Category: Greek Islands

Review of our Greek island and other places cruise with MSC – Opera cruise ship & Holiday

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I have promised lots of our followers a review on how we found the holiday and the cruise…..

Those of you who know my husband will know that he is very rarely derogatory about anything…where as I am quite outspoken and say it how I see it…

So I will start with Johns review ….he decided to compare MSC to our preferred cruise line Princess……

Johns views:-

MSC Cruises v Princess Cruises

The end of MSC Opera’s seven-day cruise around the Greek Islands – and Bari in Italy – prompts me to look at a comparison between these two cruise brands.

Perhaps this particular MSC cruise destination and timing skews my perception, but it was soon obvious that there were two noticeable differences. The MSC demographic was noticeably younger. Whilst on Princess, English is the predominant language, the MSC profile was much more multi-lingual.

There are differences in the crews too. Let me say at the outset that the cheery outlook of all MSC is an absolute treat whereas, on occasions, the Princess personnel give the impression of pretence or forced smiling!! As to numbers, I dont have comparison figures, but there are far more staff in evidence across all the Princess activities compared to MSC. However the MSC staff are far more attentive, quicker service and more proactive in meeting their customers needs. On the evidence we saw, the theatre performers were not of the same quality as that of those on the Princess Cruises.

The food on board is different, too. On Princess the choice suits what I would describe as ‘the American palate’, whilst on MSC it is clearly more ‘Mediterranean’. The menu choice on Princess includes foods like lobster, steaks, duck , beef wellington etc. Where as on MSC this type of food is at an extra high charge.

That’s Johns review….mine is a copy of the response I gave to our travel agent when she said my response to their online customer satisfaction survey was very mixed …this is what I said…

The clientele on our cruise consisted mainly of large very loud Italian family groups – in the buffet they took huge platters of food of one type…all the fruit, all the bread rolls etc then they grouped up to 20 chairs and made their own family buffet..often not finishing the platters which they put down the middle of the tables…this left other passengers with no assorted fruit etc…no member of staff stopped them doing it by telling them to just get their own plate of food, and lots of these big family groups sat for several hours at every meal time taking up all the seating area In The buffet whilst still saving their sun loungers …so we never got a sunlounger the whole cruise and gave up trying to get a table in the buffet at breakfast, preferring to go to the main dinning room and wait for service…… we often went without lunch because on port days the ship doesn’t serve in the dinning room and we couldn’t get a seat in the buffet. Our evening meal was nice, we sat in the same nice area every night and had two great waiters. 

We saw one really good show in the theatre but the only other one we could find seats for was weak vocalists …… again huge blocks of seats were reserved by a couple of family members..some filled near the start of the show others never filled…..the shows we went to we had to get there over an hour in advance to get a seat. 

On the sea day we couldn’t get any loungers or a table, we eventually found two chairs which we sat on but it was like Butlins on water, the disco started at 10.30 am with everyone shouting, jumping up and down…horrendous……the excursions…..were ok apart from the scenic cruise of corfu coastline…sounds good but it was a nightmare…we had booked the English commentated one….alas after a few minutes the guide spoke virtually entirely in Italian. Even worse she started talking about “The Anglaise” …a young German, couple who were doctors, told us she was being very offensive to our race…all the Italians were laughing and shouting “viva Italy”….. we felt very intimidated. When a lot got off for a swim the lady came and asked if we were ok and I said we were not happy that the commentary was in Italian and that she had humiliated us with what she was saying about the English. She pretended not to understand saying her English wasn’t good and the majority of people were Italian . The German couple spoke to her in Italian and explained what we were saying she just shrugged and wandered off….on the way back after the swim she encouraged everyone to dance so we couldn’t even see the scenic coastline….This wasn’t sold as a party cruise it was sold as a scenic cruise……on top of this MSC had double charged us/double booked this excursion we realised prior to the excursion and they said it would be refunded to our cruise account and we could cash it out as Euros. We said we’d prefer it to be refunded to our credit card they said they couldn’t do that …so we lost out twice by paying a transaction fee on the card and on the exchange rate changing it back to £…… so this wasn’t good .. as for the end of cruise excursion…..this we had booked through our travel agent and not through MSC……it was pleasant enough…the limousine it advertised was actually a Mercedes’ taxi….we went to all the places described but unfortunately it was only 3 and a half hours not 4/5 hours …we could hardly ask him to just drive around for another hour so we again felt the excursion was mis-sold…so again disappointed as we spent hours at the airport unable to book our cases in until 2 hours before our flight…..not great

