Review of Mediterranean Cruise - 14 Days on NCL Spirit May 4-18, 2017 (with photos)

[SeahawkSiren]

 

 

 

 

 

[SeahawkSiren]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After we had been there for about 2 hours, it just turned into an assembly line of people so we were thankful that we got to enjoy most of the site with very few people and in peace and quiet.

 

 

Saw some turtles wandering around once we got back down the hill.

 

[SeahawkSiren]

After the Acropolis we took the X80 bus back to Piraeus where we lingered and enjoyed a nice, long lunch at O’Connell’s Restaurant, an Irish Pub near the ship. Excellent food here! I also enjoyed some wine with lunch.

 

 

 

I have no idea what this says or what kind of wine I drank but it sure was good!

 

 

After we got back on the ship it was time for more drinks and we sat and enjoyed watching all the marine traffic in this very busy port. Lots of different size ferries and ships coming and going literally every few minutes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Royal Caribbean Jewel of the Seas heading out of Piraeus.

 

[SeahawkSiren]

Then it was time for us to leave Piraeus as well.

 

 

 

 

 

I'm going to stop here for tonight. Will start on this review again tomorrow. Up next: Santorini, Greece!

[anonmom]

What a beautiful ship! What are all those windows that look into the atrium? Could they possibly be insides? I wouldn't mind an inside as long as it had a window to a nice atrium like that...

 

I also didn't realize there was a beer garden on the Spirit. Did you happen to take a pic of the menu?

 

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[kikki21]

Thanks for your review & photos so far, I didn't realise what a nice looking ship the Spirit was apart from that Spa relaxation room which definitely needs to be refurbished!

I would definitely consider sailing on the Spirit. I did a 10 night cruise on the Jade which was lovely but a more Eastern itinerary.

 

Visiting Valletta is also a highlight for me on my forthcoming MSC Meraviglia cruise as I have never been there & it looks a fantastic place to visit - we are still deciding what to visit there!

[mugtech]

Was there any entertainment on the ship?

[SeahawkSiren]

What a beautiful ship! What are all those windows that look into the atrium? Could they possibly be insides? I wouldn't mind an inside as long as it had a window to a nice atrium like that...

 

I also didn't realize there was a beer garden on the Spirit. Did you happen to take a pic of the menu?

 

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Forums mobile app

 

I don't think those are inside rooms, I think they are only decorative windows. Someone else may chime in if I'm mistaken about that. I never saw anywhere on the ship where you could be on the other side of those windows looking down into the atrium.

 

I did not take pics of any menus. I know there is a recent thread here with pics of the menus. The only food that the Bier Garten served on our cruise were the same things that were served poolside - burgers, hot dogs, chicken, pasta salad, etc. We never saw a separate menu for the Bier Garten. Also, the times listed in the dailies of when the Bier Garten would be serving food were not always accurate. Several times we went up there looking for quick bites at the times listed in the dailies and food was not there at those times on the days we tried to go. :confused:

 

Thanks for your review & photos so far, I didn't realise what a nice looking ship the Spirit was apart from that Spa relaxation room which definitely needs to be refurbished!

I would definitely consider sailing on the Spirit. I did a 10 night cruise on the Jade which was lovely but a more Eastern itinerary.

 

Visiting Valletta is also a highlight for me on my forthcoming MSC Meraviglia cruise as I have never been there & it looks a fantastic place to visit - we are still deciding what to visit there!

 

Yes, we thought the Spirit was a beautiful ship. Dated in some respects but for a ship that is nearly 20 years old we thought she was in really good shape for her age. The bathroom in our cabin really needed an upgrade too (I will get into that more at the end of my review). Glad you may consider sailing on the Spirit. We also thought she was really the perfect size ship for the Mediterreanean as well. Would definitely sail on her again regardless of a few dated aspects.

 

Enjoy Valletta. It was one of my favorite ports of the entire cruise. A really beautiful place.

[tmackel]

Loving your review. The Spirit was one of our favorite ships.

[SeahawkSiren]

Was there any entertainment on the ship?

 

Yep, plenty of entertainment! There were 2 shows every night at 7:30 and 9:30 in the Stardust Theater. But we did not make it to any of those shows. This was a very port intensive cruise and we were in bed early almost every night and up very early almost every morning. For us, this cruise was much more about the ports than activities on the ship.

 

We did go to some early evening entertainment on occasions at Champagne Charlie's, a nice little bar on Deck 8 where we listened to the lounge acts - singers and piano players. Oh how I miss those Peach Bellini champagne drinks!

 

The casino was really dead on this cruise. It was the same way on our other Mediterranean cruise too. Every other itinerary we have been on besides the Mediterranean the casinos were really hopping!

 

DH enjoyed playing in afternoon darts tournaments at Henry's Pub and various trivia contests around the ship.

 

We did enjoy a morning event on one of the sea days which was a "behind the scenes" of the ship. It was really interesting learning fun facts about the ship. Then the captain and a couple other senior officers came for a Q&A session after the presentation. The presentation was hosted by Joel Dizon ("Philly Joel"), the cruise director, who coincidentally was also our cruise director on the Sun last October on our Panama Canal cruise.

[SeahawkSiren]

Saturday, May 13 – Island of Santorini, Greece. Aaahhh! Here we are again on the stunningly beautiful island of Santorini. We had been to this island once before on our honeymoon cruise 10 years ago.

