Date: June 10th to 19th, 2023

Part two of my 2023 European summer vacation which started in Slovakia involved visiting my mom in Bulgaria. I flew into the Burgas airport Monday June 5th. Mom was already there, waiting. With her was one of her new acquaintances, a Czech lady who has been living in Lozenets for over a decade, supplementing her retirement income by providing airport rides. I then spent few days resting at mom's apartment pool and the Lozenets beach, doing some reading and writing. I have more pictures from here in Part 3 from my return with Sandra. Lozenets is a really nice place to visit for a relaxing beach vacation!

Then on Friday, June 9th, mom and I made our way back to Burgas (this time using a regular taxi) for a 12:05 pm Adatur bus to Istanbul, where we were to embark on a 9-night Eastern Mediterranean cruise aboard MSC Splendida. The scheduled arrival time to Istanbul was only 5.5 hours later at 17:30, but this timing is completely unrealistic given the border situation. It literally took over 2 hours to inch across the the several hundred meters at the border. The queue itself was not long but the system is extremely inefficient. Every single piece of luggage has to be scanned and there is only a single line for this. I don't know if it always has been like this, or whether this is a new protocol since Bulgaria joining the EU, and perhaps Turkey being difficult on purpose in retribution to the likely increased border controls demanded by the Union. I also had to buy visa for 20 euro, since I was traveling on US passport. This is something I probably should have checked ahead of time, but it did not even occur to me that US citizens would need a Turkish visa while Europeans can travel visa free. We got into the Istanbul bus station in the evening, and from there, took a taxi to the Karakoy district where we were staying. Karakoy is right next to the Galataport cruise terminal. According to websites like Rome2Rio, this roughly 10 mile drive should cost around $10. The driver, with the predictably "broken" taxi meter, tried to charge us around 50 euro, despite dropping us off over 10 blocks away (to his credit, Karakoy is very congested with tourists so this was probably faster). I ended up paying him "only" 20 euro, but I feel even that was a ripoff. This was my first not-exactly-positive introduction to Istanbul. While it is a spectacular city with extensive history, it also made me feel really uneasy since it seemed like everyone was scheming to scam me. This was such a different vibe from Bulgaria where the only risk seems that the shop owner will not understand a word of English. The scamming didn't seem limited to the streets. We stayed at the really nice Royal Tophane hotel, in a room that had a separate bedroom. The next morning, during check out, the owner wanted me to pay him more money despite having pre-booked the stay on Expedia. Apparently the rate that Expedia charged me was too low and they wanted me to pay extra. Maybe this was some weird booking issue, but in my years of traveling, this was the first time I've had a hotel attempt what appeared to be a bait and switch. Then on the streets, you have shoe shiners who always "just happen" to drop their brush in front of the unsuspecting tourist, hoping to transform the generosity of the person noticing the brush into a tip following the "free" shoe shine gift.

Having said that, Karakoy is very nice and I am glad we picked this location for our first ever visit to Istanbul. It's full of various restaurants (although most of them serve the identical Turkish specialties). We had really good kebabs in a restaurant located in an alley across the JW Marriott hotel. The next morning I went for a walk / jog around Karakoy, mainly trying to figure out where to board the cruise. The cruise terminal is inside an area called Galataport. It took me a while to realize that you first need to enter this whole "Galataport" area, which involves passing through security, and only then your will find the actual building from where to board the cruise. There are several entrances to Galataport, including one at the Peninsula Hotel, and the more convenient route through a small shopping mall in an old post office building. You then find yourself on a boardwalk lined with multiple restaurants and modern clothing shops. The middle of the boardwalk contains a barrier that is raised whenever a cruise ship is docked. This barrier limits the area next to the water only to the ticketed passengers. When I passed in the morning, there were already 3 ships docked, but none of them was our MSC Splendida. It was still on its way, as it turns out. Being a cruising noob, I wrongly assumed that cruise ships arrive the day before to "get ready". Instead, as I found out later, this ship runs this Turkey-Greece-Italy circuit (with small variations in ports visited) for months on end, non-stop! It's basically a roundtrip bus.

Our boarding time was not until the early afternoon, so after breakfast we spent some time walking around the neighborhood. This included climbing up the very steep street leading to the Galata Tower. Here we encountered multiple soccer fans since, as it happened, the 2023 UEFA Champions League final between Manchester City and Inter Milan was being played here this very night. Later we grabbed our bags from the hotel and proceeded to the Galataport where we had cakes and Turkish coffee until it was time for embarkation.

