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

We took this trip in June of 2014. Fortunately there were no incidents, and we had the exact itinerary as scheduled. Here's a bit of info...

Toulon - went to the maritime museum, a short walk from the ship. Excellent! And the French soap bars offered in the cruise terminal are not to be missed.

Livorno - wife and daughter went to Florence, son and I went to Cinque Terre. Both excellent trips.

Rome - took the general ship's tour. Need to go back to see the Coliseum, catacombs, and Sistine Chapel. But we certainly had a great overview of everything. Trevi fountain was under renovation, glad to see it's back up and running.

Naples - Climbed Mt. Vesuvius with my son on Father's Day. Bought limoncello and some local wine, both excellent. Pompeii was neat, did you see the cantelope-sized lemons?

Mykonos - went scuba diving with my son. No brilliant coral reefs and fish like the Caribbean. Ouzo was good, however.

Istanbul - went to Hagia Sofia, wandered the Grand Bazaar and Spice Market. Found an excellent candy store and stocked up on Turkish Delight and fruit gems. Neat town.

Ephesus - our only non-ship's tour. Ruins were neat, make sure you wear shoes with good tread as the 1,000+ year old marble was slick as teflon.

Athens - after looking at Rick Steves and Tom's Port Guides, decided to do this on our own. Got a bus right outside of the port that took us to the Acropolis. Pretty amazing. I'm a software engineer and it was cool to walk the same marble as trod by Aristotle, the father of logic. Again, very slick underfoot.

Venice - just wandered around, found good food, enjoyed the shopping. Tide came in while there, and St. Mark's square was starting to get water.

Fortunately, other daughter lived just north of Venice in Pordenone, so we were able to secure our liquor for luggage trip home. Brought about 10 bottles (wine, ouzo, grappa, limoncello) and didn't break a single one.

Can't wait to hear about your stops in Corfu and Dubrovnik - they're both on my list to see.

I missed the gelato so much I bought a Cuisinart gelato machine and now make lemon and strawberry gelato as good as we got anywhere in Italy.

Outstanding review!

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.

We really enjoyed reading your review and picked up some good information regarding tours. Can you tell me please if many people participated in the formal nights? If so, where there lots of tuxedos or suits? We are taking a 20 day trip, so our luggage space will be limited. Just wondering what many of the men wore on formal nights. Realzing that we do not have to participate if we don't want to. Thanks for the information.

Thanks for the kind words!

@beachbumsns-I never saw anybody very dressed up. Certainly no tuxes or gowns. We went very, very casual the whole trip and never felt uncomfortable or out of place. The dressiest I saw was sundresses and heels on some of the women. Not even sure if I saw sport coats! It was actually one of the things we liked so much. We could go tour all day, come back and do a bare minimum clean up and still be seating in a lovely dining room for a multi course meal. Don't take up valuable luggage space with clothes like that!

At the end of the review I have some items we brought that really helped us (but I haven't typed it yet lol!)

Day 11: Sea Day

This is the problem with the changed itinerary. We didn’t really need another sea day at this point! We’d only had one port since the last two. We got up at a normal time, had breakfast on the terrace outside Raffles (it was finally warm enough to sit outside!) with one of the ladies from our Toulon tour then DH left to go back to the cabin to do some reading and some work and I hung out with “the girls”. I seriously could be friends with these ladies in real life! Even my kids said they could see us hanging out at home. Sadly they live on the other side of the country. I finally forced myself to go to the gym and lift and then walked the promenade again.

That afternoon, the guy who organized our roll call and kept us all on track with excursions and organized the meet and greets had organized a game called left-center-right. It’s a really simple $3 gambling game. About 15 of us met at 2:00 on the terrace outside Raffles and we played for about an hour. Fun way to lose $3! We were all told that one of our roll call members was in the finals of the karaoke superstars and the winner would be decided by audience vote so we were encouraged to go and support Tracy.

After L-C-R I grabbed a drink and went looking for a lounge chair in the sun but out of the wind and settled in to read for a while. You can’t beat reading a good book with a nice cocktail on a cruise ship! The chair hogs were out but I don’t like to be by the pool-too loud-so I didn’t have any problems finding a chair. I stayed out until the cold drove me inside.