We had already been to Oia and a winery tour on the prior cruise so we chose not to do a ship excursion this time and just did the on our own thing. We took the cable car up to Fira then walked part of the trail from Fira to Oia. We did not do the entire 6 miles, but just walked for about an hour or so.

 

Views from the trail

 

 

 

 

[SeahawkSiren]

Santorini is one of those places where everywhere you turn, there is something to see.

 

 

 

 

There are even cute little kittens in Santorini.

 

 

 

[SeahawkSiren]

After our morning of exploring around Fira and walking part of the trail we stumbled across this cute little place for lunch, the Art Cafe, which was not in the touristy area. There were only 2 other couples there when we had lunch.

 

 

 

After lunch we started heading back toward the ship. There were 3 cruise ships in Santorini on this day so it was very crowded. There was a 1.5 to 2 hour wait for the cable car so we took the long walk down the donkey hill, watching out for piles of donkey "business" along the way.

 

 

 

Another great day in Santorini. We vow the next time we go to Santorini it will not be on a cruise. It would be really nice to spend a few days there staying in a hotel with one of those infinity edge pools and also enjoy the sunsets.

 

Goodbye Santorini

 

 

[SeahawkSiren]

Sunday, May 14 – Katakolon (Olympia), Greece. The cute little seaside town of Katakolon, Greece.

 

 

 

Our ship excursion here was Olympia, the Birthplace of the Olympics. This archaeological site is where the very first Olympic Games were held in 776 BC. Not much in the way of ruins still remain here as most were destroyed by earthquakes.

 

 

 

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The stadium had a capacity of 45,000. Just imagine what it would have been like to be attending the Olympic Games back then!

 

 

 

Back in Katakolon we enjoyed lunch and drinks along the waterfront with a great view of the ship!

 

Another fabulous day in the books!

 

 

 

[SeahawkSiren]

Monday, May 15 – At Sea. Our third and final at sea day.

 

A relaxing day on the ship. The photos did not turn out very well, but I will post a few of them anyway. There were some birds that were following along the ship (and even resting on it at various intervals) for a good portion of the day. I think they were swallows.

 

 

 

 

Our final SDP dinner was at La Trattoria. This is the Italian restaurant on the Spirit but is known as La Cucina on the other NCL ships. As always, we really enjoyed our meals here but the set up was odd on this ship and it is not a dedicated restaurant space, but instead part of the buffet is partitioned off for La Trattoria so it was quite noisy and distracting here.

 

 

Love me some spaghetti carbonara!

 

 

 

 

[SeahawkSiren]

Tuesday, May 16 – Messina (Island of Sicily), Italy.

 

Sailing into Messina

 

 

 

 

 

[SeahawkSiren]

Our ship excursion here was Highlights of Taormina.

 

It was clear to us that Taormina would be a very charming place to visit under normal circumstances and we could definitely see the potential, but unfortunately we were there just days before the G7 Summit was to be held in Taormina. So because of that, certain roads, sidewalks and the parking lot where the tour buses normally go were closed off due to heavy security and police activity that was taking place in advance of the summit. Therefore, the volume of people were funneled into very small areas and the buses had to drop us off at an odd location and we had to walk a ways to get to Taormina.

 

We went to the Ancient Theatre of Taormina, built in the 3rd Century BC. Even the main entrance to the theatre was blocked off as they were working on it in advance of the summit so we had to enter through a side area.

 

 

 

They were fixing up the theatre too for a concert performance that was going to take place for the world leaders and their entourages who were attending the summit.

 

 

[SeahawkSiren]

Unfortunately it was too cloudy to see Mount Etna. :(

 

 

According to the guide on our tour bus, this is the hotel where President Trump would stay for the summit.

 

 

 

Random photos around Taormina

 

 

[SeahawkSiren]

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our guide on the tour bus stated that the locals had very mixed feelings about the summit being held there. Many of them were quite unhappy about it because of serious disruptions to their lives and some of the businesses were planning to shut down completely during the summit.

 

On the other hand our guide said that since they had known many months in advance that the summit would be held there that everything was getting a very good cleaning, roads were being repaved, projects getting completed to make everything look nice, etc. She laughed and asked why wouldn't they do that anyway regardless of the summit? :)

[SeahawkSiren]

After Taormina we went back to Messina where we had lunch near the Messina Cathedral.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After lunch on the way back to the ship, we stopped and had drinks under an orange tree!

 

These trees do not grow in Seattle.

 

[SeahawkSiren]

We headed out of Messina before the Jewel of the Seas.

 

 

 

[SeahawkSiren]

Wednesday, May 17 – Naples, Italy. Good morning from Naples! How about a beautiful sunrise to start the day?

 

 

 

 

 

 

[SeahawkSiren]

Our excursion here was Pompeii On Your Own, where NCL provided only the bus transportation. This excursion was roughly 3.5 hours. Pompeii is only a 30 minute bus ride from Naples. We had a guide on the bus to give us information and answer questions but we were left to wander the ruins of Pompeii on our own for 2.5 hours which we really enjoyed. We arrived at Pompeii shortly before they open at 9:00 a.m. and there were already hundreds of people there waiting in line, particularly private tour groups. I had pre-purchased Pompeii tickets online before leaving home and am very glad I did as several of the people on our bus stated they spent the first 30-45 minutes waiting in line to buy tickets as apparently the tour groups get priority entrance. Despite hundreds of people in line, they only had one ticket window open! :confused:

 

Since we had purchased tickets in advance we were in a separate line and got in right at 9:00. Very nice!

 

Pompeii was buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. Its most recent rediscovery was in 1748.