Embarkation

The embarkation process was really smooth. It's fairly common for seasoned cruisers to complain about long embarkation times, but this was not the case with MSC. The "cruise boarding building" is marked with signs, but instead of finding a place to check in, you essentially find yourself on top of a long escalator leading several levels underground. Below you is even a road which presumably provides access to taxis and bus shuttles. I was expecting a long line but there was barely anybody ahead of us. After having our photos taken (despite me uploading them already to the app), we once again found ourselves heading back up an escalator, but this time one on the other side of the raised barrier. Few more minutes and we were on board! The ship was not set to depart until 11pm, and we got to watch the soccer match on the pool deck movie screen, with fans celebrating on the dry land next to us.

At this point, it is also appropriate to mention the price of this adventure. We picked MSC because of their affordable rate. The cabin fare for this 9 night trip was $1199.00 per passenger. Taxes and port fees added additional $130.46. This is also per passenger. The fare included free mineral water and tea or coffee in the dining room, which I got thanks to a status match using my Hyatt level (which I get for "free" from having a Hyatt-branded credit card). The total rate per person, per day, thus ended up being $132.95. Of course, excursions are extra, but the only real excursion we opted for was a trip to Venice from Trieste which cost $205.50 per person. We were in the balcony room #9076.

Day 2: Dardanelles and Greek Islands

And our adventure began. This was my first ever "real" cruise (after our 2022 Ensenada 3 day test run) and I was quite excited. Partly, while I have traveled quite extensively so far, those travels have been on land. Cruising offers a way to see the world from a different perspective. Something I was particularly excited about, in a really nerdy way, was passing through the Dardanelles, which is a narrow strait connecting the Sea of Marmara next to Istanbul to the Aegean Sea around the Greek islands, which itself then leads to the Mediterranean. The strait is only 0.75 miles at its narrowest part. I did not know exactly when we will be passing this narrow section, but it just happened to be in the morning of the second day as I woke up and decided to go for a morning walk around the deck.

The rest of the day was spent "sailing" around the Greek islands. This gave us a chance to explore the ship and basically to just hang out. MSC seems to be really big on various giveaways, as there were many opportunities to get a free glass of sparkling wine. I even ended up winning a bottle at a store raffle. We took most of our dinners at the main dining room (MDR), where we were seated at a table of 8. The first 2 or so nights, only 6 of the seats were occupied: my mom and I, a Dutch couple on their post-wedding holiday (if I am remembering right), and a lady living in Los Angeles traveling with her Chinese niece (who didn't speak English). The following days, the missing South African couple joined in. The international selection we encountered at our table represented a good sample of the overall ship demographics. There were people here from everywhere! But probably the largest single demographics were people speaking Russian. Given the ongoing war in Ukraine, and that Turkey did not restrict entry to Russians, this made sense. Even our cabin neighbors spoke Russian but visually they seemed to be from the eastern regions close to China. I found the food in the MDR to be very good. Of course, you get more variety in the buffet, but then you need to deal with the crowds - and there were crowds! However, one thing not to miss in the buffet is the pizza including one made with a charcoal dough. That was really interesting!

Day 3, Corfu

The next day we arrived in Corfu, Greece. The scheduled arrival and departure times were 1pm and 9pm respectively. Writing this report over a year later, in September 2024, I don't remember anymore if these times really held - I want to say that we arrived somewhat earlier. But regardless, upon disembarking, I added a new country to my list of visited places (after Turkey). This was my first time ever in Greece! The charm of these small sea-side towns is that you don't need to stress about booking excursions. There is a public bus that connects the port to the city for the low cost of euro fifty (if remembering correctly). After a short 10 minute ride, we found ourselves in a town square, with a restaurant called Gatto Nero in our path. Given it was lunch time, and that weather was beautiful, we settled in an outside seat for a quick lunch. Well, our timing was phenomenal since just as we were about to wrap up the meal, a huge rainstorm thundered in out of the blue. The streets turned into a lake. A sidewalk table across the alley happened to be located next to a literal shit fountain emerging from the backed up sewer. Other diners, along with the populace previously strolling the streets, crowded their way into the restaurant.

But the rain eventually passed, and the Noah's ark island emptied out. The rest of the day was beautiful, with the streets drying off as quickly as they filled up earlier. This may be a common occurrence here, as the shop owners did not seem too perturbed, but I have never before seen such a rapid flooding. We spent the next few hours strolling around, first visiting the New Fortress. Later the plan was to visit the Old Fortress, but apparently one of the lightning strikes landed a direct impact, causing a small fire, which led to the fortress getting closed for the day. We could only admire it from the outside. We also passed by the Spianada square, the Liston street, and the Municipal Gallery. We ended up walking back to the ship. There we had dinner and then went to see the main theater evening variety show.

Comments or questions? message me

❮ ❯

×