Milhouse

Data point Fri Nov 4 1130am LAX to Long Beach Renaissance Hotel. Day before the cruise. Lyft. 29min ride. Just under $35 with fees but before tip.

There's not a lot of nice shaded areas either in both Oia and Fira so the sun can get pretty draining, especially in the afternoon. So everyone is competing for little patches of shade.

If we cruised out of Ravenna again, I'd consider flying into Bologna. For our cruise a few weeks ago, we flew into Rome because we didn't find a better option (for our situation) to fly into Bologna. But we did research various options for flying into Bologna. I can't speak to the connection from Bologna airport but it's an easy connection from Bologna Centrale as there are hourly (nice/modern) commuter trains (no reserved seats) to Ravenna for 8e per person. Bologna itself is nice too; worthy of at least a one or two night visit IMO.

+1 for visiting Bologna. We did an overnight there post cruise and really enjoyed it. Great food. Walkable core. Beautiful main square and other piazzas. Porticoes that provide reprieve from the sun and rain. Way less crowded than Florence and Rome where we went to on our next legs.

I didn't think Zakythos was that bad of a port of call. However, I don't think we made the most of our day. Our ship (X Connie) arrived to Zakynthos at 9am and we were on land by 10am. We did not hustle to get our tender tix and ended up with tender tix 13. No problem getting on the initial tender waiting to get back to the ship around 4pm (last tender at 5pm). Our independent tour fell through before we got to Zakynthos because it didn't have enough people (min of 10). Originally, we weren't sure what to do in Zakynthos but we eventually settled on trying to at minimum see Shipwreck beach (yes, I knew it was closed and boats could only get so close) and the Blue Caves. We reached out to a tour company on the island after doing some research/google searches. A few others on the ship had also apparently reached out to them to do a tour. I don't think any were from my rollcall. For 75e pp, here's what they offered: - Transfer from the port to Agios Nikolaos - Speedboat tour to Shipwreck bay for pictures - Swim stop in a beautiful Blue Lagoon Agios Andreas - Swim stop in the Blue caves - Quick snack in the harbor of Agios Nikolaos - Local road side market - Bochali the village above Zante Town for a panoramic view over Zante Town Itinerary would be dependent on how fast everyone got off the ship. Minimum 10 guests (which we obviously did not meet) and maximum 19 guests. Lessons learned: I should have gotten a quote sooner and posted it on the roll call to see if anyone else was interested. If back in Zakynthos, I'd likely try this tour company again as their responses to me were timely and detailed. PM me if you want the name of the company. I just don't want to post it, in order to be mindful of the CC rule of not recommending a tour if you haven't been on it. Alternatively, I'm sure you can reach out to one of many tour companies on Zakynthos to provide a similar itinerary. We were also thinking about renting a car or trying to take a bus up to Agios Nikolaos to find a tour on the spot since most of the tours visiting Shipwreck Beach and the Blue Caves leave from there. There was one guy offering a tour a the marina but we didn't investigate it in more detail. Before arriving in Zakynthos, a couple dining beside us in the MDR said they were doing a tour around the entire island. I didn't clarify but I don't think it was around the whole island but likely similar to the tour listed above due to time limitations. Post Zakynthos, they said they loved their tour. They enjoyed Shipwreck Beach even from afar. It helped that since the beach was closed, there were far fewer boats along the exclusion line. Went to the Blue Caves. Got to swim and see fish and turtles. (Person at another table beside us just did a simple day and rode the tourist fun train around town.) We on the other hand, ended up first walking along Al. Roma street which was a nice street. We then went to the bus station and caught a bus to Laganas Beach. The beach was long and beautiful but the town itself is a tourist beach town that is seemingly overrun by 20somethings. 😆😆 In addition to a good number of eateries and some touristy shopping, a lot of businesses catering to the party scene. We did eat a small lunch/snack at one place and it adequate. For us, we likely would not go to Laganas Beach again. Glad we went but we're not huge beach people. But if you are looking for a nice beach day, I think it could be a good option. Lots of restaurants renting chairs and umbrellas for between 7-15e IIRC. It's very touristy though and everything that comes along with that. Lesson learned: We caught the bus at the bus station but it also picks up passengers by the Church of Agios Dionysios along the waterfront road and is easily identified by the bell tower beside it. Lesson learned: The bus back to Zantetown may arrive and leave sooner than scheduled so get to the bus stop early!

