CruiseCat99

Sounds like you had a great trip:)…..I remember when I went to Ephesus. It was back in 2012 and I was blown away...…...it really is an amazing place. I might have missed it but did you go to the Terrace Houses?

 

Sorry about your cat as well.

 

Thanks for sharing your trip with us.:)

Yes, we did the Terrace Houses

Last day/night in Athens before we head home tomorrow. We had “skip the line” tickets for the Acropolis and we were there by 8:11am this morning. Perfect timing as much of the tours hadn’t begun. The light was perfect for photographs and the temperature light with a nice breeze. It was breathtaking. We had contemplated not going up, but that would have been a huge mistake. The walk is not at all difficult. From the South entrance, the walk is pleasant. One area was paved but a little steep. It was maybe 30 yards long. There are benches and shade everywhere and plenty to look at on the way up. The views and sites to behold are truly amazing.

After a few hours we walked down and found a cafe for a coffee and crepe. We found a shoe store and replaced the horrid shoes that I had bought that had been giving me problems all trip.

I didn’t mention it, but my feet have been killing me because BOTH pair of shoes I bought for this trip (and yes, they were supposed to be sensible walking shoes) did not have thick enough soles for the types of walking we did on this trip. My feet felt 100% better with better shoes.

We explored more of the Plaka and found a cafe for a light lunch. I don’t remember the name, but it was just to the North of the place we ate last night. We had mussels in wine and garlic sauce.

We explored some more and then went back to the room for a rest before dinner.

Dinner was at Athens Gate Hotel Reataurant. I knew the food reviews were terrible, but we did not go here for the food, we went for the view. We had a reservation right at sunset. We stayed until it was fully dark and the Acropolis was gleaming. I took some pretty good photos with my DSLR camera. The food was truly terrible, but the wine was good and the views were worth the €70 dinner we didn’t eat!!

As much as we felt mixed about Athens, we had some amazing moments and saw things that my husband and I have learned about, dreamed about, and studied since we were both children. We don’t regret this trip at all!

It is a shame that Athens is having the troubles it is having. Without the graffiti everywhere, it would be even more of a beautiful place. Without the rudeness people might stay longer or be willing to come back.

We will probably come back to Greece, but not this area. We have fulfilled our bucket list in this area and feel we have seen what we came to see, ate what we wanted to eat, and experienced what we wanted to experience. We may include Kalamata or Nafplion in future travels, maybe different islands. If a cruise includes Greece, then all the better.

Once we are home and settled, I may post some pictures if I can figure out how to work it.

Good night!!!

Cruise cat were you on a cruise that visited Chios and Kalamata? Both are places I’d like to visit.

 

We head to Greece again next week!

Yes. Our cruise started in Venice, then to Koper, Slovenia. Havr Croatia, Kalamata Greece, Santorini, Mykonos, Kusadasi Turkey, Chios Greece, Nafplion Greece, and ended in Athens.

On my recent Silversea cruise, our passports were take. Upon checkin a d returned when we disembarked. We visited Italy, Solvenia, Croatia, Greece, Turkey, and ended in Greece. No passport the whole time....

We had a lovely time in Kalamata and Nafplion, and loved Santorini. There are aspects of Greece we enjoyed on this trip. However, not enjoying Athens outside of the amazing historical sites and museums. We didn’t really like Turkey, again except for the historical sites, and were just discussing last night that Turkey felt safer than Athens (the part we were in).

We did not care for Mykonos, and would have like Chios better if we had booked a different tour. It appeared beautiful from our bus view...

That is good to know Stumblefoot. Perhaps the difference was in where you were staying.

We are staying in the heart of the Plaka, and this is where we feel the most comfortable. It is actually up by the square and heavy vehicle traffic areas that we are not enjoying at all.

Hello

Thank you very much for your detailed report. I will board Silver Whisper in 3 months (first time aboard Silversea) just after her extensive drydock. In the frame of the invictus project, have you already noticed some enhancements in terms of service? For example do they resume serving caviar and champagne for free? Thanks in advance.