Dinner that night was back at Cagney’s. We walked into the restaurant and all the staff from the first night was very solicitous of us. They remembered the steak debacle and I think really wanted us to have a good experience that night. It was. Everybody’s steak was cooked perfectly, the appetizers were good and we were actually too full to have dessert at the end!

We finished dinner and it was time to head up to the theater to cheer Tracy on. Quite a few of the roll call folks were there and we found seats with them and got our drinks. Then the singing started. What was frightening was these were the finalists!! A couple of them were good but the rest were typical karaoke singers-entertaining but not too talented. One of DS21’s new friends was in the finals and she was a cute college girl and convinced the guys she was hanging out with to be her back up dancers. The crowd loved it so Tracy decided SHE needed backup dancers. I had had enough wine with dinner and my cocktails in the lounge that I was persuaded along with 3 other ladies to be her backup. There is video evidence of this but I will not be posting it! Let’s just say we embarrassed ourselves enough that Tracey was a co-winner! It was very fun but it was time to go to bed at that point.

Day12: Kotor Montenegro

When the first rumblings of Turkey being dropped from the itinerary started going around on CC there was lots of speculation about where we’d go. Crete? Santorini? Everybody started doing preliminary research to be ready to get the best private tours. Finally our stops were announced but I had never heard of Montenegro! I had several friends though tell me it was beautiful and where they filmed Casino Royale with Daniel Craig. I started my research on CC and Trip Advisor and sent an email to the name that showed up the most-Milo. Luckily he was available and very inexpensive. I booked his 6 hour tour for the 4 of us and he didn’t even want a credit card as a deposit. Wow.

Everything I read said to be up on deck about one hour prior to docking because it’s one of the most beautiful sail ins. The bay of Kotor is the southernmost fjord and a World Heritage site. So we set our alarms for 6:30 a.m. and awoke to rain. We didn’t let it stop us and got upstairs early and grabbed some coffee and a muffin and headed to the Galaxy of the Stars so we could watch the sail in and stay dry. Unfortunately we don’t have great pictures due to the weather but it was beautiful! We were tendering in this port (our first tender) and we grabbed our tender tickets right away. Milo had said there was construction going on so he didn’t want to pick us up until 9:00 to avoid it. I didn’t want to get our tender tickets since I knew we wouldn’t be in the first group but the shore excursion folks handing out the tickets said we could take a tender any time after our zone was called-they weren’t timed zones. So we got zone 1! I guess because of the weather we didn’t start tendering until well after the 8:00 scheduled time and we did end up on the first non NCL excursion tender after all. We met Milo and off we went.

Now let me tell you about Milo. First of all if you are a “person of size” (shall we say) you need to let him know. He drives a basic 4 door Toyota sedan. It was clean and ran fine but it was snug for the 5 of us (Milo and us). I sat in the back the whole time since I take up less room than my 3 large men. Of course lovely DS21 reminded me my hips were bigger than his and his brothers. Brat. The other thing about Milo is he’s not your typical guide. He didn’t stand on a spot and go “in 1041 the Mongol hordes …” He knew basic history but not incredibly detailed stuff. It was more like having your cousins best friend take you around and show you things. He was nice, funny and very entertaining and took great pride in his country. He told us lots of interesting personal stories about growing up during the war, the ethnic issues they still face and was greatly offended that when they filmed Casino Royale they morphed all the places together and said it took place elsewhere!

He drove us to a scenic overlook that looked down on the town of Budva and their popular beach Jax beach.

(Budva)

I had told him we weren’t interested in going to a beach since we live in Florida (plus the weather was awful) but he really wanted to show it to us. Then he took us through town to St. Sebastian to see the really expensive resort where some tennis star got married and rented the entire island.

(us in front of the island)

We then went to the Old Town of Budva and walked around a little bit going to an incredibly old church right up against the sea where you could hear the pounding of the waves inside! We stopped for a cappuccino and some wifi before heading up into the mountains. It was a very twisty road with hairpin turns and absolutely spectacular views of the bay below us.

The boys found a cave to "explore".

Then we went over a pass into rural towns where he grew up. He took us to the oldest restaurant in Montenegro where they make their own brandy, mead, ham and cheese.

We all did brandy shots (WHOA!!) and then the owners brought us sandwiches made on their homemade bread with the ham and cheese. It was all delicious and we bought a few bottles of mead and brought those home with us. Those folks in the Middle Ages knew what it was about!

The room where they dried the hams (and stored our brandy!)