We found the stretch of Al. Roma street (aka Alexander Roma) between the Metropolitan Church of Agios Nikolaos on Kapodistriou street and Tzoulatou street a nice walking district with shops and eateries, though we didn't stop to eat nor buy anything. It's nicely paved/tiled though a few cars and motorbikes do traverse it. (We ended up grabbing a gyro pita at a place on the waterfront road with good reviews... it was meh.) Shopping was reasonably priced though. We were looking at various hats that were around 10e.

Just a follow-up on this thread. On google maps, the place where X Connie tendered to was Zakynthos Marina. If you search for that in Google Maps, it should pull up the point pretty close to where tenders land. No car rental options jumped out at us by the marina but we weren't looking very hard either.

We went to a number of these places last month during a local tourism challenge for industry staff (+1) and the best places IMO for a few hours with a tween is likely what you originally mention. Science World has a lot of hands on stuff and is easy to get to. The Aquarium has a lot of displays. Can easily spend a few hours at each of these. The Space Centre has a lot of displays with a few hands on and a theatre show. This city's museum is in the same building but the displays are likely more interesting for locals than tourists. Granville Island is a good choice too since it has waterpark, kids market, some live entertainment, and open areas for kids to roam. FlyOverCanada is a good option too but it's only a 25-30min overall experience (~15min ride/show) unless they have a double bill as mentioned. Many options I feel are probably more interesting for locals because of the type of displays or the timing might be tight.

I forget if I replied to this on another thread (because I have a bad habit of drafting a reply and forgeting to submit so apologies if I'm repeating myself) but while I didn't see any taxis when I poked my head out the balcony a few times on departure day, the cruise director did say there were limited taxis available (and therefore book a transfer with the ship... 🤔).

Thanks for correcting me! Sorry, I just saw and was offerred a water taxi ride in Fira's port to Oia and just made the leap that they would go in the opposite direction. Cannot say definitively if they will in Oia waiting for pax to go back.

IMO, the touristy part of Mykonos town is small enought that you can't really get lost but there are the occasional dead ends. One of the issues in the early part of the day is dodging the small trucks making deliveries. FWIW, what we do is walk in the general direction of the windmills. Knowing where the water is kind of helps keep our bearings. And the Fabrika bus station kind of marks the far boundary where we need to turn towards the water to head to the windmills. Fabrika bus station was a gong show when we went two weeks ago. People queuing for tix. People queuing for the buses. People cutting in line. 😠 Buses trying to park/back it in. Cars and scooters trying the weave through the queues. This trip we took a bus (1.80e pp) from Fabrika to Ornos Beach which was a quick ride (15min?) south of Mykonos town. The ride back was slightly longer (20min?) as it stopped at some of the other beaches along that stretch. It has beach chairs, umbrellas, restaurants, and nice views. Pretty much all the beach is seemingly spoken for so you pretty much need to rent a chair if you want to sit on the beach. We were going to take a water taxi to Paradise Beach to beach hop a bit but they wanted 15e per person one way or 20e for a day pass so we just stayed at Ornos. Some locals were frolicking on the sandy area on the eastern part of harbour (Paralia Chora Mikonou?) but there are no facilities.

If I'm not mistaken, the all tenders to get back to the Celebrity ship are at the base of Fira, not Athenios port. If not going directly through Fira (and down the cable car / donkey path), I'm guessing you'd have to walk down to the harbour in Oia and take a water taxi back to the harbour at the base of Fira where the tenders are(??). EDIT: If there are tenders at Athenios port, maybe you can hire a water taxi from Oia?

Here's the placard in front of the HoHo bus. They were located in the parking lot in the port area a short walk from the ship.

We flew in and out of Rome for a cruise out Ravenna and trained it there and back. From our experience: For Rome to Ravenna, if booking a high speed train from Rome Termini station to Bologna Central, try to do so sooner than later to try to get a discounted fare. Seating is reserved. Note there are two major high speed operators: TrenItalia and Italo. We took TrenItalia there and Italo back and found them to be comparable. They have an English version of their website. We found Italo has some reps by their ticket machines at the stations to help travelers book. The train from Bologna Central to Ravenna is kind of a TrenItalia commuter train that seems to run hourly at a set price of 8e with no reserved seats. We initially had some problem finding all train times for this segment on the TrenItalia website so we just bought this ticket when we arrived in Rome. We found a Celebrity coach transfer to the port at the Ravenna train station starting at 11am. I'm assuming other lines would have something similar? +1 on the ease of a coach transfer offered by the ship from the port to Venice.

