Need recommendation for cruise line to Greece

[meicheraxo]

We are interested in doing a greek isles cruise and were wondering which cruise lines do it best. Any help would be great. Thanks! Michele

[CruiserBruce]

There is no one "best" cruise line for everyone. Who have you cruised with in the past, and enjoyed? Do they cruise the area you want to see? 

[chipmaster]

What are your priorities, specific ports ( Santorini, Athens, etc. etc. ),  then as important could be the port time ( tendering / docking ),  schedule ( ships rotate in their sailing ), then each cruise line each have their own style ( they work really hard to create that image Princess, NCL, RCCL, Carnival etc. ) then the ship and their amenities too.

 

IMHO the cruise line is least important for a port intensive cruise; schedule/ports-time are the most important thing.   A bad or poor scheduled in port can't be made up by good bar, pool or dining on the ship.

 

 

[Ashland]

We just returned from a 12 night Med/Greece RCI cruise out of Barcelona (7 port stops)....loved our Greece ports Athens, Mykonos & Santorini...but the most amazing port was Valletta, Malta. If you have this port on your itinerary...you'll understand !!

Edited July 16, 2019 by Ashland

[marazul]

12 nights and 7 ports means 5 sea days.  Anyone interested in Greek ports should not be sailing out of Barcelona, they should be doing a round trip Athens or a one-way Venice-Athens or Athens-Venice cruise. 

Check out the itineraries and the amount of time spent at each port. With short port times you will really be shortchanged in value.

[CruiserBruce]

1 hour ago, marazul said:

12 nights and 7 ports means 5 sea days.  Anyone interested in Greek ports should not be sailing out of Barcelona, they should be doing a round trip Athens or a one-way Venice-Athens or Athens-Venice cruise. 

Check out the itineraries and the amount of time spent at each port. With short port times you will really be shortchanged in value.

Almost. 12 nights means 7 ports, 4 sea days.

 

Sailing out of Rome, and ending in Athens or Venice also works. In 12 days we are hitting 4 Greek ports, and only have one sea day. N. Amsterdam, May 22, 2020. The next cruise is Venice to Venice, 12 days, 2 sea days, 4 more Greek ports, but also includes an overnight in Istanbul. Doing both cruises.

[Ashland]

3 hours ago, marazul said:

12 nights and 7 ports means 5 sea days.  Anyone interested in Greek ports should not be sailing out of Barcelona, they should be doing a round trip Athens or a one-way Venice-Athens or Athens-Venice cruise. 

Check out the itineraries and the amount of time spent at each port. With short port times you will really be shortchanged in value.

Thanks for you're input and what interested "us" or may interest someone else and what "they should be doing". We got a great rate on our cruise and certainly weren't "shortchanged" at all.

 

Just offering what we just did...and it was 4 days at sea not 5.

[marazul]

Ashland-

I am sure you had a great trip that covered at least 4 countries and had many enjoyable sea days.  But I was replying to the OP who wants to do a Greek island cruise.  There are cruises that just do Greece and others that do mostly Greece, like CruiserBruce's great itineraries, which just start or end in a neighboring country.   Being shortchanged or not depends on whether your cruise met your expectations. Someone who wants to visit many Greek islands and spend time in them would feel shortchanged by a cruise with a lot of sea days and short port times.  There is no best cruise line or itinerary. It just depends on what the OP wants to do and she should consider all the options.

[pe4all]

We love getting "a taste of the pie" rather than eating the whole pie.  For us, sea days are nice, but we much prefer seeing as many different ports/countries as possible.  We are sailing NCL on a 7 day cruise out of Venice (always been on my bucket list) to Kotor, Montenegro - then on to Corfu, Santorini, Mykonos, Argostoli, then Croatia, and back to Venice.  No sea days. I explored many cruise options before deciding on this one.  We did NCL 9 day Baltics last summer out of Copenhagen (exhausting, but loved it!) and will hopefully do an Ireland/Scotland cruise next summer!  For us, itinerary is more important than the ship we sail on, as we are very easy-going, and we are not "foodies."  NCL is a good fit for us at this point in our lives.

[chipmaster]

For Greece you can do it by land/ferry, but if you want to cruise we looked and found NCL (Venice, Kotor, Corfu, Santorini, Mykonos, Argostoli, Dubrovnik ) was the most efficient, no sea days at all really.      The only miss was Athens but we had been there before and wasn't high on our list.