We then drove back down the twisty road and through Kotor onto Perast. We kept chasing the rain all day and while we didn’t get very wet we could see huge storms over Perast as we drove along the coast road.

Luck was with us though and we drove through the rain and had clear skies once in Perast. We strolled around a bit, touched the water (COLD!) and declined taking the boat out to Our Lady of the Rocks.

Other folks who went said it was beautiful but we were just too cold to do it. Milo drove us back towards the ship and dropped us off outside the walls of the old town of Kotor. We walked around a little bit but I think we were getting kind of over charming old towns and without a guide really explaining what we were seeing we were ready to head back to the ship.

During the day the ship that had been docked in the morning left and the Spirit moved into that berth so we didn’t have to tender back.

We decided since it was early, we were hungry and we all had pants on to try the Windows dining room for the first time. We got there about 6:00 and there was no wait. We couldn’t get a seat by the windows-those were taken but we were able to see out. The dining room stayed relatively empty since all aboard wasn’t until 7:30. It was O.K. but we really preferred the Garden Dining room. Service was good but I missed the folks we had gotten used to-especially Mario the wine steward! After dinner we walked around the ship a bit but had an early night as usual.

We did take some pictures from our balcony though of what we had missed that morning.

enjoying this review as we are doing this in July and have booked Milo for Kotor!

Day 13: Dubrovnik

It was my birthday!! Apparently quite a few others had birthdays too since we saw balloons up and down the hall. My kids asked DH why he hadn’t gotten me balloons and I answered because I was too cheap!

We had read enough stuff about Dubrovnik to know that this was really a DIY port so our plans were to leisurely leave the ship and take a taxi to the Old Town and walk the walls. We were able to pay euros for the taxi, use our credit card for the wall tickets and the vendors either took credit cards or euros. So we had no need to get Kuna.

The day was GORGEOUS! Bright blue sky, puffy white clouds and perfect temperature. The taxi dropped us off outside the Pile Gate

We went inside and got in line to buy our tickets. We had been able to get student discounts at a lot of places using the boy’s college ids. So we handed over their ids but I guess in Croatia the students get new cards each year so they wouldn’t take ours since the dates were the date they enrolled. No biggie but this was the only place and they were quite firm about it!

We walked up the stairs and started the walk. You only walk in one direction which is nice, makes picture taking and crowds less of a problem.

It took a good 2 hours to walk the whole wall and it was really beautiful. The Rick Steves book had mentioned the town was heavily damaged in the war and when you looked at the rooftops, the brighter orange tiles were where things had been repaired. It was nice to see that you couldn’t see any damage.

After the wall we walked around the Old Town and shopped and had a nice lunch. It was so charming and so beautiful! The food was a little pricey though but good.

There was Game of Thrones stuff EVERYWHERE (to be expected) and Star Wars stuff too! I knew they filmed GoT there but didn’t know of any Star Wars connection. I spoke to a guy back on the ship who did a GoT tour and he said they would walk around to places, hold up a still from the show and say “that’s where _____ happened!” He said it was pretty good. Since I’m the only one in my family who has read the books or seen the show (not caught up-don’t say anything!!) it wasn’t an option for us although DH was curious about it afterwards!

Finally it was time to take a taxi back to the ship. I wanted gelato but the line outside the gate was horrendously long so we hopped in a taxi and went back to the port. The guy dropped us off in some weird spot so we had to search to find our way inside and there was tons of shopping right there! So I had to buy a few more things!

Dinner that night was at Le Bistro to celebrate my birthday. I had the sea scallops appetizer (super yum!), mussels (still so good) and the lobster. I should have listened to DH, the sauce was weird! DH and DS21 had the lamb and said it was excellent, DS19 had the filet again. All so good!

That night was Elements. I had read enough about it on CC that I convinced DS19 to go and DH actually went too! It was an enjoyable show. The dancers were apparently all new (and it showed a little bit) but it was a nice combination of everything. My favorite part though was at the end when the entire crew came up on stage. What a nice way to end things!

Off to bed because tomorrow is Venice!!!

Day 14: Venice

We were due to arrive in Venice at 2:00 but from what I had read on CC and what my aunt said I knew you started seeing the islands at least an hour beforehand. We ate breakfast and I had every intention of hitting the gym one last time but we had some serious packing to do! We’d had a zipper blowout on a duffle bag on the way over so one whole compartment was no longer usable and we had bought a LOT of stuff along the way. And remember we had that very limited carry on policy so we spent all morning doing some judicious packing trying to balance weight and who was going to have what. Never did make it to the gym.