 

 

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We looked for this and did not see it offered, however we did not ask specifically.

Terry,

We are mixed on our enjoyment of Athens. We enjoy being in the Plaka, not so much anywhere else. Yesterday we walked to Constitution Square and watched the noon changing of the guards. It was so hot and so crowded. There were police everywhere, but we did not feel safe. My husband is retired law enforcement with over 50 years in the field. He was very on edge. We kept waiting for someone to drive a car into a crowd or something else awful to happen. We left before it was finished. We don’t speak Greek, but both of us are trained in reading body language. (I’m a psychologist, with a forensics specialty.) The police here are on edge, and it is not a good sign. They walk and drive in 3’s, and military are also always around and heavily armed. There is anti-state, anti-police grafiti everywhere. There are people sending their children begging everywhere. Most likely refugees. They send their small children into bars and restaurants, even in the heart of the Plaka. It is sad, but also unnerving. I would call Athens anything but safe and comfortable right now. We will both be glad to get home in 2 days.

This morning we walked to the New Acropolis Museum. It is beautiful and definitely worth spending a few hours. It houses the originals from the Acropolis, as much of what you see at the top is replicas. We were amazed at how close you can get to everything.

After that, we took a taxi to the Archaeological museum. Again, amazed at the experience. This place is huge. I’m afraid my feet wore out before my eyes did. After, we tried to get a taxi back, and several drivers turned us down! Finally we found someone to take us. Traffic is awful! We have found people outside of the Plaka area to be very rude, pushy, and dismissive. We try not to be “tourist“ despite what we are, we even greet people in Greek and ask if they speak English....

Anyway, after we got back, we rested our feet and then wondered around to find the place to get tickets and enter the Acropolis tomorrow. We had dinner at Estia Taverna. It was lovely, right across the street from the rooftop theater. After, we bought water and beer, “supplies”, as the hubby says, just seconds from the apartment. We enjoyed olives and wine on our balcony. We discussed how different this part of Athens is from 3 streets over. We are both glad we have come and have seen these wonderful artifacts of important world history, but we both agreed that we won’t come back to Athens again.

Overall impressions:

The ship has some signs of age, but it is scheduled for dry dock soon. Nothing took away from the experience. We had a vista suite, the first time I have ever cruised without a veranda. Honestly, I didn’t miss it. I wondered if I would, but with the port intensive cruise and not utilizing it at all on my last cruise, our suite was just fine. The money we didn’t spend on the veranda was well spent on the excursions and the experiences we had instead.

Some nice touches to note in the suite: The alarm clock had a wireless charging pad on the top that was compatible with my iPhone 8, and that freed up a plug. Plenty of hangers in the closet. The on demand movies were nice, but there was a distinct lack of television programming unless you wanted news channels. We prefer to unwind with a tv show or comedy at night, so we did miss that a bit.

The Complementary WiFi was sufficient for my needs. Mostly I was posting here, or checking maps and weather.

The entertainment on board was not good. After the first few nights, we stopped staying up for the shows. Even the resident pianists were lacking in talent. Again, I am biased because of my musical training, but there was just no enthusiasm or passion in any of the music on board. Also a lack of depth and phrasing from all the performers. Phrasing is something that makes music tell a story, and it wasn’t present. Anyway, again, not a reason we cruise, so didn’t detract from our enjoyment.

The food was very good. Surprisingly, one of the best meals was in the Restaurant. The 34 day dry aged beef was wonderful when it was offered. My only wish was that the menus changed more frequently in La Terraza.

We never ventured out of the suite for breakfast, having coffee and a light breakfast is preferred for us, especially since we almost always had an early morning tour.

The Spa: I had a massage that was three times as expensive as at home, and not really as well done. You pay for the experience and location. I always am a sucker for this, and always feel let down after. I guess I need to learn this lesson a few times! The hard sell is annoying, even when I made it clear I wasn’t interested.

