpin turns and gone off into the ditch and was kind of blocking the road.

These RIL drivers don’t let things like that stand in their way though! Diego got out and started directing buses to move a little here, move a little there (forget the police trying to do the same thing!) and pretty soon he’d managed to create an itty bitty gap that he could squeeze his van through! We started on our way back down the mountain and there were buses and cars all along the road with people hiking a long way just to get to the parking lot!

Tip—go here first thing in the morning!

We were on our way to Sorrento! It was a beautiful drive so we weren’t TOO upset that the wifi didn’t work in Diego’s van. Sorrento was beautiful. Diego dropped us off in the town square and gave us about an hour to grab some lunch, wander around and take pictures. We found a restaurant and initially we were going to grab a pizza to go but then decided to sit down and eat it. Something got lost in the translation though and we ended up not being able to stay there to eat it so we walked over to some benches with our full pizza and ate outside. I got some gelato (there’s a reason my shorts don’t fit right now!) and we did some souvenir shopping before meeting up with the others for the drive back to Herculaneum.

DH had decided he’d heard so much about Pompeii he wanted to go to Herculaneum even though it’s so much smaller.

I was fascinated by the fact there are people living over the unexcavated parts!!

The frescoes were incredible. Turns out DS19 is NOT a fan of ruins like thi and it's a good thing we had a short time here. This was not his favorite day at all. While the rest of us were fascinated by the excavation site and the explanations from the guide I kept getting the teenager heavy sigh. I believe he later called it “the stupid dirt city”! After about 90 minutes though it was time to say goodbye to our guide Libby and get back to the ship.

The previous night in the Dailies there was a flyer for the laundry special. $19.95 for all you could stuff in the bag. It needed to be on your bed before noon the next day. Well I had read so many reviews where I KNEW the laundry special was on the sea day and why give us something like that when so many folks would be getting back to their cabins late and we had an early port day?! So we didn’t do anything with it. Mistake. I mentioned something about the laundry special to the other folks on our tour and was corrected that the laundry had to be out that morning before we left. ARGH! We had based all of our packing on the premise that we’d get that laundry special on the sea day. As soon as we got back on the ship I called Guest Services and spoke with Katya. I complained about the timing of the special and the notification and she told us if we had it out before turn down service she’d give us the promo price. So dinner was a bit delayed that evening as we got our laundry ready and made certain the boys had their laundry good to go. We got the special price so it all worked out well and the clothes came back just fine. It took until Saturday night to get everything back so 3 full days-plan accordingly. We didn’t have enough socks.

Dinner was the same as previous nights. Even though we didn’t have to be up early the next morning DH and I were pretty worn out so headed back to the cabin. The boys on the other hand had found some other college kids and made big plans for the evening.

Day 8: Sea Day

At last! We can sleep! The official Meet and Greet was set for 10:00 a.m. this day so we rolled out of bed around 9, went and had a nice leisurely breakfast and I went to the M&G and DH went back to the cabin to try and straighten it up. We’d been doing some major shopping and things were getting a bit out of hand. The M&G was modestly attended. We had around 90 people signed up for it but probably only around 40 showed up. So a good number but not as many as had committed. NCL did a nice job. They originally had us in Henry’s Pub but moved us up to Shogun when they saw how many we were supposed to have. It was still pretty crowded in there. They had muffins, coffee and water and all the officers came. After the M&G I finally made my way to the gym.

The gym is on Deck 12 and is decent. The cardio machines all look over the water (the side vs the front) but the weight machines are crammed in pretty snugly and there’s a really small set of free weights. What’s worse is there was no floor space! There’s a classroom but every time I was in the gym it was being used for a seminar so you couldn’t find any place to stretch or really use those free weights. The gym also has floor to ceiling windows looking over the pool. Odd. But you can use the locker rooms, sauna and steam rooms for free! Nice!