Around 11:30 I started really seeing land and started getting twitchy that I was going to miss one of the major things I’d booked THIS itinerary for. Finally DH couldn’t take my irritability anymore so we headed up to the buffet to grab a quick lunch with DS19. I wolfed my food down and said I’d see everybody on Deck 12 starboard. Well when I got up there everybody else on the ship had beaten me to it! I took a few pictures by holding my camera up above everybody’s head then decided our balcony would be a better spot to watch sail in. Somehow in that mass of people I found all my guys and we ran back to our cabin and out on the balcony.

We sailed past St. Marks and the Doge’s Palace and you could clearly see the Bridge of Sighs (you’ll have to trust me-memory chip thing again)! It was magical. We docked at almost the farthest pier you could be at and anxiously awaited being allowed to go ashore.

Finally we got the all clear and headed out. We planned to spend 2 days in Venice post cruise and I had booked a Free Walking Tour of Venice for 5:30 that afternoon so we wanted to find our hotel and figure out where we were going. We walked to the People Mover and had to pay cash to buy our tickets (the credit card feature wasn’t working for anybody) and the People Mover dropped us off in P Roma really quickly. We had reservations at the Hotel Arlecchino right there at P Roma so we walked up and down some steps, over one bridge and we were right there! We got a map of Venice from them and they gave us some suggestions about transportation and we decided to wander until it was time to meet our tour guide.

We walked back over to P Roma and bought Vaporetto tickets for the 4 of us. DH and I got 48 hour tickets but they had a special for youths for a 3 day pass that came with discounts to some of the museums. We hopped on the number 2 line and rode to the Rialto Bridge.

We walked along looking in the shops and I finally found the blue purse I had been seeking since Florence and DS21 finally found the wallet he wanted. We decided not to buy them right then since we still had to do our walking tour.

I had booked this tour both because it was free and because I thought it would give us a good overview of Venice. Well it wasn’t really free. It was one of those “pay what you think the tour is worth-I hope I don’t go hungry” kind of things which always make me very uncomfortable. The guide spent a good 30 minutes getting everybody sorted out and giving us the spiel about payment before we were off. It also wasn’t an overview of Venice. She avoided the main tourist areas and focused on little neighborhoods. It was charming and she gave us some interesting information and we did see local life (including two kids flying a drone in a plaza that got stuck in some plants and DS21 couldn’t stand seeing them trying to rescue it so had to go help which annoyed our guide no end!) but I’m not sure if I’d do it again.

(These things are put in the corners to discourage men from using the corner as a urinal-one of her interesting tidbits!)

We walked MILES and were starving by the time the tour ended. It was prime rib night on the ship and DS21 had been waiting for it the whole trip so we decided to do one last dinner on the ship and made our way back. This was the only cluster**** the whole time. We rode the vaporetto back to P Roma. Took the People Mover back (it took forever-must run a reduced frequency schedule the later it gets) then started walking towards the terminal. The nice straightforward path we had taken that morning was now closed though. We had to walk down the road, then all the way to the end of the terminal building away from where our ship was, through the terminal building back towards our ship (meanwhile, there was a door right there at the end they could have opened for us!) and almost got strip searched by port authorities before getting to the ship. We were hangry by this point!

We went straight to the Garden Dining Room, got seated and I begged for Mario to fill my wineglass! Ah, life was so much better then. Dinner was quite good and we headed back to our cabin to get our luggage out.

We were told luggage had to be out in the hall by 11:00 p.m. unless you were self-disembarking so we got all our stuff tagged and put out and they took it quickly! Off to sleep, our last night on the ship.

Day 15: Disembarkation Venice

We had selected the “brown” disembarkation time-9:15. We had to be out of our cabins by 8:30 so we got up, finished packing and went up to the buffet at 8:30 for breakfast and to wait until our color was called. We never could hear them calling our color but there was a TV display just outside raffles that showed what color they were on. Right at 9:15 we saw “brown “listed so grabbed our carryon’s and made our way down to deck 7. One last swipe of our card, down the stairs, into the terminal and we easily found all our luggage. I had made arrangements the previous day for a cab driver to take us to P Roma. If you don’t have much luggage you could take the People Mover but it’s a pretty long walk over there plus the up and downstairs-best 20 euros I could have spent was taking that taxi!

