Mediterranean Cruise

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I generally am okay with a cruise but I’m just not clear on the advantage of cruising in the Med. seems like you see less and don’t eat as well.

My kids were able to visit three countries over the course of our 2.5 week trip which included an 11 night Med Cruise with 9 ports. They saw a lot and we ate well (see pp re: eating off the ship).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Bill Burr has the best bit where he describes how to depopulate the Earth in a way no one will notice nor miss. It had to do with cruise ships

Another option would be people who feel the need to criticize how other people vacation.

[Anonymous]

I did one through various seas around there with a middle schooler but at height of summer. I wouldn’t recommend the Greek Isles with a large cruise ship. The waits for the tenders at Mykonos and Santorini were hours each way, leaving very little time on land. Big city ports are better for big ships. Istanbul and Athens, for example, are much better set up for large ships. Dubrovnik requires a bus wait but not horrible. The port for Rome is far, far away. Anything specific you want to know?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I did one through various seas around there with a middle schooler but at height of summer. I wouldn’t recommend the Greek Isles with a large cruise ship. The waits for the tenders at Mykonos and Santorini were hours each way, leaving very little time on land. Big city ports are better for big ships. Istanbul and Athens, for example, are much better set up for large ships. Dubrovnik requires a bus wait but not horrible. The port for Rome is far, far away. Anything specific you want to know?

You know that you are the people everyone else in these cities hates, right?

[Anonymous]

I just spend some time researching and it wa pretty discouraging. The reviews on cruises critic are pretty bad even for celebrity and many note the food quality has decreased a lot in the last couple of years (except for costa which used to be mediocre but now is apparently improving). I also noted that a lot of them have very short port days — departures at 5 or 6 making it tough for you to eat dinner on sshore.. I spent a couple of hours and just couldn’t find one that was attractive with the port stops.
If anyone seems anything great, let me know. Vaguely considering the smaller lines like Crystal and oceana.

[Anonymous]

We did a Disney Cruise from Barcelona to Florence, Rome, Naples, Villefranche and back to Barcelona with a kid about that age and it was great. Food on board was not fabulous, but ok. Was a great way to get a flavor of all of these places and decide where we wanted to go back and spend more time. We spent a couple of days in Barcelona before the ship departed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I did one through various seas around there with a middle schooler but at height of summer. I wouldn’t recommend the Greek Isles with a large cruise ship. The waits for the tenders at Mykonos and Santorini were hours each way, leaving very little time on land. Big city ports are better for big ships. Istanbul and Athens, for example, are much better set up for large ships. Dubrovnik requires a bus wait but not horrible. The port for Rome is far, far away. Anything specific you want to know?

You know that you are the people everyone else in these cities hates, right?

You realize those places have economies that are highly dependent on tourism right? They can block cruise ships from docking if they are so inclined.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I did one through various seas around there with a middle schooler but at height of summer. I wouldn’t recommend the Greek Isles with a large cruise ship. The waits for the tenders at Mykonos and Santorini were hours each way, leaving very little time on land. Big city ports are better for big ships. Istanbul and Athens, for example, are much better set up for large ships. Dubrovnik requires a bus wait but not horrible. The port for Rome is far, far away. Anything specific you want to know?

You know that you are the people everyone else in these cities hates, right?

You realize those places have economies that are highly dependent on tourism right? They can block cruise ships from docking if they are so inclined.

Which Venice, understandably, did, in part. In contrast, Istanbul built a new cruise ship port to welcome even larger ships and create jobs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Aren't most Med cruises at least 10 days long? The other issue is that some of the ports, especially in Italy are FAR from the actual sites you want to see.

DP

There are cruises ranging from 7 days to 14 days.

I’m curious when your spring break is and which sailings you see in the Med. We did a Med cruise this summer.

Re: distance from ports and “what you want to see” - Totally depends. The ships dock by the old town in Dubrovnik and Split. They tender by Portofino and Kotor.

They typically are docked longer when folks need to travel further to sites. We went all over Italy and were able to get to Florence from the port in Livorno, to Taormina from the port in Messina, etc.

Civitavecchia isn’t too far from Rome.

Ravenna is 2+ hours from Venice but Trieste is much closer.

We’ve been cruising with our kids for 10 years (since they were very young). It’s a great trip with kids.

This sounds wonderful. We had done very exhausting drive around and check-in and out of various cities trips and this sounds more like a vacation than an adventure that leaves you wanting a staycation to decompress