There was a BBQ on the pool deck but DH had a real hankering for fish and chips so off to Blue Lagoon we went. While we were there we noticed that the ship wasn’t moving. And folks were talking about “the boat”. Came to find out there was a fishing boat full of Libyan refugees foundering in the Med and when the distress call went out we were one of the closest ships and had to go see if we could give aid. This became an all-day affair. The Captain and crew did a pretty good job of keeping us informed that we were at the mercy of the Coast Guard and until they released us we couldn’t move along. The close to 300 people on the boat (I can’t remember the exact number but it was something like 282) had been drifting for 15 days and several of the passengers were in desperate need of medical care. Including 2 pregnant women one of whom was 36 weeks pregnant. The coast guard boat ultimately brought the woman to our ship where she ended up giving birth. We then had to have her and the baby evacuated by helicopter along with our ship’s doctor back to Italy. This meant we had to sail back towards Sicily and wait for the doctor and there was no way we would make Mykonos the next day. I think most people understood but there were certainly quite a few who were very upset about the whole thing. As the Captain said though-we saved a couple of lives that day.

This is all I have time for right now. I will be back later to finish the second half of the cruise! Any questions I'm happy to answer.

Enjoying your review -- very informative!

Loving your review[emoji844] I'll be in this same trip in September. Thank you for taking the time to write this. [emoji4]

Enjoying your review. Looking forward to the rest.

Thanks for the review.

Great review so far. Looks like you had a fabulous time!

Looking forward to reading more!

An amazing review.

Look forward to reading more.

Keith

(Sea Day continued)

So we were supposed to have dinner at Le Bistro that night. Remember the boys making some new friends? Yeah. They didn’t get up until around 1:30 and promptly ate about 3 dozen wings. They weren’t in any shape to have a nice dinner in just a few hours so we rescheduled it for Athens day. We didn’t have any issues moving our reservation but apparently the ship was only half full so that may have played a role. We did our usual dinner in the Garden Dining Room then back to the room.

Day 9: Sea Day again

I honestly do not remember what we did this day! I know since I had lifted weights the previous day I didn’t go to the gym so I think this was the day I walked the Promenade deck for a couple of miles. It’s lovely. Everybody has to go one way, you can’t jog but you can walk briskly and it’s shaded. I also know I went and hung out on the very back deck by the kiddie pool and lay in the sun. Pretty sure I had a little nap out there courtesy of the 2 Rebellious Fish I had! Whatever, it was a very relaxing, low key day with lots of reading and resting.

That night we went to Teppanyaki for dinner. We were able to reserve this ahead of time which was good. The Spirit only has 1 table for 10 and does 3 seatings a night. We chose the middle seating at 8:00 p.m. We arrived at the restaurant a little early and we were asked to wait while they readied the table for us but it was only a few minutes until we were seated. They had changed the signature drink of the Japanese Martini from our time on the Getaway but replaced it with something else whose name escapes me. Probably because I had 3 of them! I know it wasn’t the wasabi one though. Yum!

The table was full with the 4 of us, three couples and a 6 month old baby. Yikes. In all fairness, the baby was really well behaved (we were concerned!) but the mom didn’t get to eat much. The chef was kind of lackluster though in his performance. I don’t know if he tempered everything because of the baby or if she made him homesick or if he just was over the whole thing but he kind of mailed it in. The food was good though. DS21 and I both ordered the lobster/scallops/calamari and asked for some shrimp and were obliged. DH ordered the steak and lobster and DS19 got the steak. All so good and so much food! I’d had the green tea cake on the Getaway and while I know lots of people rave about I wasn’t a fan so we all ordered the fruit sashimi. It was beautiful and so good! DS19 said we should always eat our fruit like that from now on lol!

We finished dinner close to 10:00 (which is close to my bedtime!) and we had an early port day the next day so it was back to the cabin we went. The boys were going to hang out with their new friends but we warned them about the early start so I think they behaved themselves!

Thanks for the nice comments! I learned so much from cruise critic and from reading other peoples reviews I had to pay it forward. Plus it was such a whirlwind trip it helps me to remember some of the things that flew by.

Day 10: Athens

We booked the Full Day Athens excursion with PKTravel. They were great to work with! I had even emailed Patoula from the ship when we had heard about potential strikes. He responded immediately that there were no planned strikes for the day we were going to be there so not to worry. Unlike our RIL tours where we had 8 people, PKTravel gave us a price of $480 for up to 12. This included the guide for the Acropolis! We had to purchase our entrance tickets to the Acropolis and the Acropolis museum but it was still quite the bargain.

Our driver Tolis picked us up at 8:30 and off we went. Tolis was funny and really nice and took us straight to the Acropolis where we met our guide Georgia. I can’t say we beat all the crowds but compared to the lines when we left it was pretty close! We all took advantage of the bathrooms and Georgia took us to an out of the way spot, sat us down and explained everything we were going to see. She took us up the steps to the Propylea and walked us up to the top. The Parthenon is undergoing restoration so the cranes and scaffolding kind of impacted the magic of what we were seeing but when you looked around it was still pretty incredible.