Unfortunately the guy I’d made arrangements with was nowhere to be seen so we had to scramble to get another cab. It’s very disorganized and not really a first come first served kind of situation. It was more like whoever was more aggressive got the cab first! We found a guy who would take us but he wanted to fill his van so he went looking for another group of 4. Finally we were off. It took a grand total of 5 minutes driving once we were out of the port. We told him where our hotel was and he dropped us off at the end of the parking lot and directed us to the shortest way (read least amount of steps!) to get to the hotel. We got everything there, checked in and they said our room would be ready in 15 minutes if we wanted to wait! So we waited and then got all our luggage safely put away vs sitting in the lobby all day.

The hotel is charming! It’s right on the corner of 2 canals so can be loud but it’s a good loud. It has an elevator but it’s really, really tiny. Our room was on the 3rd floor so we’d send one person up in the elevator with several suitcases and the others would take the stairs up to help empty the elevator. Worked great! We had all 4 of us in one room this time but DH and I had a king sized bed and each boy had their own bed. Uncomfortable beds mind you but they didn’t have to share!

I had read comments on CC that this hotel makes arrangements to get you out to Murano. We could have used the Vaporetto since we had the passes but I asked at the desk anyway. Turns out they have an arrangement with one of the factories and for guests who are interested in buying glass they will send a water taxi and take the guests directly to the factory for a demonstration and then the opportunity to browse their showroom. So we said “sure!” The water taxi picked us up right in front of the hotel and we were off. Unfortunately it was raining so I didn’t get to do the stand up in the back like a tourist thing but it was still really cool!

We saw the master glassblower make two carafes with the help of his assistant then it was time to browse. Oh my goodness. The stuff was beautiful!! We did end up purchasing something and arranged as part of the deal for a water taxi ride back to St. Marks. It would have been cheaper to pay for the taxi rides ourselves!!

We got back to St. Mark’s and it was crazy busy!

We then went looking for lunch. Our guide the previous day had given us a map with some restaurants that she and the other guides recommended as being good, non-tourist places. We finally found one and had a nice lunch. DS21 and I split squid ink risotto and DH and DS19 each had the lasagna special. The lasagna was much better!

We just spent the rest of the day wandering until we got tired and rode the Vaporetto back to our stop near the hotel. DH was feeling twitchy about the luggage situation and didn’t want to pay excess baggage so he decided that he would stay in the hotel and shift luggage and carryons and the rest of us should go out to dinner.

We got the name of a restaurant from the front desk and it was still drizzly so we grabbed our umbrellas and walked to the restaurant. It was delicious! After dinner, strolling back along the canal, in the dark with the drizzle and just a few locals out walking their dogs-I felt like I was in a movie. So cool! We got back and gave DH the pizza we had brought him, opened the windows to listen to the canal noise and played with wifi!

Day 16: Venice

When we disembarked the previous day I knew there’d be a lot of cruise ship passengers between our ship emptying and then filling with new passengers plus 2 other ships in port so I wanted to avoid the main tourist areas of Venice as much as possible. I really wanted to go to Burano but the weather the previous day wasn’t conducive and we decided if we went today we’d spend most of the day doing that. My cousin had done a tour on her honeymoon cruise called St. Mark’s After Dark (did I mention my cousin did this itinerary in reverse last summer? If not, she did!) . I went looking for the tour and the company was called Walks in Italy, The only day it was available was our last night in Venice. My cousin had raved about it though. It was pricey but it was going to be a special moment. Basically, you get to go into St. Mark’s after it closes with just the folks on your tour! You get to go up close and personal with some of the things and also get to go places the general public doesn’t get to go.

So since I had that planned we weren’t going to go in with the regular line. The free walking tour guide told us about a DaVinci museum that was worth the cost. I looked it up on Trip Advisor and it got pretty good reviews. With an engineer for one son and an artist for the other the DaVinci museum was a no brainer. We had breakfast in the hotel (included and good) and rode the Vaporetto over to the museum stop. The museum is in a former church and the building is pretty. Basically what they did was take DaVinci’s sketches and build models from them. There were copies of a lot of his paintings with explanations as well as all the mechanical things he did. Of course it was a private museum so not covered by the discounted tickets we had bought the boys but they all really enjoyed it. We spent about an hour there. I was good about halfway through that!