So you can see why the review was a mixed bag of frogs….the staff on the ship were very helpful and pleasant ( apart from one in the WiFi department who was obnoxious, luckily the manager intervened) the food in the restaurant was good but the rest of the experience was not good at all.

Our Travel Agent, Rosie Price – rosie.price@dialaflight.co.uk. – passed our views on to MSC. Very surprisingly …a pleasant surprise …… because when we’ve voiced issues to P&O, Princess and TUI/Marbella Cruise companies they’ve either not responded or the later gave a very abrupt and rude response asking what we wanted, I said “an apology for giving us two right angled twin beds when we had requested a double and informed them it was our honeymoon and they had refused to let us change cabins with an elderly couple who had requested single beds and had been given a double”….we never heard anything back from them even though we felt we had a valid reason to voice our displeasure…….I digress ……….. back to MSC response…which we asked our travel agent to thank them for……

Dear John and Jennifer Jackson,

Thank you for taking the time to provide such detailed feedback about your recent cruise with MSC. I genuinely appreciate your honesty and am truly sorry to hear about the negative experiences you had. Your comfort and satisfaction are our top priorities, and it’s disheartening to learn that we fell short during your trip. Let me address each of your concerns.

I’m sorry that you were unable to find sun loungers throughout your cruise and that finding a table was so challenging. It’s disappointing to hear that you had to compromise on your relaxation and dining experiences due to overcrowding and lack of available seating.

I regret that you had difficulty finding seats for the shows and that the quality of the entertainment varied. Reserving blocks of seats should not have been allowed, and it’s concerning that this disrupted your enjoyment. We strive to offer high-quality entertainment for all guests, and it’s clear that we need to improve in this area.

While I’m glad to hear that you found the staff mostly helpful and pleasant and enjoyed the food in the restaurant, it’s clear that the overall experience did not meet your expectations. The mixed experiences you had, from loud and disruptive environments to feeling unsafe and unwelcome, are far from the relaxing and enjoyable holiday we aim to provide.
As a gesture of goodwill, we would like to offer you a £130 cruise discount voucher. To accept this, just let me know and I will send this straight out to you. We understand that we cannot change what has happened, but we want to do what we can going forward, to put this right.

Please accept our sincere apologies for the distress and inconvenience you experienced. If there is anything else we can do to address your concerns or if you would like to discuss this further, please do not hesitate to contact me directly.
Thank you again for bringing these matters to our attention. We hope to have the opportunity to restore your faith in MSC Cruises.

Kind regards,
Jack Murphy
Customer Service Executive

I am certain everyone reading this response will be amazed at its concerning manner…rarely do people apologise and I take my ‘hat off’ to Jack Murphy for his show of concern and the wording of his response…’Well done Sir!’. However, we will not be accepting the discount voucher because we do not intend to cruise with MSC again…we do accept the apology which was conveyed to us in a very congenial, honest way…Thank you Jack Murphy and thank you Rosie Price (rosie.price@dialaflight.co.uk) our disappointment has been somewhat appeased.

