Any Opinions About the Mediterranean Itinerary for QM2?

[sfvoyager]

I know I am excited about sailing on the QM2, but I am not sure about the itinerary for the Mediterranean.

 

I always thought a Mediterranean cruise would be the Greek Isles, Istanbul and Venice. Never gave a whole lot of thought to Gibraltar, Vigo and Lisbon.

 

Any thoughts from more veteran travellers in this region?

[jbailey]

I think what you want is an Eastern Mediterrean cruise. Because all Cunard cruises leave from Southampton, they tend to visit ports in the entire Mediterrean and don't focus on just the eastern portion. (I just checked the itineraries online.)

 

What you probably want to do is find a cruise line whose ships sail from Venice or Rome and go entirely in the eastern Mediterrean. I heartily recommend HAL and Rotterdam in particular, especially if you can go slightly off season, which I did last May.

 

In my opinion, must see ports are, in order, Santorini, Rhodes (Lindos), Dubrovnik, and Kusadasi (Epheseus). I was not impressed with Athens and the Acropolis because of the crowds. One thing you should know if that that part of the world is extremely crowded during summer. Our cruise left Venice on May 9 and if I had to do it over again, I would have taken the late April cruise and some ports were already getting busy.

 

In a couple of years or as soon as I can afford it, I plan to return to Santorini, Rhodes, and Dubrovnik, which were all wonderful places, and spend more time. Santorini is easily the most beautiful place on earth, yet Cunard apparently doesn't go there.

[sfvoyager]

Thank you for the reply! Royal Carribean's Brilliance of the Seas hits the ports you speak of, and seems to be a nice ship in spite of its current controversy.

 

The ports you describe sound wonderful, and they go in late September, early October. What is your opinion of that ship, and the timing for those ports?

[ocngypz]

Check out Celebrity Galaxy's 11 night sailings rt from Rome. Perfect eastern Med itinerary... and you get to fly into and out of Rome!