We walked from there over to St. Mark’s square and stopped for lunch on the way at a lovely plaza. Free wifi and good pizza! Expensive though. Venice is NOT a cheap city! We continued on our way and decided to tour the Doge’s Palace. I rented the audio guide for 5 euro and it really wasn’t worth it. The Doge’s apartments were closed so they (I guess) had rerouted the tour and it didn’t really match what the guide was saying. It was pretty amazing and beautiful though! We walked over the Bridge of Sighs and through the prisons too.

We had time to kill before our St. Mark’s tour and DH had decided he’d found a loophole in Lufthansa’s carryon rules so we could buy another carryon and redistribute the weight. So we went looking for a carryon that didn’t cost more than the excess baggage fee! We found something that was on sale and then went and decided to sit down in a pretty plaza and have a drink and a light dinner. The place was not good. The drinks were expensive, the food was just O.K. and the server was rude! Sadly I couldn’t even begin to tell you where we were since we had walked so much and we paid cash since we were trying to use up our euros!

It was time to start heading back to St. Mark’s to meet our tour but one last stop for gelato was needed! We met our tour company and had a little bit of time to wander around the square and look in the shops before the tour started.

Our guide Josie took us over by the bell tower and told us the history of St. Mark’s (and Venice really) while we waited for a Mass to finish. She then took us inside and took us over to the Doge’s entry and talked about the mosaics in the vestibule. There were 3 guides and each guide had 15-18 people in their group. That’s it. That’s all the people inside the church! Josie then directed us through the curtain into some seats and implored us not to look up. She kept saying “just listen to me and look at the floor”. She had us sit quietly then said “look up”. When we walked in the lights were off in the church but there was plenty of light coming in the windows to see how magnificent it was. Then while we were sitting they turned the lights on. She told us to look up just when the lights really made the domes glow. You could hear the “ooh’s” and “aaahh’s” from everybody. We were then taken up to the altar and stood around St. Mark’s body while she pointed out all the mosaics and the stories they told. Then we went behind the altar to the jeweled altarpiece. Just wow. We walked all over the inside of that church looking at the marble, the mosaics, and the statues. It was insane. Then we went down into the crypt and walked around down there. DH and DS19 had really been mad that I had booked this tour for our very last night and had been making noise about bagging it. While neither one ever said “Gee that was a great idea!” they did stop complaining and I noticed their mouths hanging open! This is another place that pictures can NOT do justice so I'm not even going to try. We have some but they are so inadequate!

We walked outside after about an hour in the church and it was turning to twilight. The boys each still had time on their Vaporetto passes but DH and mine had expired. I suggested DH and DS19 take the 2 valid ones and head on back to the hotel and DS21 and I would walk. DH wasn’t keen on that and said it would take almost as long to wait for the boat and ride it as it would to walk so let’s all have one last stroll though Venice.

Day 17: Flight Home

Our flight was at 10:10 a.m. and the front desk operator said it would take about 20 minutes by either bus or taxi and we should be there 2 hours ahead so we got up at 6:30, showered, packed the rest of our stuff and headed down to breakfast. We checked out, got all our luggage downstairs and headed to the taxi stand. The bus was going to be 8 euros each (so 32 euros) and a taxi was 40 euros. I liked the idea of being on our own schedule so we chose the taxi option.

We got in line for the taxi and it took about 20 minutes before we were in one so don’t know that we saved any time there but our driver was fast and we were at the airport in no time. Check in went smoothly and DH’s loophole worked so we didn’t have to pay any excess baggage! Both flights were on time and we had the lovely bulkhead seats again. DS21 made friends with some German businessmen who were on their way to Orlando for a conference and they had cracked open their duty free liquor (!) and were having a grand old time until the flight attendant yelled at them.

All our luggage made it, we got through customs (a few snafus with our Global Entry thing but the Customs agent was cool), got to the car and the battery was dead. ARRGGH! We were so tired by this point we were all snapping at each other. We got a jump and drove straight home with no other issues.

I'm not sure if my puppy was happier to see me or I was happier to see my bed but everybody was happy!

I have one more post to make regarding general thoughts, stuff we brought that was helpful, stuff we brought that wasn't helpful and other things but I have to give that puppy a bath and make dinner!

enjoying this review as we are doing this in July and have booked Milo for Kotor!

