USVI-On-Line

My husband and I recently celebrated our 25th anniversary with our first trip to Europe. Venice and the Greek Islands, specifically Santorini, had been on my list of “maybe some day” for quite a while. I’m one of those people who buy the calendars of far away places and hope that I’ll see them in person at some time. Gives me a “happy boost” when I look at the beautiful pictures during a stressful work day.

We found an NCL cruise that sailed in/out of Venice and then went to Corfu, Santorini, Mykonos and Katakalon (Olimpia) with a few sea days thrown in. We stayed for 2 nights in Venice before the cruise departed.

Flew through JFK on Delta and upgraded our seats to the Economy Comfort ones they offer now with extra legroom/recline. We had flown to Hawaii before so were prepared for the length of the flight, but I’ll say this was comfortable, they fed you often, you get complimentary beer/wine/liquor and with the tvs in the seatbacks we were easily entertained. We experienced no jet lag coming or going which was wonderful!

Briefly-Venice was AMAZING. I’d go back in a heartbeat. We are country people (farmers) and we love small cities near/on water that you can walk around easily. Well Venice fits that bill perfectly. A city with no cars (for the most part), the logistics are fascinating! Here’s a few pictures:


Airplane view of Venice:


Canals:




Photo of the ship coming into Venice:



St. Mark's Street Sweepers early a.m.



Looking across the canal from off St. Mark's Square:


The cruise-we have cruised several times before but never with NCL. Chose them simply for the itinerary and had some concerns that they wouldn’t quite “fit” us, and that was true to a certain extent, but I will say they have an outstanding crew. Friendliest crew we’ve ever sailed with before.

Biggest cruise disappointment-we had to skip Santorini due to high winds. They tender you in to Santorini since there’s not a big/deep enough dock, so you have to go in by small boat from your ship. Then there’s a cable car that takes you to the top of the cliffs where the town of Fira is. Apparently bad weather was approaching so while we were anchored offshore they wouldn’t let us go onshore. SOOOO disappointed! Practically cried-we were sitting in the theater waiting to board the tender boats when the cancellation announcement came on. Looked at my husband and said, you know what this means, right? And wonderful man that he is, he stated, yes we will be back!


Closest we got to Santorini:





Telephoto lens:




Our next stop was Mykonos which somewhat made up for Santorini. Lovely port. Beautiful scenery and great food.







The happy couple:



Anyway, thought you might like some pictures (I could easily post dozens and dozens )-I always enjoy others reports!

Thank you for the beautiful pictures and lovely report. Been to Italy, but Greece is high on our bucket list.

Beautiful, Toni!!! Looks amazing. Please post dozens and dozens (or bring them when we meet for coffee someday)! Or both

Nice! I'd like to see more pictures too!

what a shame about Santorini.... it is a lovely place and well worth it to go back-- but don't do it on a cruise next time--simply not enough time to explore all that the island has-- matt barrett has a great website on all things greek travel related-- so if you decide to go back definitely give that a look--
if you do go back-- take a couple of weeks and fly into athens and see the sights there-- then take a high speed ferry to santorini (you can fly as well-- but the ferry is more than comfortable!) then if you feel up for it. move on to another island-- they all have a sort of different vibe in a way --we loved Crete -- it's huge-- and has a whole other aspect of history (knossos ) and it's lovely-- you picked the perfect time to be there!-- we ae heading back to Greece (third trip for me, 5th i think for husband, he has a big scientific meeting there every other year ) in 2014--
thanks so much for the pictures--- venice is on my short list. it must have been magical!

Thanks for sharing. Great pictures. So sorry about Santorini, but luckily Greee has a couple of other islands to go to. Personally, I love Italy more, mostly because of the food. I get tired of the food in Greece after two days. But the islands are beautiful. Corfu is very pretty.

Your photos are wonderful, I don't think I've ever seen an ariel shot of Venice like that!

ok, I literally just spent 2 hrs uploading more pictures and when I went to preview it knocked me out???

ARRRRGH

ARRRRGHHH. Did you kick it?

I Loved the report...I book travel Part time (mostly cruises) and this itinerary has been on my list for awhile..I very much enjoyed the pics...post more when you can ...

I was so surprised to see this post! We also just returned this past week from a 10 night Greek Island cruise from Venice. We cruised on the inagural sailing of Oceania's new Riviera (magnificent). We had done a 10 night last fall and visited Santorini, which was one of our main reasons for returning this year. Sitting in Oia is one of the most magical places I've ever visited. We were told we were very lucky to be able to get ashore, we also encountered very high winds. We were told that 12 different ships had not been able to make the visit recently.
Since our return on Monday, I've already starting looking for next year. Cruising may not be for everyone, but it certainly is an easy way to see the Med. coast line and the Greek Isles.