After the initial bumps and adjustment, service onboard improved dramatically. The CD was Adam, and he was always around and doing a fine job making sure everyone was having a good time.

Will we book Silversea again? Most likely. We are not sure when or where, but there are several new itineraries that appeal to us.

Any questions, and I will be happy to try to answer.

Yes, was there on September 11th, and we took the cable car up and found Skyline Travel. Amazing day and less than half the price of our quotes for a pre-arranged tour that we declined before leaving home. We saw more too!

See my full review on the Silversea boards under “Live from the Whisper”.

Recommend Panos as a driver. He was fun and informative.

We made it off the ship and had no trouble getting a taxi into Athens today. We have rented an apartment looking up to the Acropolis in the Plaka neighborhood. We will be here for 4 nights.

Disembarkation was easy. We had coffee in our room this morning. My only complaint was they turned off the TV at 7:00am and WiFi at 9:00am, but we did not have to leave our rooms until 8:39 am and were not called to exit the ship until 9:3am.

I’ll post over all impressions a little while later. We are just settling into our apartment.

Thanks JP! Enjoying your report as well. We are usually very independent and book our own tours, but this was the first time in Europe, so we felt a little out of our league. Now that we are more experienced, we will know for next time.

Nafpilon, Greece

Today was another early start. We were tendered, and met for our tour in the show lounge. We boarded the bus to the Theater of Epidurious. This was a spectacular theater to see. Then we went in to the citidal of Mycenaean, and under the famous Lions Gate. Again, too much time standing, listening to the guide, and not enough time to actually enjoy the sites. If we ever come back, we will book private tours or go on our own. Again, we had taken extensive courses to study the history and information of each site we visited on this cruise, so we may be biased by this. In Mycenae, we ditched the guide halfway and went to the top on our own. We wouldn’t have been able to do that if we had stayed with the tour. We did make it back down and rejoin the tour without being disruptive or late, as we were the first back on the bus! We just didn’t need to stand at one spot for 20 minutes in the sun to hear infomation we had studied extensively.

The tour also stopped at the dome tomb which is impressive. On the way back, we had a 30 minute stop at a lovely hotel for drinks.

The port town is beautiful. We enjoyed the shops and beautiful streets. We had an authentic Greek lunch with the locals. The man seemed surprised I didn’t speak Greek! We found an Ozuo shop and bought a small bottle that we enjoyed back at the ship.

We slowly made our way back to the ship, and made the sad effort to pack.

Our vacation doesn’t end, as we have 4 days in Athens. However, it is always sad when the cruise ends.

We had a pretty awful tour yesterday in Chios, Greece. Several others on the tour were also displeased, and we heard one man giving the shore concierge desk a tongue lashing!! We have already voiced our displeasure, but feel what we paid for the tour was way too much for what we received, and when we complained, the girl at the desk looked at us with a blank stare....

Any advice? We leave the ship tomorrow. Everything else has been great, and on a 10 day cruise we had one really bad tour. All the others were great. We spent over $2000 on tours alone..... :confused:

Thank you as well, Cruise Cat.

I will look into Skyline.

We have been considering Chara as a personal guide, but Skyline def. is a better rate.

Decisions, Decisions...

If you go with Skyline, build yourself a bit of extra time. The rate is about 50€ per hour, and if traffic is bad, factor in a bit more time than you think. It will be worth the extra cost. Then if you decide to stay somewhere a little longer, you will be fine. I got the impression the drivers cannot just “add time” on a whim. Our time was perfect but when I asked about extending time at one stop, it seemed to make the driver a bit nervous about sticking to the first agreed upon schedule.

Remember the good old days when they didn't charge for the evening concert at Ephesus?

I don’t, but at $249 a pop, they are making bank on it!!!

We hired Skyline Travel once we were at the top, and our driver, Ponos was great! We had 4.5 hours of touring. We paid 220€ For just the 2 of us in a large air conditioned van. We saw the red and black beaches, tasted 10 wines at Santos Wines, went to the monostary (highest point), had a few hours in Oia, and ended back in Fira.

