Cruise review - Celebrity Reflection May 2022

[ladylemondrop]

We had an amazing time on Celebrity Reflection, 11 night med cruise to Italy, Greece and Turkey. We are calling this ‘3 minutes of happiness’ We hope you enjoy it as much as we did! 
 

 

[DCPIV]

Lovely ship!  We were on board back in February and had a magnificent time.  It's good to see you also did!

[Majkman]

Beautiful!!! We'll be on her in 4 weeks!!! Can't wait!! Lovely video, thanks for sharing!!

 

Keep the Seas calm and the Sun out,

 

Andy

[SHIP TRAVELER]

Great Video.  I am sure it represents a lot of effort and editing.

Thanks for sharing your delight.

[FRMPEI]

Nice videos! Thanks for sharing. Who are four stars of the video?

 

Regards

Kevin Reid

[rivieraraver]

Glad you had such a great time. We love the Reflection too.  I wonder if you could give me some info please. We have to pay our final payment next week for our Reflection cruise in August and have been reading the awful experiences of people quarantined with Covid (not on Reflection) in the last few weeks. All seems to have quietened down re covid and associated problems on CC. Do you know if there were many cases on board. Was there a lot of coughing going on, people not reporting illness etc!?  We are from UK too and we have avoided infection up to now and tbh don’t really think about it now, but I am concerned about potentially being quarantined in an ocean view😳

[kebrown]

2 hours ago, ladylemondrop said:

We had an amazing time on Celebrity Reflection, 11 night med cruise to Italy, Greece and Turkey. We are calling this ‘3 minutes of happiness’ We hope you enjoy it as much as we did! 
 

 

Glad you had a great time.  We are doing this same cruise on the Reflection in September and I was hoping you could answer a question about the new cruise terminal in Istanbul, Turkey.  Is the cruise terminal in Istanbul within walking distance to the city center and most of the tourist sites?  Our plan is to tour Istanbul on our own and we were wondering if it is possible to walk to most of the tourist sites from the cruise terminal.  Any information you can provide regarding this would be greatly appreciated as this will be our first time visiting Istanbul, Turkey.

[ladylemondrop]

18 minutes ago, kebrown said:

Glad you had a great time.  We are doing this same cruise on the Reflection in September and I was hoping you could answer a question about the new cruise terminal in Istanbul, Turkey.  Is the cruise terminal in Istanbul within walking distance to the city center and most of the tourist sites?  Our plan is to tour Istanbul on our own and we were wondering if it is possible to walk to most of the tourist sites from the cruise terminal.  Any information you can provide regarding this would be greatly appreciated as this will be our first time visiting Istanbul, Turkey.

This would be quite a hike, I would probably not. We had a private tour booked with Daily Istanbul Tours, who were excellent and a great price too. If we wanted to tour alone, I would get a taxi to the Haggia Sophia area, it’s beautiful. 

[ladylemondrop]

29 minutes ago, kebrown said:

Glad you had a great time.  We are doing this same cruise on the Reflection in September and I was hoping you could answer a question about the new cruise terminal in Istanbul, Turkey.  Is the cruise terminal in Istanbul within walking distance to the city center and most of the tourist sites?  Our plan is to tour Istanbul on our own and we were wondering if it is possible to walk to most of the tourist sites from the cruise terminal.  Any information you can provide regarding this would be greatly appreciated as this will be our first time visiting Istanbul, Turkey.

And take a scarf to cover your head! We had to buy. 

[CruisinNewb]

Enjoyed your video. Well done!

 

Glad you and your family had such a good time.  The Reflection is a great ship.

 

Happy Anniversary!

[ladylemondrop]

3 hours ago, FRMPEI said:

Nice videos! Thanks for sharing. Who are four stars of the video?

 

Regards

Kevin Reid

Myself, my husband, our eldest son, and his girlfriend (her first cruise) safe to say she is now a confirmed cruiser! 

[kebrown]

Did they have taxis available at the cruise terminal in Istanbul?

[Silkroad]

Lovely video. Reflection is one of my favorite ships. Thanks for sharing your beautiful journey with us!

[vickykay]

Would love to know what the excursion you were on. 

[Searanger]

Just returned last night from our adventures on the Reflection.  Thanks for posting the video.  It was nice to view all the wonderful ports again.  A port intensive cruise with over 20,000 steps on average per day.  It will take me this week to recover.

[ladylemondrop]

18 hours ago, vickykay said:

Would love to know what the excursion you were on. 

Hi, we used Sicily Life for our tour in Sicily, we had a great driver. 
In Istanbul we used Daily Istanbul Tours, and had a private guide, it was excellent and we hihly recommend, the price was fantastic. 
In Ephesus we used Ephesus Port Tours, again, a great private tour. 
Santorini and Athens were ship tours. We went to Akrotiri in Santorini, and Oia, a great combination. 
Finally in Naples we used AP Tours, and went to Pompeii, then to Sorrento for pizza making and free time to shop. This was our favourite tour. 

