9-day cruise on NCL, wow!

Posted by sfarkas425 on 06/20/22 01:15 AM

We just came back from a 9-day cruise on the Med that took us to Kotor, Corfu, Santorini, Athens, Mykonos, Argostoli, Dubrovnik, and Split.

I HIGHLY recommend Rick Steves Mediterranean Cruise Ports book for folks contemplating a Med cruise but still want some independent travel. Rick’s walking tours for Kotor, Mykonos, Dubrovnik, and Split were perfect! Cruise excursions we did were very campy so we took advantage of any opportunity to explore ourselves. The book came in handy and went with us everywhere. The places that blew me away the most were Mykonos, Kotor, and Argostoli on the gorgeous island of Kefalonia.

To the Rick Steves team - I don’t believe there’s a chapter on Kefalonia but it’s worthy of one. Unbelievably beautiful, especially Myrtos Beach.

Posted by Dick

Olympia, WA, USA

06/20/22 02:56 AM

6713 posts

We haven't done a Mediterranean cruise but we used his book on Baltic ports and it helped us a lot. Kudos to RSE for putting these guides together as they (and we) age into, shall we say, less strenuous travel.

We're longtime NCL fans who haven't cruised since early 2020 for the obvious reason. How well do you think NCL handled the Covid situation? Did they require vaccination? Pre-cruise testing? Masking in public areas on the ship? Was the buffet self-service as in the past? How did they handle any outbreaks, to your knowledge?

Posted by sfarkas425 OP

06/20/22 03:14 AM

11 posts

To be honest, it was very lax. You had to show proof of vaccination and negative test. They had a mask policy but it wasn’t very enforced. You could serve yourself at the buffet which I was never a fan of even before Covid. The saving grace was our sailing was only 45% capacity and that was wonderful. This was our second Med cruise. The first was Costa and it was horrible. In the book I mentioned, Rick gives a brief rundown of the major lines that do the Med and his thoughts are 100% onpoint.

The NCL route we did was purely one of a kind because we had no at sea days and hit all the stops. By the end of the cruise we knew which places we would want to go back to.

The big mistake a lot of folks make is they don’t give themselves a few days before and after the cruise. We gave ourselves 4 full days in Venice beforehand to see stuff and then 2 days after the cruise just to decompress before the long haul flight back.

Posted by rvw2000

Seattle

06/20/22 04:10 AM

49 posts

I’m so jealous, that sounds fantastic. I didn’t realize RS had cruise ports books, nice!

Posted by bogiesan

Boise, Idaho

06/20/22 11:53 AM

1258 posts

Thanks for the report! Visiting the Greek islands is on my list. [I had to look it up: NCL can be Norwegian Cruse Lines. (Might have been North Carolina Lions.)]