Vista Photo Review: 10-night Mediterranean Cruise from Athens to Barcelona

[sailawaybellaluna]

Sailawaybellaluna, thank you so much for taking time to do this review. I'm glad you're family had a great time and I'm really looking forward to seeing the Dailies and to our 1st Med cruse in Sept.

Thank you again! :-)

~~ Diane

 

Thanks for reading along! I'll work on getting those uploaded today!

[JaniceB]

Your photos are awesome. What great excursion you found in Ephesus.

[lhuggi1]

I'm taking this cruise in September. I'm living through your beautiful review until then. Thank you so much for sharing with us.

[sailawaybellaluna]

Hello all,

 

Thanks for reading along...I hope you are finding some of the information useful. I didn't take many photos of the ship, but if there are any specifics I can help answer, please let me know!

 

Here are the dailies from our day in Rhodes!

 

Again, I'd encourage you to pick and choose a couple of ports on your cruise to take it easy and DIY it. There is just so much to see and do everyday, and if the weather is hot, you may get worn out a little sooner rather than later. Rhodes is such a beautiful place to relax and soak it all in, without rushing around to try and see/do/learn about everything! Just my $0.02.

 

 

 

 

[sailawaybellaluna]

We were so happy to have a day at sea on our brand new ship!

 

At this point, we had already been traveling for 8 days (since we stayed in Greece for several days before boarding the ship), so we were ready for a little break!

 

We started everyday with room service, and this day was no different! A note about the room service breakfasts: they're just not that great or plentiful. :rolleyes: I found it was good to get our coffee/OJ/milk delivered via room service, but go up to deck 10 and get proper food to bring back to our cabin and eat on our balcony. And a note on the coffee: I feel it has gotten slightly better...but still not great. I continue to take my mini coffee creamers on the ship to make it more palatable.

 

Anyhow, one thing I was really looking forward to today was Tea Time. However, they didn't have it on the Vista! Such a bummer, as my mom and son and I always enjoy going to this during our sea days...

 

I laid out on the Serenity deck for a bit on this day while my husband and son went to the arcade. They seemed to enjoy it! A note about the serenity deck: they have a lovely salad bar called "Fresh Creations" which they open up for salads you create yourself. I loved this! (I also loved that the chefs are the ones spooning in all the ingredients and making the salads for you...because buffet germs make me a little :( ).

 

After I felt all nice and "serene", I was brought back to reality by taking my little boy on this:

 

 

Water slides are basically my nightmare. I hate tunnels in general, I'm very claustrophobic, and when you add water, I feel very :eek:

 

But my 6-year old had a wonderful time. There were no lines which was awesome. [sidenote: there weren't really any lines we encountered anywhere on the Vista, which was a nice change from the Breeze]. The yellow slide is MAJORLY fast, and seems way too intense for a child under 7 or 8 IMO. However, the height requirement is lower on this slide because it doesn't require a large tube to hold on to like the orange slide. The orange slide is multicolored inside. Let's just say, I went down each of them once and had to take motion sickness medication!

 

After we recovered from the water slide debacle, we decided to head up to Cucina del Capitano. While this is a $ (pay extra) restaurant, the pasta bar at lunchtime is free. It is located near the Mongolian Wok, and when we arrived for lunch, there was a big line. (Oops, I just said above we didn't encounter any long lines. This was the first). Anyhow, it turns out all of these people were actually waiting for the Mongolian Wok, so the hostess took us straight through to Cucina del Capitano.

 

It's a fun atmosphere in there. Lots of Carnival history with old photos of several ships, their captains, etc. You basically mark a little piece of paper with the type of noodle and sauce you want, and whether you'd like garlic bread as well.

 

I had the clam sauce and it was just okay. but the rest of my family really enjoyed their food!

 

 

...more to come!

[sailawaybellaluna]

In the afternoon while our little girl was napping, we cracked open a bottle of wine we had purchased at the winery in Turkey. I love that Carnival allows you to take a bottle of alcohol (per adult) in your carry-on bag when boarding the ship. However, we didn't do that this time because we were so overwhelmed with luggage/carseats/portable highchairs, etc. etc.

 

But in many ports we bought a bottle of wine, and had no problem taking it straight on to the ship! So, we were enjoying this Turkish wine today!

 

 

(And a little word of advice if you don't already do this: I always order proper wine glasses and a cork screw from Room Service. Usually like 4 - 6 glasses. Then, we pour a glass of wine and take it to dinner in the dining room. That keeps our costs down, and really, no one would know since the glasses are exactly the same as you would receive if ordering wine in the dining room or another bar elsewhere on the ship).

 

Ok...I must wake my baby from her nap and run to pick up my son from VBS...more later!