Milo is great!! His wife is about to have a baby so I'd love to know what she has!

So as I said in the beginning-this was the trip of a lifetime. I'm still stunned at all the amazing things we saw! Everybody in my family said this was our best trip ever (and we've done some great trips). Part of that though was all the planning that went into this trip. I know I'm preaching to the choir here because if you're on CC you are a planner and researcher. I met a couple on the ship who was mad at NCL that they wouldn't be able to see the David. I very calmly told them that the Academia is always closed on Monday and it's not NCL's fault. Basic research would have found that out! I'm stunned anybody would do a trip of this magnitude and not research things.

We have always tried to do independent excursions when practical but DH says he is now fully committed to only doing private unless we would seriously be at risk of missing the ship. I added up how much our excursions would have cost if we had done them through the ship and it was at least twice as much as we spent and in some cases the ship's excursions didn't do what we wanted to do so we would have settled for less than we wanted to see and still paid more! I never had any fear about missing the ship. Every driver asked what time all aboard was and made certain we were back well before that time. These companies make their living on cruise ship passengers so they can't afford to miss the boat!

My cousin did the Venice to Barcelona route last summer and loved her itinerary. They flew to Venice a few days early and spent time there acclimating and had a sea day right off the bat to help with their jet lag. They felt like they eased into the cruise and ended with a sprint.

I liked the Barcelona to Venice route though (even though Florence was probably my favorite port and it was at the beginning). I liked that we started out with 5 busy days when we were still relatively fresh (other than the jet lag) then had a sea day. I loved sailing into Venice during the daylight and having an overnight there. I liked having that half sea day to do my packing before disembarkation vs having to do it the night you get back from Toulon.

I really enjoyed NCL for this cruise. I so loved the casual element on such an exhausting trip! It helped with packing to not have to bring any dressy clothes or heels.

My favorite port was Florence. The boys loved Rome. We all felt that except for going back to see the lavender fields we were good with not seeing Provence again (never thought I'd say those words!). DH desperately wants to go to Pompeii now too. I was not a fan of Athens at all and now that I've seen the big stuff there if we ever did another cruise that included Athens we'd go to Cape Sounion or Corinth. Montenegro was beautiful but I think we "saw" it and there's not that much left that we didn't see. Croatia on the other hand was beautiful and I'd love to go back and see more. I really think though that I need to live in Italy for a month. I loved it all. We always say that a cruise gives you a taste of a place so you know if you want to go back. Well, I want to go back to all of Italy!

Tips:

-don't book your flight too hastily! After I booked I read a lot of things about people adding in trips to Paris and London (we couldn't have been gone that long but it's nice to dream) or flying into and out of other cities like Milan and using trains or intercontinental flights to move to the different embarkation and debarkation points for much less money.

-research your tour providers and book early! The good ones fill up fast. All of them had very reasonable cancellation policies so there is no harm to you if your plans change.

-JOIN YOUR ROLL CALL!! It was great having such an active roll call and not only filling up our private tours (and thank heavens we liked everybody we toured with!) but also to have "friends" on the ship. It was nice running into people you sort of knew.

Things we brought that were very useful:

-6 port USB charging hub

-3 socket outlet expander

those two things allowed us to charge everything we needed with our one outlet!

-lipstick chargers

we used these in the airport and on tours as backup batteries to our phones/ipads

-clothespins

These came in great doing handwashing of delicates or things I didn't want dried and they are so cheap on Amazon I left the 10 I took with me behind.

-ponchos/rain jackets/mini umbrellas

We had a lot of rain on our trip. It would have been miserable if we didn't have stuff to keep us dry.

-leatherman/gorilla tape/cable ties

DH is Mr. Prepared but this time these things were great to "fix" the broken suitcase. He also used the gorilla tape to help secure some of our more breakable souvenirs.

-extra ziplock bags -both quart and gallon size

-OTC meds (tylenol, ibuprophen, pepto bismol, tums)

-We bought TSA approved 3-1-1 heavy duty clear plastic bags to use for our liquids.

http://www.amazon.com/Approved-3-1-1-Airline-Travel-Toiletry/dp/B00OWLHSL2?ie=UTF8&keywords=3-1-1%20bag&nodeID=9479199011&qid=1464644839&ref_=sr_1_2&s=apparel&sr=1-2

They held much more than the usual ziplock quart bags and are heavier duty so you don't have as much worry of a spill.

