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Costa Victoria Cruise Review to Europe - Mediterranean

RinaV

Contributor Level: Deck Hand

Cruises: 1 cruise (first)

Review: 1

Helpful Votes: 72

Overall rating:

4 out of 5

Verified Review

7 Night Eastern Mediterranean (Rome Roundtrip)

Sail date: August 06, 2007

Ship: Costa Victoria

Cabin type: Oceanview

Traveled as: Couple

Reviewed: 14 years ago

Review summary

My husand and I went for a 7 day Eastern Meditteranean Cruise. The Ship is quite nice, clean, and big. Our cabin was nicely sized, and bright (an oceanview cabin). Our evening waiters, our cabin steward and all the other members of the crew were amazing. Despite everyone coming from all different locations (Germany, France, Spain, Italy, England, America) the staff would practically always give instructions in all these differnent languages. Most notably there was a comedy show at night we were thinking it would be all in Italian considering 70% of the passengers were Italian, but the comedian managed to make everyone laugh nonstop while doing his whole skit in five different languages. If you are British, American, Canadian, etc and you are used to people saying excuse me, not cutting lines, smiling , etc, you will surely be quite irritated with the other passengers as they DO NOT follow any of these etiquettes as a generalization, but you quickly get over it. That was the only major downpoint for us. One thing we really appreciated was that the cruise company does their best to put all similar language speaking together, so they easily communicate together during dinnertime. Our group was absolutely wonderful and we definitely made some friends we plan to keep in touch with and meet up afterwards. Pretty much food was available at all hours, and we LOVED the pizza bar, and made sure it was our meal after a meal. The itinerary was quite nice, except we could have done with no time on Patmos, Greece, and more time on Mykonos. Our personal favorites were Santorini and Izmir.

Ports of call

Patmos, Greece

1 out of 5

Nothing to see on this island, locals were not friendly at all, shopping was not great. We tried to rent a scooter there, and after being told noone had it, we found one place that did have them. When we initially asked him, he said he had none. Then he asked to see our license, when he saw the U.S.A. license, he said no this doesn't authorize motorcycles even though it does not have it written anywhere. But when he saw another person after us had a EU passport he didn't evgen ask for the license.

Thumbs Up 0

Santorini, Greece

5 out of 5

Just get off and go to the major city and walk around. Great small shops for shopping, then go to any of the numerous restaurants which overlook the ocean. Just so peaceful, beautiful and so unique how they just carved out these little niches of hotels. Defintiely would be wonderful to go and stay for a few days for a relaxing lazy vacation. Heard they had black sand beaches but didn't have enough time at the port to really enjoy them. Don't bother doing an excursion unless it's to the beach, just spend your time in the major city

Thumbs Up 0

Don't Miss: relaxing at the restaurants overlooking the sea

Santorini, Greece

5 out of 5

Thumbs Up 0

Don't Miss: relaxing at the restaurants overlooking the sea

Patmos, Greece

1 out of 5

Thumbs Up 0

Izmir, Turkey

5 out of 5

Ephesus was gorgeous, our rug demonstration was great, but ridiculously expensive carpets. The Virgin Mary house site, was good for avid religious people. I know our fellow passengers loved the shopping.

Thumbs Up 0

Don't Miss: Ephesus

Mykonos, Greece

5 out of 5

Take a hike up to the top or at least midway up and through the local alleys. We saw a great sunset

Thumbs Up 0

Catania, Sicily

3 out of 5

Mt. Etna was great but Catania as a port was quite a bore, but maybe since we went during August when most locals were out on vacation themselves.

Thumbs Up 0

Don't Miss: Mt Etna

Catania, Sicily