Just a quick follow up on this. FWIW, while I realize the original question relates to Asia, I'm just in the last few hours of using the Ubigi esim for my Italy-Greece trip/cruise and it performed well overall in all locations except one island (Zakynthos) where I needed to roam on my home carrier. Would buy again for an international trip.

I took a picture of the placard beside the HoHo bus but my phone *has stopped* letting me attach pictures to my posts for some reason (not enough memory error). We fly home late tomorrow so I'll try to dump the pics to my laptop (didn't bring it with me for the cruise) and load it from there. It shows frequency (every 25mins 8:30-4:30 on cruise days), the route, what the stops are, and a telephone number but no URL.

We went to Olympia but the only other option we were considering was the tourist fun train which has stops at Mercury Winery and Agios Andreas beach. There's a hop on hop off that apparently has 5 stops and loops to Pyrgos for 10e.

FWIW, Celebrity also offered a coach transfer from the port to Bologna train station for $34.95 and to Bologna airport for $44.95.

Assuming the question is re: going from the port (Porto Corsini) to Ravenna train station: FWIW, we just got off the "Celebrity shuttle" this morning which is obviously run by a contractor. I'm assuming it would be similar for RCL(??). We booked the last 9:30am shuttle and it left at 9:30am on time. They called our tag number around 9:10am. Need to find luggage. There's a risk you get stopped by Italian customs who were roaming included a sniffer dog and a check point but I'm guessing it's unlikely. We walked right through. There's obviously a risk that the bus needs to wait for stragglers. Our bus only took just over 10mins to go from the port to Ravenna station (whereas it took closer to 15min the other way). Note, our shuttle dropped us off in a parking lot on the back side of Ravenna train station so there's a short 2min walk to the stairs/elevator that leads you to the platforms. Had to wait for our luggage to be pulled from the belly of the coach bus as there were a number of cruisers taking this transfer. There was a bit of a line for the elevator which only can handle 2-3 people at a time with luggage. There aren't many stairs though; two flights. It's a small station so unlikely to get significantly lost/disorientated. If you need to buy train tickets, the machines are to the left around the corner of the ticket window. No line for the machines, they had an English option, and they took cash and card. Slight line for the ticket windows. We held off buying our tix to Bologna until at Ravenna since the route is an hourly (at x:45 intervals) commuter train so little risk of not getting on. We didn't risk for the 9:45am train but just waited a bit for 10:45am train in the cafe/McDonalds seating in the train station. Needed to remember to validate our tix. Platform for our train was was relatively easily identifiable from the screens. The train left on time at 10:45am. I think a 9:15am shuttle for a 9:45am train in Ravenna is possible but I wouldn't consider it plenty of time. Hope the description of my transfer gives you ideas where the potential choke points are if that's the direction you are going.

Definitely not a definitive answer but we didn't encounter or come across any obvious guides offering services at the train station or outside the entrances of either museums or the archeology site last week.

From my experience, a person was promoting 15E buses (return) to Olympia just outside the port gate which is within easy walking distance. However, it is far enough that someone we passed that had walking difficulties was taking about paying a taxi to take them the rest of the way from the gate to the gangway. The train was a 10-15min walk from our ship's gangway. Taxis are also available within the port IIRC. Not sure what you are referring to for skip the lines. A 12E ticket gets you access to the archeology museum, the archeology site, and the Olympic Games Museum. The archeology museum is relatively large with a number of rooms. The archeological site grounds is quite expansive. Saw many tour groups all over the place. The Olympic museum has many rooms but there are some relatively narrow halls so I can see it getting congested. We did not have problems entering any of the three places. Side note, the circuit seems like it can be done in two directions depending on which direction you head: archeology museum-archeology site-Olympic museum or vice versa. The Olympic museum is kind of uphill.