If you walked around to the back side the scaffolding wasn't apparent and that's where lots of people were taking pictures.

We had about 45 minutes up top before we were supposed to meet our guide and return to the bus so we wandered around and took some photos. It was a little disconcerting to see garbage lying around and DH picked up a rock to look at it and got whistled at by one of the “guards”. There were some other folks from our roll call who had a mini Travelocity traveling gnome with them and they were taking pictures of the gnome in front of all these famous things they were seeing. They got whistled that “toys are disrespectful!” Really? What about the trash?!

Tolis then drove us to the Temple of Zeus and the Panathenaic Stadium,

past the Catholic Cathedral and the neo-classical trilogy before taking us to see the Changing of the Guard. Monty Python’s Ministry of Silly Walks came immediately to mind but then the seriousness of where we were with the tomb of the Unknown Soldier sobered us up.

After the changing of the guard Tolis drove us to the Plaka where were going to have time on our own for about 2 hours. We grabbed a restaurant right there that had a good looking menu and free wifi. EVERYBODY immediately whipped out their phones because we’d been without wifi for 3 days now! The food was good too and really inexpensive. DS21 tried ouzo. He was braver than I was!

After lunch we went shopping. I guess I had a different idea of what the Plaka was. I envisioned something along the lines of the Grand Bazaar on a small scale and it wasn’t anything like that. It was restaurants and lots of cheesy souvenir shops. While walking along the main road we noticed we were right next to the Agora and DS21 really really wanted to go inside and see the Temple of Hephaestus. So we split up from DH and DS19 and the two of us went into the Agora. Wow. After the chaos of the Acropolis the Agora was an oasis of calm with some really spectacular statues and buildings. The Temple is fairly intact and gives you a really good idea of what the Parthenon looked like. I really wish we had had more time there! We didn’t even have time to check out the museum. (sadly all my pictures of the temple are on the memory chip I'm having issues uploading!)

We met back up with the bus and headed to the New Acropolis Museum. I had mistakenly thought we were going to the Archaeological Museum and downloaded that Rick Steves audio guide and just could not figure out what he was talking about! The museum was just O.K. to me. The best part was seeing the original Cariatides from one of the temples on the Acropolis.

We weren’t able to go up the Hill of Lycabettus because of traffic so it was time to start heading back towards the ship with the stop for-you guessed it GELATO! Tolis took us to a bakery/gelato place and it was yummy. DH bought some baklava and the boys and I got gelato. Then it was time to get back to the ship. I noticed once we were back in our cabin that we could see the Acropolis from our balcony now that we knew what to look for!

Dinner that night was finally in Le Bistro. I had been dreaming of those mussels since the Getaway! Unfortunately service was AWFUL that night. Our reservation was for 6:45 and we were seated after about a 5 minutes wait. By 7:10 we still didn’t have any drinks and hadn’t placed our orders yet. That finally happened but there was a huge lag between every course. We all had 2 appetizers. DS21 and I both had the mussels (good but they’ve changed the recipe a little bit), DS19 and I both had the cornets (the Duck confit one was outstanding, the others were just O.K.), DH had the 4 mushroom soup and said it was delicious and DS19 had the French Onion soup and said it was really good. I ordered the Fruits de la Mer and it was tasty but not enough food (probably a good thing!), DS19 had the filet and said it was wonderful; DH had the lobster and said the sauce was weird, and DS21 had the duck and loved it. For dessert I ordered the chocolate fondue with fruit (YUM!) and the others ordered crème brulee. The food was good but it took forever. You could tell something wasn’t working right in the kitchen and when some of the ships officers came by and asked how things were we told them all about it. We noticed when we went back a few nights later that the hostess was working a little harder and actually expediting things and that night’s service was much better.

This was the night that they had an aerial show in the Stardust Theater so I convinced the boys to go with me but DH couldn’t be persuaded. The show was O.K. If you’ve seen a Cirque DuSoleil show it was a bit of a let down from that but the strength the man showed and the flexibility (and strength) the woman showed was incredible. There were definitely some WOW moments. After the show the boys went downstairs to get wings and I went up to bed.