Excellent tour, good price, and I would do it over again and again!

Was there on September 11th. Our small 300ish pax ship and a large 3000ish pax ship. we got off the tender and were told 2 hour wait. There was no line for the cable car, so we took it up and eventually made our way to Oia.

We survived Turkey. For a full report, check out my “Live from the Whisper” thread on the Silversea boards.

We had 2 lovely tours, but honesty, I never felt completely safe, even with armed guards visible everywhere.

Having Ephesus on my bucket list, and now having the experience as well as the evening concert there, I’m not sure I would want to come back. Our first tour guide was obviously trying to give a positive PR speech for the country. It fell flat when we got off the bus and were immediately rushed by very pushy men trying to forcefully sell their goods. I found that they were more likely to leave me alone and take “no” for an answer when my husband was by my side.

The 2nd Guide was more honest about the “terrible messy situation”—her own words. I was afraid for her, as she might get arrested, or worse, if she keeps openly speaking like that and talking about the “horrible” mistakes the government has made and how it is “ruining” tourism, and “that’s all we have left besides rugs!” (She was delightful and funny as well.)

So, while we had a good time, I think only time will tell as to what will happen with the situation in Turkey.

Chios, Greece.

We were up early again this morning for the Chios panorama tour. We were only in port until 1:00pm, so it was hard to fit in the many options. The tour description stated we would be visiting the Homer stone where are the poet Homer taught and passed on his famous stories that turned into the Iliad and the Odyssey. The tour also stated we would visit a citrus plantation and end at a library that was famous for its collection of books and art.

In reality, the Homer stone is a big rock up a few stairs with absolutely no mention of Homer anywhere. There used to be a temple to the goddess Artemis in the same location.

The citrus plantation was also a disappointment. We were taken to a beautiful location, herdedinside to watch a 20 minute video, and left to buy things in the gift shop. The video had its charm, but spent a good deal of time lamenting the loss of the old ways of harvesting citrus. There was so much potential here! They could have provided fruit to taste, walked us through the rows of citrus fruits, and talked to us instead of the video.

We waited and waited, and waited for our guide back at the bus. She finally came with an explanation that it takes a lot of time to make the Greek coffee she had ordered back at the shop.

Our final stop ended back by the ship where we had to navigate a very busy road up a hill to the library.

It was a dangerous walk, and we did not feel safe with the scooters wizzing by.

Here the library was small. They wanted us to store our bags in a staff room, and rather than do that, we opted to leave. I have no idea why this place is on a tour stop. The ladies at the library didn’t seem to know we were even coming!

We turned in our audio devices and made our way through town and back to the ship. We decided $99 each was way too much money for what we were offered here. We would have had a lovely time on the Chips Highlights tour or just on our own wondering the local shops.

Lesson learned.

Back on board I have scheduled a massage for later, mostly to help my aching feet! The hubby decided to do laundry before we pack up tomorrow.

We will have almost all clean clothes before our stop in Athens!!

I tried to post a review of the concert last night, but it didn’t seem to take.

Since our tour provided a late lunch, we skipped dinner. Dinner was offered at 5:30pm in The Restaurant for those people who want to dinner but had the early concert. We boarded the bus at 7:00 PM and headed back to Ephesus. When we arrived there was no one there lovely tables were set up with candles and we were served red and white wine with a mix of nuts. When the concert was ready to begin we were escorted to the theater. It was not the large amp a theater but the small theater that was used for Parliament. Cushions were provided and we were enchanted with that wonderful location and beautiful classical music for around an hour. Refills on our drinks were served at intermission. This tour was worth every penny as it truly was magical listening to music in an ancient location.

I would not hesitate to book this tour again.