[rcamazed]

23 hours ago, kebrown said:

Glad you had a great time.  We are doing this same cruise on the Reflection in September and I was hoping you could answer a question about the new cruise terminal in Istanbul, Turkey.  Is the cruise terminal in Istanbul within walking distance to the city center and most of the tourist sites?  Our plan is to tour Istanbul on our own and we were wondering if it is possible to walk to most of the tourist sites from the cruise terminal.  Any information you can provide regarding this would be greatly appreciated as this will be our first time visiting Istanbul, Turkey.

We did Istanbul entirely on our own and had a fabulous time.  If you walk out of the cruise port and turn left on the main road you will walk about 5-10 minutes and arrive at the tram station.  There were guys there selling stored value cards for 50 lira (which is only about 4 dollars) that you could then insert into a machine to add money.  One card can be used for multiple riders.  You can then take the tram easily to the main tourist sites (topkapi, Hagai Sophia, Blue Mosque, and Grand Bazaar).  We arrived at noon in Istanbul and spent our first afternoon at the Grand Bazaar and then spent a little time in the Archaeological museum and then Topkapi palace and then walked to a place for dinner before taking the tram back to the boat.  On Sunday morning we went out early (around 7:00 or 7:30am) and went to the Hagai Sophia and Blue Mosque.  The Hagai Sophia is open 24 hours and there were very few people there.  We then hung out in the square between the two mosques and then went into the Blue Mosque when it opened at 8:30am.  There wasn't much to see in the Blue Mosque due to the renovation.

 

It was super easy to get around by tram, and very cheap.  Highly recommend!

 

We actually did our own thing in every port except for Ephesus where we used Ephesus Shuttle (highly recommend!). 

Edited June 7, 2022 by rcamazed

[kebrown]

22 minutes ago, rcamazed said:

We did Istanbul entirely on our own and had a fabulous time.  If you walk out of the cruise port and turn left on the main road you will walk about 5-10 minutes and arrive at the tram station.  There were guys there selling stored value cards for 50 lira (which is only about 4 dollars) that you could then insert into a machine to add money.  One card can be used for multiple riders.  You can then take the tram easily to the main tourist sites (topkapi, Hagai Sophia, Blue Mosque, and Grand Bazaar).  We arrived at noon in Istanbul and spent our first afternoon at the Grand Bazaar and then spent a little time in the Archaeological museum and then Topkapi palace and then walked to a place for dinner before taking the tram back to the boat.  On Sunday morning we went out early (around 7:00 or 7:30am) and went to the Hagai Sophia and Blue Mosque.  The Hagai Sophia is open 24 hours and there were very few people there.  We then hung out in the square between the two mosques and then went into the Blue Mosque when it opened at 8:30am.  There wasn't much to see in the Blue Mosque due to the renovation.

 

It was super easy to get around by tram, and very cheap.  Highly recommend!

 

We actually did our own thing in every port except for Ephesus where we used Ephesus Shuttle (highly recommend!). 

Thank you so much for this information on doing Istanbul on your own.  We are going to follow your advice and take the tram into the main tourist area.  I really appreciate you sharing this useful information regarding Istanbul since this will be our first time visiting this city.

[jelayne]

Excellent video!  Celebrity should buy it from you and use it as a commercial - real people enjoying all that cruising has to offer.

[sunlover33]

Wonderful video, 5 weeks till we go on Reflection again, love this ship. 

[ladylemondrop]

1 hour ago, jelayne said:

Excellent video!  Celebrity should buy it from you and use it as a commercial - real people enjoying all that cruising has to offer.

Ha ha! That would be nice…. We really had a great time. We heard the song a lot around the ship and it kind of stuck with me. 

[Chrissi3010]

On 6/6/2022 at 6:46 PM, kebrown said:

Glad you had a great time.  We are doing this same cruise on the Reflection in September and I was hoping you could answer a question about the new cruise terminal in Istanbul, Turkey.  Is the cruise terminal in Istanbul within walking distance to the city center and most of the tourist sites?  Our plan is to tour Istanbul on our own and we were wondering if it is possible to walk to most of the tourist sites from the cruise terminal.  Any information you can provide regarding this would be greatly appreciated as this will be our first time visiting Istanbul, Turkey.

We were on the same cruise. A few things are in walking distance, such as some mosques, a bridge over the Golden Horn, the ferries to the Asian side and some markets. But there is a lot to walk even if you take a taxi to the main places (Hagia Sofia, Topkapi).

 

Ps. Not to mention the endless track from the ship to the port exit... 😉

[ladylemondrop]

15 minutes ago, Chrissi3010 said:

We were on the same cruise. A few things are in walking distance, such as some mosques, a bridge over the Golden Horn, the ferries to the Asian side and some markets. But there is a lot to walk even if you take a taxi to the main places (Hagia Sofia, Topkapi).

 

Ps. Not to mention the endless track from the ship to the port exit... 😉

And we hope we are on the same cruise with you both again some day, it was so nice to meet you! 🥰🥰

[Chrissi3010]

6 minutes ago, ladylemondrop said:

And we hope we are on the same cruise with you both again some day, it was so nice to meet you! 🥰🥰

That would be lovely...and you never know. 🥰

[jael001]

Lovely video, thank you for sharing. I'm taking my daughter and her boyfriend in August and he's not been to any of the ports (or on a cruise for that matter) so looking forward to seeing it through fresh eyes.