[sailawaybellaluna]

 

 

 

Tonight was formal night. I LOVE that they decided to do it on a Sea Day! I'm always perplexed with a cruise has SEVERAL days at sea, and they put the formal nights on port days!

 

The photographers were out and about in the atrium, with some pretty backdrops. There was a fun vibe on the ship, and people were dressed up and looking nice! My poor husband though...Lufthansa LOST his suitcase and he literally had NOTHING to wear for the ship. Thank goodness we had 4 nights prior in Athens...he was able to hit H&M and buy a new wardrobe, including a sports jacket to wear on the elegant evening. Unfortunately, our son's dress clothes were also in his suitcase, but I found his little shorts suit at H&M too and loved it! (Nearly one month since our departure, and still...no suitcase! If you can believe it, the kids' suitcase showed up in Athens completely SPLIT in half with clothes falling out. Someone had taped it all up. It was a new suitcase too! I loved flying Lufthansa in terms of the new A380-800 and the friendly flight attendants....but their baggage people! Yikes!)

 

We weren't really able to get ANY good family photos! Our best attempts:

 

 

 

The dinner in the Horizons dining room was very good! I had the lobster, and it was perfect! Unfortunately, I was dripping sweat in my brand new dress I had just ordered from Nordstrom the week before out trip...due to the "refrigeration" issues still prevalent in our little area. :p

Edited July 13, 2016 by sailawaybellaluna

[Froufie]

Anyhow, one thing I was really looking forward to today was Tea Time. However, they didn't have it on the Vista! Such a bummer, as my mom and son and I always enjoy going to this during our sea days...

 

Okay - that kind of freaked me out - until I saw your copy of the Fun Times above - if you check the 'food' page - under HUNGRY FOR MORE - you will see Teatime listed at 3 pm!!! :)

[sailawaybellaluna]

Okay - that kind of freaked me out - until I saw your copy of the Fun Times above - if you check the 'food' page - under HUNGRY FOR MORE - you will see Teatime listed at 3 pm!!! :)

 

Oh my goodness! You're absolutely correct!!! You know, I think on prior cruises it has always been listed in the afternoon section of the "what's happening" portion of the fun times. I think I'm still getting used to this new format!

 

Thanks for clarifying! Oh well, I guess I saved myself an extra 800 calories that day...:p

[sailawaybellaluna]

The next morning, we had a beautiful arrival into Valetta, Malta! I really enjoyed watching the ship come in to port this morning from my balcony! Hopefully this video will work, and you can get a glimpse of how beautiful it was!

 

 

 

 

You could tell...it was going to be a hot day!

 

Malta was port we had decided to take it easy. We didn't book any excursions, but had read a bit about some of the main sights on Malta, and had an idea of what we might like to do.

 

Upon getting off the ship, we decided to do the Hop on Hop off bus. Now, we NEVER do these buses! My parents love them! They have just never interested me before...

 

But after looking at the map of Malta, and seeing how spread out certain things of interest were, we decided to do it. Plus, I should mention, it is only 10 euros each and children are free. (That being said...my Egyptian father got a buy 3, get 1 free deal when he got off the ship later in the day with my mom, my brother, and his fiance). He's an expert negotiator! :p

 

More photos of Malta coming up...

[lilnoia]

And a note on the coffee: I feel it has gotten slightly better...but still not great. I continue to take my mini coffee creamers on the ship to make it more palatable.

 

Thank you for that tip. I'll be packing some creamers too!

 

By the way, I'm really enjoying your review. We're on the 9/23 sailing and taking our two kids (2 & 4) on their first cruise, so it's really great to see that it can be done (and enjoyed!) Did your son do Camp Carnival?

[Keith1010]

Nice review/report and photos.

 

Keith

[texasgirl29]

I'm stalling getting up and going to work this morning, more fun to armchair travel along on your cruise! Thanks for taking the time to post lots of photos.

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Forums mobile app

[scowat]

Loving the review so far... we're heading off on the same cruise from Tuesday and really looking forward to it.

 

Plenty of great pics and tips here :D

[sailawaybellaluna]

Thank you for that tip. I'll be packing some creamers too!

 

By the way, I'm really enjoying your review. We're on the 9/23 sailing and taking our two kids (2 & 4) on their first cruise, so it's really great to see that it can be done (and enjoyed!) Did your son do Camp Carnival?

 

You know, he didn't. In fact, this was his 10th cruise (:eek:), and we've never put him in the kids club! I don't have anything against it, and I'm sure the facility and staff are lovely! I guess this was such a busy cruise that during our downtime, we enjoyed just chilling and being together. I should add, I'm also really intense about leaving my kids with anyone except my parents, and even then, I'm still intense! :eek: I'm working on chilling a bit because my daughter exhausts me! Ha.

[sailawaybellaluna]

Loving the review so far... we're heading off on the same cruise from Tuesday and really looking forward to it.