 

Every cruise is a marketing, logistics and scheduling balance and you'll need to make some tradeoffs.

[SummmerInKefalonia]

I agree with what the others said . The best itinerary is that of NCL in my opinion. It starts from Venice (last chance to sail away from giudecca cana as it will change from 2021), it features the best 2 islands from the Aegean Sea (Mykonos & Santorini) and the 2 from the Ionian Sea (Argostoli (Kefalonia) & Corfu), and other 2 must see destinations (Dubrovnik & Kotor). It is the most balanced itinerary. Other cruise lines that do greek islands cruise are MSC Cruises (most variety of ships and itineraries) and Costa Cruises (many years of experience on doing greek islands cruises). Also, there is a Rhapsody of the seas itinerary with the 3 of the 4 greek islands that NCL is offering (it misses Santorini). Think about it and tell us what you chose! 😎

[Ashland]

13 hours ago, marazul said:

Ashland-

I am sure you had a great trip that covered at least 4 countries and had many enjoyable sea days.  But I was replying to the OP who wants to do a Greek island cruise.  There are cruises that just do Greece and others that do mostly Greece, like CruiserBruce's great itineraries, which just start or end in a neighboring country.   Being shortchanged or not depends on whether your cruise met your expectations. Someone who wants to visit many Greek islands and spend time in them would feel shortchanged by a cruise with a lot of sea days and short port times.  There is no best cruise line or itinerary. It just depends on what the OP wants to do and she should consider all the options.

We considered it 5 countries, Spain, France, Italy, Greece and Malta. Our port times were certainly long, over approx 10 hours in each and certainly met our expectations. Over 25+ cruises and we usually know what those entail. I merely gave another option to the OP...that they may not have considered. Again thanks for your input.

Edited July 18, 2019 by Ashland

[chipmaster]

2 hours ago, SummmerInKefalonia said:

I agree with what the others said . The best itinerary is that of NCL in my opinion. It starts from Venice (last chance to sail away from giudecca cana as it will change from 2021), it features the best 2 islands from the Aegean Sea (Mykonos & Santorini) and the 2 from the Ionian Sea (Argostoli (Kefalonia) & Corfu), and other 2 must see destinations (Dubrovnik & Kotor). It is the most balanced itinerary. Other cruise lines that do greek islands cruise are MSC Cruises (most variety of ships and itineraries) and Costa Cruises (many years of experience on doing greek islands cruises). Also, there is a Rhapsody of the seas itinerary with the 3 of the 4 greek islands that NCL is offering (it misses Santorini). Think about it and tell us what you chose! 😎

 

My impression with Costa and MSC is the mix of passengers will be more European focused, not a bad thing but something to be aware of.   While sailing a Carnival, Princess, NCL, RCCL, HAL or other will likely have a rich mix but more from No. America.

[drneal]

We are going on Windstar

smaller than most cruises 

I like the idea of sailing the Greek islands 

[marazul]

13 hours ago, drneal said:

We are going on Windstar

smaller than most cruises 

I like the idea of sailing the Greek islands 

Great choice.

[ollienbertsmum]

On 7/18/2019 at 10:34 PM, chipmaster said:

 

My impression with Costa and MSC is the mix of passengers will be more European focused, not a bad thing but something to be aware of.   While sailing a Carnival, Princess, NCL, RCCL, HAL or other will likely have a rich mix but more from No. America.

 

 

Hmmm...   Not a bad thing to be European focused in Europe!!

[snirpville]

I've got a Celestyal cruise booked for next June for the Greek Islands. I chose this for the itinerary and the inclusiveness of the costs. For any cruise, I think you need to look at all the itineraries and decide what you want to see and what would suit you best. Have fun researching!

[Kate P.C]

With Princess we were able to visit Santorini, Mykonos, Corfu, and Crete from the islands and ports like Volos and Pireas.

[edinburgher]

 

Hmmm...   Not a bad thing to be European focused in Europe!!

 

Yes and no, pros and cons.

 

Both are Italian lines.  Having never sailed with either, but having been told by family and friends who did sail with them, here were some of their comments. If anyone thinks I got some or all of the following wrong, please do say.

 

 

Unless in the Caribbean, onboard currency is usually the euro.

 

Some folks don't like the many announcements always being repeated in several languages.

 

Some shorex may be offered in more than one language.

 

Menus will most likely be geared to more European/Italian tastes.

 

 

Edited July 27, 2019 by edinburgher