Review of Reflection Eastern Mediterranean June 23, 2014

[gordylad]

we took turkish lira and used it to pay into the Topkapi Palace. We also got a taxi back to the ship and the driver said he would take any currency money was money.....

[TexSea]

Hi, Great review so far. We're on this cruise in August..CANNOT wait!

One question, did you get Turkish Lira for Istanbul?

Did you bring it with you of change it locally?

Maybe you used euros?

 

As yet, i've not sorted any.:confused:

 

I did get lira beforehand because I wasn't sure if we'd need it right away or not. If I had to do it over again, I would wait until I got there to get money from an ATM.

 

I noticed Euros were accepted many places with an exchange rate posted if you wanted to use them.

[Tommy3putts]

Euros or lira accepted. Agree to use ATM.

[TexSea]

Here's a short video I took of the bubble boy at Liquid, held in the Solarium the night before Kusadasi.

 

[YOUTUBE]mYYwu4eXovA[/YOUTUBE]

 

 

[TexSea]

I've scanned the Celebrity Today dailies from the trip and uploaded the PDF to my Dropbox.

 

You can download the PDF file at https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/67289472/ReflectionEasternMed2014.pdf.

 

Still working on the rest of the review...

[cynbar]

We are on this cruise in the Fall. Tommy3putts do you know if Mykonos is always a docked port with the Reflection now?

Thanks in advance for the answer.

 

We were on the May 23rd cruise. Reflection was listed as tendering in Mykonos. An announcement was made the day before that we would dock instead, but then we ended up tendering anyway. So, apparently it is hard to predict! Tendering wasn't bad at all, it took us right to the edge of the village, I hear that the dock is a couple miles away.

[TexSea]

Here are some of the Blu dinner menus in PDF. Not the best quality of pics now that I see them on my computer, but I think it gives an idea of what to expect.

 

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/67289472/BluMenus2.pdf

[drarill]

I've scanned the Celebrity Today dailies from the trip and uploaded the PDF to my Dropbox.

 

You can download the PDF file at https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/67289472/ReflectionEasternMed2014.pdf.

 

Still working on the rest of the review...

 

Thanks for the dailies!!:):)

[bvocruise]

I appreciate the great review and look forward to sailing on the same itinerary next May.

[TexSea]

Now for a short review about the ports and what we did. I highly recommend Rick Steve's Mediterranean Port Guide as he gives very reasonable expectations on what to see in such a short time in each port.

 

Transfers...We used Rome Cabs for all of our transfers and they handled most everything really well. During our Roll Call-orgainzed transfer to the port they were over 20 minutes early to pick us up, the first of three pickups. Well, that made the other pickups early and not everyone was ready. The driver wanted to leave but I had to pretend to look for a phone number in order to give the others time to get down. Fortunately it all worked out. I definitely, without reservation, recommend them though.

 

Santorini...After much reading and discussion on the Roll Call we decided to do the ship's excursion that included the winery. We did this in order to be among the first off the ship and not have to wait in line for tender tickets or the cable cars. We later learned that some people waited up to two hours in line to go up via the cable cars, with only three other ships in port. The first stop in Oia was short, just over an hour. For some reason we were in a major shopping mood and would have liked longer. Walking around and discovering the fantastic views was fun, if a bit crowded. The winery had great views, with a couple of decent wine choices. Though I have never seen people attack a plate of cheese cubes as I did when we got off the bus. We were dropped off in Thira to make our own way back down on the cable cars. We did more shopping and had an early dinner at a nice restaurant, Naoussa http://www.naoussa-restaurant.com, recommended to us by an art gallery owner in town. The tomato balls and octopus were delicious! Our waiter was quite the character, asking us to apologize to the feta we dropped on the floor. People were lining up along the water views waiting for the sunset. We were worried about the time and decided to make our way to the cable cars. Besides, nothing beats a Texas sunset. The line to go down on the cable car was pretty long but ended up only taking about 30 minutes.

 

 

 

Octopus!

 

Istanbul...Wow, what a city. We toured the sites on our own and it was very easy. Our big mistake was walking from the port to the Hagia Sophia area - it was hot and up hill. We purchased the Museum Pass from the nearby parked vans for skip-the-line admission to Hagia Sophia and the Topkapi Palace and Harem - worth it even though we didn't break even money wise. The line for the Blue Mosque was about 45 minutes, going all the way around the courtyard. While standing in line guides will offer to take you inside in order to skip the line. I was a little wary about all that, though others left the line to go with them. Every site was astonishingly beautiful - full of culture and a long history that we simply don't have in the relatively young USA. We had a pleasant, albeit pricey, lunch at the Topkapi Palace at their sit-down restaurant on the terrace. We ended up walking back to the ship, detouring to a Starbucks (for a city mug) and some off the main road neighborhoods. On the Galata Bridge we walked on the lower level with the restaurants. If you want pushy, obnoxious, in-your-face vendors, go there.

 

View of Istanbul from our balcony. Nice way to wake up.

 

Hagia Sophia

 

Blue Mosque

 

 

Istanbul at night...We arranged a night tour with a gay-owned Turkish travel agency to take us around to the Istiklal Avenue area and a few bars and nightclubs. The guide picked us up at 10:00pm and we taxied to the Galata Tower. We strolled along the street while the guide talked about gay life in Istanbul and Turkey - not completely out in the open, but well accepted in most cities. The Istiklal area is packed full of street cafes, trendy restaurants, bars of all sorts with tourists and locals out to enjoy the evening. The area is the place to go at night and has something for everyone. In the bars we went to (which by the way, are just like US bars) I was expecting at least some Western pop music, but it was all Turkish music with live singers at an ear-splitting volume. If you think the volume at the Martini Bar is loud, you definitely would not like this. The tour officially ended at 2:00am, and by 2:15am we were ready to go back to the ship after such a long day. Needless to say, we didn't do much the next day, but we were glad to take advantage of the overnight stay.

 

Istikial Avenue at night