 

Plenty of great pics and tips here :D

 

Thank you! You'll have the best time!

 

And, thank you Keith1010 and Texasgirl29 for reading along as well!

[sailawaybellaluna]

So, where did I leave off...

 

Yes, we were on the Hop On Hop Off bus. Big mistake. Don't do it!

 

There are two companies: Sightseeing in Malta I believe and something like Malta Sightseeing. They both have almost the same logo. But your ticket is only good for one of them. Which means....you do a lot of waiting for your actual bus to come by. And when it does, it's old and rickety and the driver may or may not YELL at people the way ours did. Like YELLING. Not a great ad for the Malta tourism board. (But to be fair, NO ONE was waiting in line and it was making me crazy. So I probably would've been yelling too if I were driving that hot bus without any a/c!).

 

Anyhow, we got off our bus in Mdina. It is a beautiful walled city up on a hill, and currently has less than 300 residents! It feels a bit like a ghost town! Especially since we arrived there quite early...It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, so it is very special to walk through. However, I will say there isn't a "ton" to do there. Just relax in a nice restaurant and take in the views, history and architecture.

 

Here's a pic as we were approaching Mdina (see, sometimes it pays to sit on the very top of the Hop on Hop off bus, getting melanoma from the sun, in order to get these kind of vacation pics you can't get from the window!):

 

 

And some scenes from within the walled city:

 

(Note: the second pic below shows the entrance/sign for a lovely little restaurant with a shaded courtyard where you can have tea. We would have eaten there but they don't begin serving food until noon, and we were starving from our coffee and Raisin Bran room service!)

 

 

 

We really haven't mastered the art of the selfie stick like everyone else on vacation in Europe...so this was my attempt at a family photo using the stroller to prop up my phone with the timer!

 

 

 

More to come...

[sailawaybellaluna]

The ship terminal in Malta had some decent duty free shopping. It's along a wharf with several fun restaurants too! Worth having a look...

 

Anyhow, we bought a couple of bottles of local Maltese wine here before heading back to the ship. Again, no issues getting these on board and through security (and we made no effort to hide them).

 

A few glimpses of our ship docked!

 

 

 

More to come...

[sailawaybellaluna]

If you're needing some $$$, I should mention there is an ATM right as you are walking down to the the ship's terminal in Valetta.

 

There were also two ATMs on board: one that dispensed US dollars and one that dispensed Euros. However, our Bank of America ATM card (with chip) would not work in either. It couldn't even connect in order to do a balance inquiry. Nothing. So, FYI.

 

Assuming you have no problem using the ATMs onboard, the service fee was 6 euros (plus whatever fees your bank may or may not charge)...

[JaniceB]

Your children are adorable, enjoying your review.

[grandmacani]

Such beautiful pictures you've posted. Your time doing this is very much appreciated. We are doing the Last med cruise and are just soaking up every bit of information we can. Thanks.

[hockeyguru32]

Hello all,

 

Thanks for reading along...I hope you are finding some of the information useful. I didn't take many photos of the ship, but if there are any specifics I can help answer, please let me know!

 

Here are the dailies from our day in Rhodes!

 

Again, I'd encourage you to pick and choose a couple of ports on your cruise to take it easy and DIY it. There is just so much to see and do everyday, and if the weather is hot, you may get worn out a little sooner rather than later. Rhodes is such a beautiful place to relax and soak it all in, without rushing around to try and see/do/learn about everything! Just my $0.02.

 

 

 

Do you know why they are charging for shows now? Fees for a Deck Party and Variety Show? Or could it be a Carnival favourite

Edited July 14, 2016 by hockeyguru32

[sailawaybellaluna]

Hello all,

 

Thanks for reading along...I hope you are finding some of the information useful. I didn't take many photos of the ship, but if there are any specifics I can help answer, please let me know!

 

Here are the dailies from our day in Rhodes!

 

Again, I'd encourage you to pick and choose a couple of ports on your cruise to take it easy and DIY it. There is just so much to see and do everyday, and if the weather is hot, you may get worn out a little sooner rather than later. Rhodes is such a beautiful place to relax and soak it all in, without rushing around to try and see/do/learn about everything! Just my $0.02.

 

 

 

Do you know why they are charging for shows now? Fees for a Deck Party and Variety Show? Or could it be a Carnival favourite

 

No charge for those things. The asterisk with the star just denotes that it is a "Carnival favorite"! :)

[JaniceB]

Had me worried for a minute about additional charges, happy to hear it is a favorite.

[rjdcruises4fun]

I am loving your review and enjoying the photos. We are doing a cruise in January with a lot of the same ports. We maybe a little cooler than you guys are since it is in January. Thanks again for taking the time to review. I love exploring the ports beforehand through other's perspective.

Rachel