Kusadasi, Turkey

We were loudly awoken this morning by our Butler bringing breakfast! Apparently we were asleep harder than expected. We ate a hearty breakfast as we had an all day tour of Ephesus. Our bus left at 8:45am and our first stop was to the Ephesus Museum. The statues and artifacts here are quite breathtaking. We had two guides with us, one was an actual archaeologist who has worked on the site. From there, we went to Ephesus. The tour was amazing and informative, however a bit long. My feet were already tired and the explanations and all the standing was draining. The hubby and I have studied Ephesus from home with The Great Courses as well as books and genuine interest. Perhaps because of this we felt the tour moved too slow for our pace. It was also hot, very hot.

About halfway through the tour, we entered the Terrace Houses. Beautiful and well worth the extra time. Most of our tour did not complete the climb inside due to fatigue.

Finally we had about 10 minutes to take photos of the library and walk to the amphitheater, which I felt was not enough time when we had spent so much time at the other places.

When I booked the tour, I remembered it being 5.5 hours and no lunch. However, we were already 5 plus hours in, and our guide announced he was going to take us for a traditional Turkish lunch. We went to a “local” place for a delicious lunch of starters, kebob, and local beer or wine. The food was delicious and we were all starving. After lunch, we drove back to the ship where we could opt for a carpet demonstration (sales pitch) if we wanted. We opted not to, as did most others. The tour ended for us at 4:00pm. That is way more than 5.5 hours, but a good tour none the less.

I am resting my feet as we have the concert in Ephesus tonight booked as well.

Our sympathies for the loss of your dear cat. We had a similar situation years back and we had to decide what to do from Hawaii. So sorry that this happened.

 

In the end we made the same decision you did, and felt terrible for not being there. I hope you find some comfort in your surroundings and it eases your pain just a little bit.

 

Enjoying your report otherwise - following along from Silver Wind here in the North Sea. The one time we visited Mykonos, we went to Delos and walked through the ruins.

 

Enjoy LT - we ate there 2 nights ago and it was great.

 

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Thank you for the sympathies. She will be so missed. We do regret not being there, but our kind vet assured us that she was probably unaware of her surroundings anyway...

We wanted to go to Delos, but between the delays due to the rough seas and our continued lack of energy (probably enhanced by our grief), we just were not up for it today.

CruiseCat99, Sending condolences on the death of your cat. We do get so close to our furry family members.

 

Interested to hear how crowded Mykonos has become. We were there 13 years ago and it was not crowded at all. Too many cruise ships?

Thank you for the condolences. She had been a member of my family for 19 years.

There were 3 large ships in port, 2 Royal Caribbean and a Costa ship, and then us.... plus all the ferries. Packed!

Mykonos, Greece

After a leisurely morning, we went to tender ashore. It was a bit choppy on the way over, with some people in the tenders getting wet! We tendered to the old town, and it was packed, wall to wall people.

We explored the narrow streets, found the old bakery and had a snack, and walked up to the Windmills. It was so windy that the sand was painful when it hit you. Many people lost their hats.

After winding through Little Venice we decided to go back to the ship. There were just too many people and too much wind to be enjoyable.

Many others must have felt the same way, as our tender back was full. We had a difficult time coming to the ship and were turned away twice while the ship was repositioned. The seas started rolling.

We had lunch on the pool deck, then headed back to nap and relax in the cabin. We heard from our vet and had to make the difficult but wise decision to end the suffering of our little girl cat. :loudcry: She was in heart failure. It was the kind thing to do. We had a toast of Scotch in her honor, shed some tears, and watched a movie. Sad moment for us.

As the afternoon went on, the seas churned more and more. We set sail at 6:00 on the dot! The Captain explained that we will probably have a rough time getting to Turkey tonight, and he wanted to give us as much time as possible to make it there smoothly. I took a motion sickness medication just in case.

We have dinner in La Terraza tonight. We have already decided to skip the show, a tribute to Andrea Bocelli. I love Andrea Bocelli, and cannot bear to hear a subpar rendition... so rather than be disappointed, we are opting for movie night in the suite. Anyone know if we can order popcorn???