Thanks for reading and if you have any questions I'm happy to answer!

(please forgive the typos and any spelling errors-I tried to catch them and it makes me nuts that some got through!)

Thanks so much for the fantastic review! We are on this itinerary in September and this is only making me more excited! It's great to see the new ports discussed as well, since previous reviews still had the stops in Turkey.

Glad you had a great trip!

Thanks so much for the fantastic review! We are on this itinerary in September and this is only making me more excited! It's great to see the new ports discussed as well, since previous reviews still had the stops in Turkey.

 

Glad you had a great trip!

You will love it! Enjoy!

Thank you so much for taking the time to provide all the details, you've provided a lot of information. Loved seeing all the photos and a glimpse of what we'll be seeing soon.

I'm also booked on this cruise in September starting with two days in Amsterdam before two days in Barcelona and then getting on the ship. I knew there were a lot of ports but hadn't considered just how busy and exhausting this will be. We'll have to keep the early mornings in mind when we are tempted to stay up after the late show.

Milo is great!! His wife is about to have a baby so I'd love to know what she has!

send me an email to cruisecritic@escomb.org.uk and I'll be sure to ask him and send your regards.I'll tell you the news after our trip!

Thank you for the Great review so happy you had such a good trip and hope ours will be the same.

My one question is about the exchange rate and where we should exchange our money. Did you do your exchange to euros in the U.S before you left or did you do it when you got to your first stop.

It's hard to find a direct answer to this question, can you please let me know what you think is the better way to go?

Thanks for taking the time to share your trip with all of us. We took this trip in September 2014 are totally agree with you, it was a trip of a lifetime.

Thank you for the Great review so happy you had such a good trip and hope ours will be the same.

 

My one question is about the exchange rate and where we should exchange our money. Did you do your exchange to euros in the U.S before you left or did you do it when you got to your first stop.

 

It's hard to find a direct answer to this question, can you please let me know what you think is the better way to go?

We bought euros before we left and brought them with us. I checked with both banks we have accounts with and each of them charged a percentage transaction fee to use ATM's in foreign countries even at banks they had agreements with. Plus with paying cash for our tours and paying for 4 people I would have been having to go to an ATM every day and hitting the maximum withdrawal.

I got an exchange rate that was 1.19 euros to the dollar so not hideous but not the best but there was peace of mind that I had the money I needed. My bank didn't charge a fee to get that money (made it up in the exchange rate) we just had to order it about 2 weeks before we for sure needed it to give us time for any snafus.

I think if you just need a little cash (like you're paying your tours with credit cards or paying ahead of time) the ATM's in Europe will give you the best exchange rate. (Just heed all the cautions about using in bank ATM's when the bank is open.) But if you are paying for lots of tours and there are more than 2 of you, I'd bring the money from home.

send me an email to cruisecritic@escomb.org.uk and I'll be sure to ask him and send your regards.I'll tell you the news after our trip!

I will! Thanks!

Thanks for taking the time to share your trip with all of us. We took this trip in September 2014 are totally agree with you, it was a trip of a lifetime.

Thanks! Your review was one of the ones DH and I both read (kudos on all the running!) while planning our trip!

We bought euros before we left and brought them with us. I checked with both banks we have accounts with and each of them charged a percentage transaction fee to use ATM's in foreign countries even at banks they had agreements with. Plus with paying cash for our tours and paying for 4 people I would have been having to go to an ATM every day and hitting the maximum withdrawal.

 

I got an exchange rate that was 1.19 euros to the dollar so not hideous but not the best but there was peace of mind that I had the money I needed. My bank didn't charge a fee to get that money (made it up in the exchange rate) we just had to order it about 2 weeks before we for sure needed it to give us time for any snafus.

 

I think if you just need a little cash (like you're paying your tours with credit cards or paying ahead of time) the ATM's in Europe will give you the best exchange rate. (Just heed all the cautions about using in bank ATM's when the bank is open.) But if you are paying for lots of tours and there are more than 2 of you, I'd bring the money from home.

Thank you so much for the reply we will take your advice on this and it feels good to know what to do going forward.:)

Angie,

Great review - thanks.

We had a blast and saw so many great things, but one of the best things was the fun we had with all the cruise critic members.

Until we sail again,

John