I’m ordering the pics from the Mediterranean cruise we took after Ireland according to ports of call, so as not to get overwhelmed (and so people can easily look at what they’re interested in and ignore what they want). Here’s the first batch, taken at our first port of call: Messina, Sicily, where we took a shore excursion up the slopes of an actively erupting Mt. Etna!
The blues are incredible. I couldn’t get over the color of the water…it looked like it had been dyed, it was so blue. And the towns were so pretty in that bright blue and white.
Here’s the next batch, taken in Kusadasi, Turkey (actually, most were taken in the nearby ancient city of Ephesus, which is an archeological treasure!):
The pics are great, Redwolf. Thank you for sharing them. My wife has been talking about a Mediterranean cruise. I showed her your photos, so now we don’t need to go, I tried to reason with her.
How many people were onboard your ship? Would you recommend Celebrity cruises? What kind of musical entertainment did you have onboard ship?
I’m afraid I can’t recommend Celebrity. We chose them for the itinerary (which was outstanding), but were very disappointed with several aspects of the cruise:
The food, frankly, was, at best, dull (even the meat eaters were disappointed, as the food tended to be underseasoned and overcooked, and as far as the veg food went, well…I had a better meal on the flight coming back than I did on the entire cruise). At times it was bad enough that I pushed my entree off to the side and filled up on bread. This is our third cruise (our first on Celebrity) and the first time we haven’t been utterly thrilled with the food (I’m a foodie and, to be honest, usually it’s a high point of the cruise!) Our waiter and maitre’d moved heaven and earth to try to help us (the service on the ship, as on all the other cruises we’ve been on, was impeccable), but there’s only so much a waiter can do when the chef is useless. Even the desserts were uninspiring! We talked to several other people on the cruise who had similar complaints. I thought it might just be the cook on the Galaxy, but I’ve spoken with a couple of people who used to love Celebrity, and they’ve said that the food has gone downhill tremendously since the line was acquired by Carnival. A shame, as eating on a cruise ship is usually a real pleasure (and Celebrity used to be noted for its cuisine).
The other big issue was that our stateroom was considerably smaller than staterooms we’ve had in the same basic class on other cruise lines. Because there are three of us, we usually get what’s variously called a “deluxe oceanview stateroom,” a “veranda suite” or “a mini-suite”…basically a room with its own small sitting area, a sofa that converts to a twin bed, and its own veranda. Our room on the Galaxy didn’t really have its own sitting area…they’d basically jammed a sleeper sofa into what would normally have been an ordinary sized stateroom. We did have a veranda (again, a smaller one than we’ve had previously), but we couldn’t get to it when the sofa bed was open. It wouldn’t have been a big deal, if it weren’t for the fact that my in-laws, who gave us the cruise, paid as much for that stateroom as they’ve paid for much roomier rooms on Holland America or Royal Caribbean.
We were also disappointed with the entertainment on this cruise. Typically you have a different kind of show in the main theater each night…you might have a comic one night, a magician another, etc. There will also be some classical musicians who play in the quieter areas and on the formal nights in the dining room, and often a really good pianist or two in the lounges. We only saw one comic (and he only did one late-night show), and the rest was, for the most part, the same rather dull singer.
The thing that bothered my in-laws the most was that they charged extra for things that are normally included in the price of the cruise, or charged significantly more than other cruise lines do for extras. For example, the corkage fee if you brought your own bottle of wine to the table was an outrageous $25…highest in the business! They didn’t have any wine packages (typically on a cruise you can buy a “package” of preselected wines for dinner, at a cost lower than you’d pay for each wine by the bottle). Usually my in-laws have cappuccino after dinner when they’re on a cruise, and it’s generally included, but Celebrity treats it as a bar drink (and charges out the wazoo for it!). Whenever we were in the casual buffet dining room, we would get solicited two or three times a meal by a waiter trying to sell us bottle water or bar drinks…they were almost as pushy as the accordion players in the trattorias on the streets of Rome!
I guess what it all comes down to is Celebrity just didn’t meet our expectations. Was it a horrible experience? No. A cruise is good fun, even with disappointments. If someone were to call me tomorrow and say “Guess what? You’ve won an all-expenses paid cruise to [pick any destination]…only trouble is, it’s on the Celebrity Galaxy” I’d have my bags packed and be out the door before you could say boo. And I’d have a good time…but my expectations would be much lower than they normally are for cruise ships.
The other lines we’ve sailed with are Holland America and Royal Caribbean. We liked both, but since RC has also been acquired by Carnival since we sailed with them, I’d be a bit wary until I’d spoken to someone who’d recently taken an RC cruise, after my experience with Celebrity. Holland America takes the prize as the most wonderful cruise experience ever, in my opinion (we did a Holland America cruise to Alaska back in 2001, and my in-laws take a couple of HA cruises a year). They would have been our first choice for this cruise, but they didn’t have the itinerary we wanted. That’s always a factor in choosing a cruise as well…if you really want a particular destination or combination of destinations and your first choice doesn’t go there, you either have to change your chosen destination or your preferred cruise line.
Have you been on a cruise before? If so, which lines have you sailed on?
In any case, the destinations were well worth any disappointment in the food or accommodations…as I said, I’d go again (even with Celebrity, if I couldn’t find another cruise line), and I highly recommend the Eastern Med to anyone who wants the trip of a lifetime.
Coming soon…our pics from Santorini, from Naples and Pompeii, and from on-board ship!
UPDATE: Looks like we can’t blame Carnival for the poor food on Celebrity…they’re actually the parent line of Holland America, which has astoundingly good food. So much for that theory!
Thank you, Redwolf, for your detailed opinion about Celebrity cruises. To answer your question, yes, in June my wife and I did take a cruise to Alaska, departing from Vancouver, B.C., on a Princess cruise and land package. The Coral Princess was a beautiful ship, and Princess also has their own deluxe train cars on the Alaska Railway with a kitichen and dining room on the first floor of every car. I saw the Celebrity and Holland ships in a couple of the ports where we stopped, so I was curious about them. We loved everything about how we were treated by the Princess staff, and the food was wonderful. I especially loved the string quartet that played everyday. We would not hesitate to travel with Princess again, although with the current monetary exchange rate we may have to win the lottery before we can travel to Europe again.
The Alaska cruise is wonderful, isn’t it? We did the same thing with Holland America…cruise up the Inside Passage, then by rail up to Denali and Fairbanks. Another one of those “trip of a lifetime” vacations!
I’ve heard that Princess does a very nice cruise…we’ll have to give them a try sometime!