Thanks for posting. Sounds like a great trip.

We did a Med cruise a few years ago and loved Venice. Greece is on the list for sometime "soon".

It’s another day so let’s try this again

I like to take pictures from airplanes of places that are new to us-I’m always hoping that I’m on the correct side to see something and I lucked out with Venice. The photo posted above was taken as we were leaving-unfortunately it was very hazy when we arrived.

The shot below is of the Swiss Alps. People on the plane probably didn’t appreciate that I kept opening my window shade; this was taken about 9am and they still wanted to sleep but I was so excited about seeing things!



I can’t say enough about how much we loved Venice. We had to keep pinching ourselves and saying how we were really in Europe and this wasn’t Las Vegas Venice, this was the real thing

St. Mark’s Campanile-not the Vegas one!


The logistics of Venice astounded us; instead of land buses you took water buses or vaporetti


this is one of the UPS boats:


And since Venice is all canals there’s bridges everywhere, but they aren’t smooth asphalt bridges, instead they are bridges with lots of steps in them.




This can make it very difficult to move things around


When planning where you’re going to stay you have to factor in how many bridges you’ll be crossing carrying luggage. We stayed here at Hotel Al Sole which was only two small bridges from the bus plaza Piazzale Roma. I wanted a room with a canal view and it was perfect for us.




People shop at open air markets for their groceries. There’s a lovely seafood market:


Or horse meat if you’re so inclined:


You never knew what you might see on one of the canals-this is definitely something you rarely ever come across:


One way to get across the Grand Canal is by a traghetto which cuts across the canal for a ½ euro. This is the poor man’s gondola and it worked perfectly for us. This would be the only female I saw on any of the traghetti and we saw none on any gondolas:


Venice had so much to see:
The Rialto Bridge:


Bridge of Sighs:


Isola Di San Giorgio Maggiore (Monastery)


One of the many bridges


And another Grand Canal view:


Street Sweepers early morning-this was a beautiful time to be up and around and watch the city come to life.


Venice was magical for us. The squares at dusk when the families were out eating their dinners and the children were all running around kicking balls and playing was just wonderful to be a part of. I read a lot of travel forums and not everyone likes Venice. I’d imagine that in the heat of the summer, when the tourist season is at its height, the squares are crazy crowded and the canals might not smell as good or in the fall when it rains and the streets flood that people could see things differently than we did. But everyone is entitled to an opinion, and I’d like to think we’d see the magic in things even then.
I know we’ll be back to Venice sometime



Greece:
I really like Greek food-least the US versions of it! So I was happy to be trying the real deal on this trip.

Corfu was our first stop and we mainly walked around the city area by the port. We found a restaurant called the Black Cat and they served us up some very tasty food-fried cheese, moussaka and several other platters. Oh, and don’t forget the ouzo!

Unfortunately it was an overcast day here-the weather would be the only negative on this trip.


There’s always a McDonald’s:


Fish Spas were big in Corfu-there were several of them. I’d read about them in the US before, but didn’t know that they offered full body versions-I thought maybe just for the feet would be interesting, but full body???:shock:


Santorini was the next stop which was missed –drat, and I’ve since read that the several other cruise lines docked that day had no problems either tendering or with the cable car.

Mykonos was beautiful and we were able to get more Greek food! We ate at a place the locals seemed to be hanging out in-reminded my husband of the diner back home where the farmers all go (except for the hanging octopus of course!):


Just some other Mykonos pictures:




Katakalon was our last stop-it’s the port that’s closest to Olimpia. We just walked around the very small town again to do our final shopping and eating (of course!) and didn’t do the Olimpia tours. It’s quite different from both Mykonos and Corfu, the setting is almost like a New England port off a tree covered hill.


So that’s it; hope you’ve enjoyed the pictures-we’ll be back sometime – at least to Venice and Mykonos for sure and with luck to Santorini for the first time

toni, you are keeping me and my daydreams happy! Thank you for sharing all these wonderful pictures and details of your trip. I certainly enjoyed your report! I do hope that you will get to Santorini next time!

Oh, MY!!! It never occured to me to want to go there. I'm more of a beach person. Your pictures are stunning, and now I'm dying to!
The fish spa: ISH!
And it would make me very nervous to have a child in Venice, as there don't appear to be railings.
Your pics are spectacular, Toni, thank you so much for taking the time to share!