We did it after sunset in 2016 during a fall month to catch our last tender because the line was so long. We kind of ran down. Very dark and hard to see with mainly the light from our cell phones. YMMV depending on the amount of moonlight which we had some but not a lot of. Had quite a few slight slips but no falls. Good in that the path was empty and we didn't have to avoid other people and donkeys. Less smelly because the donkeys had long finished for the day. For comparison, we decided to take the donkey path down a few days ago because the queue for the cable car was insane. I was somewhat surprised by the number of people taking the donkey path down but I'm guessing many were in a rush to catch the last tender for one of earlier arriving ships. This time we slowed it down due to the shear number of people, donkeys still taking people up, and quite a bit of donkey pooh. It took us roughly 30 mins to get down this time. For context, while I thought we were still pretty quick, a few younger folks passed us. A lot of elderly but nimble/mobile folks were walking down too, taking their time. However, the missus doesn't want to do the donkey path again. We still found it somewhat slippery because of various smooth stones. We both slipped a bit a few times (even tho I was wearing hikers; she wore runners). She also really hated the smell, mainly from the ammonia-like urine, and gagged a few times whereas I could tolerate it and made various washroom jokes. 😃

Just back on the ship and couldn't wait to report on our fricken sketchy situations today both ways! 😀 On the way out of the port area some taxi drivers were telling us that the metro wasn't running today. So we just told them we were taking the bus which were obviously running since we could see them go by. Of course we found the metro running when we got to station. Those jerks! 🙃. On the way back, we got targeted by pickpockets! Even bigger jerks! 😄 Just before on the return metro, the missus gave me crap for not immediately moving away from a group she suspected were pickpockets. Personally I didn't think they were but she's more cautious. The main story begins while we were waiting for the #843 (or another line that Google maps was telling us) outside the metro station to take us back to the ship. Some guy comes very near us for no reason and then moves away. He must have been sussing us out, confirming we were tourists. He's so noticeable because he stuck his hands down his pants to scratch his butt for an extended period and then walks away. 🙄 #843 finally arrives. We line up to get in a set of doors second to the back. A lot of people are getting out there so we switch to the far rear doors. We get on and are immediately surrounded by Mr Buttscratcher and two girls who would not move so we could go to another part of the near empty bus which obviously starts setting off alarm bells. Any time I'm in a crowded situation, my default position is to back up against a wall and have my arms along my side with my hands covering my pockets so I can feel my phone and wallet. Mr Buttscratcher starts constantly elbowing my arm (gag, he's touching me 🤮) to make me move my hands. FU buddy, these hands are not moving. The missus beside me defaults to having her purse secured under her arm with her other hand providing a second lever of support (with nothing of value in her pant pockets). The girls, all the while smiling/laughing, were trying force her to walk through them so they could grab at her but she wouldn't take the bait. Dude eventually moves aside knowing we're not fish and provides a lane to seats. And they all get off at the next stop. Oi vey! Anyways, we love DIY and using public transportation but obviously got to be on the ball for crap like this!

We had five large ships in port a few days ago and it was crowded like nuts in Fira and Oia as were the buses to and from. 7:00am MSC Opera, 8:00am Costa Pacifica, 9:00am Celebrity Constellation, 1:30pm Norwegian Gem, and 4:30pm Celestyal Olympia. We've only been in Santorini during the fall shoulder season with maybe one other ship in port. This experience made us agree that we don't want to visit Santorini during high season. On a positive note, fortunately Athenios was not out of commission on our day and we were able to jump on Connie's first tender at 9am (and it left with quite a few empty seats?!?, even though they called tender tix 1-4 initially. Be ready to go people!) We were in the cable car queue by 9:15am starting about by the ATM just past the tents. We got to the ticket booth by 9:30am. And were up in Fira by 9:40am.

We just visited Ephesus yesterday via Kusadasi using Ephesus Shuttle. It's actually our third time using them over the years and we've had a good to excellent experience each time. This time we did Ephesus again (of course) but decided to tack on the Virgin Mary House for the first time to change it up even though we think it might be a tourist trap. It was a few dollars more and we just wanted to go for a bit of a drive to see the views as the location is on a hill. For us, I wouldn't consider it a must see but I'm happy we went as it met our expectations. YMMV of course. They also include a stop at the Artemis temple ruins which mainly consists of a single column now so it's kind of a short stop. The guides we've had have always been very friendly and this time was no exception. However, he was a bit more chatty on the ride with explanations than we would have liked. It's kind of roulette on which guide you get. As mentioned by others, their group sizes are small. We only had three couples on this tour but previous tours were also small. They seem to be flexible with some free time. We were asked if we wanted to go to a shopping area or see some kind of leather demonstration. Group said no, so we didn't go which was nice to have the option versus being forced.