Day 9- 4th June 2024-Athens – End of Greek Island Cruise and other Places

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it’s taken me over a week to get around to our final day of this cruise and disembarkation…..the reason being we both picked up “Cabin Cough” on the cruise and it took us a week to get over it….I often seem to get it cruising, it’s the air conditioning which brings it on and this time we had an inside cabin….a never again scenario…….The evening before we had put our cases outside our door before midnight….a much better time than cruise lines which want them before 9.00 pm….When we got up in the morning they had bern magicked away. We had to leave our cabin by 8.00am and we went down to the restaurant for breakfast. We then sat in a lounge. We had requested a late disembarkation. The ship for the first time all cruise was relatively quiet. At 10.00 am we wandered off the ship and down to the baggage collection …our suitcases looked a little lonely all on their own in area 21….but hey they were both still there, so that was good news.
We ad found out, onboard that the ship did offer an airport transfer at 2.30 pm which would really have suited us but it hadn’t been advertised on their excursions or transfer so I don’t know how we or our travel agent were supposed to know about it…it would have been a great deal cheaper than our excursion was, which we booked through DialaFlight who had booked it through Viator.

Anyway ….we sat outside waiting for our driver for our excursion to Cape Sounia & Temple of Poseidon. We had selected this excursion as it was an area we hadn’t seen near Athens and also it was advertised as between 4 and 5 hours so we wouldn’t have to spend as long at the airport. On the dot of 10.30am a smart gentleman carrying a sign with our name on arrived and introduced himself as John. He quickly went off and bought the car around. It was a Mercedes’ cream coloured taxi. …..Off we went along the coast which was full of pretty coves and mariners occupied by some very fancy yatchs and pleasure cruisers.

We stopped off at a “hidden gem” …a large lake which was filled with from hot water springs attached to an intricate cave system…..it was quite fascinating, a bit smelly but we soon got used to the slight rotten eggs aroma you often get with hot water swims…we wished we’d known we were stopping here as we would have kept our costumes and towels out.

We stopped again for a view of the Temple Poseidon across the bay on the top of the headland.

We continued to the Temple car park. Although it’s an easy walk up some shallow well spaced steps I didn’t feel up to it, so John went on his own. He paid €10 at a kiosk and up he went.

The Temple of Poseidon is approx 70 Km away from Athens. It is deemed an important sight aprt from the archaeological remains, Cape Sounion is also famous for its beautiful sunset and the great views of the Aegean Sea…….it is the last point you see as you sail away, on the southernmost tip of the Attica peninsula.  In the past, sailors revered the sea god, Poseidon to grant them safety and fortune on their long voyages.

Made entirely of white marble, it was erected in the middle of the 5th century BC and built to honour Poseidon, god of the sea.The first version of the temple was built during the Archaic Period but it was destroyed by the Persians in 480 BC. It was rebuilt around 440 BC. The temple was 13 columns long and 6 columns wide. Unfortunately, not all columns stand until today. A 5-meter-tall statue of Poseidon used to stand inside the temple. Nowadays, the only part of it that has survived is displayed in the Museum in Athens.

John returned raving about the views and how unbelievable it felt to be amongst something so old. We had a drink and returned to Driver John and the car. We had now seen everything included in our tour so Driver John took us to the airport….unfortunately our tour had only taken just three and a half hours…..we could hardly ask to go around the route again ….we had enjoyed the tour but we were a little disappointed that it was so short…there had been a lot of tours for this length of time at a much cheaper price but we had selected this one to use up some of the time before our flight.

We arrived at the airport at 2.00pm and fortunately found two of only a handful of seats….and there we sat…..we couldn’t do anything because we had our large suitcases with us as well as our hand luggage…the desk for luggage drop didn’t open until 6.00 pm …We sat out the 4 hours … at about 5.00 pm a queue started at the baggage check in for Easy Jet ….we didn’t get in it straight away as there were two flights going out before ours….but as they didn’t open the check in until 6.

John eventually joined the queue and after and hour and a half I joined him for the last 15 minutes. By now we knew the flight prior to ours was 2 hours late and ours was 30 minutes late…..what seemed like forever and a day passed and eventually we boarded the plane and had a further 50 minute delay….Thankfully immigration, baggage and customs were quick at Gatwick and we our driver Albert was waiting for us…we walked through our front door totally and utterly exhausted at spot on 2.00 am…….what a journey …..no wonder we were both ill for a week !!!!!…”Avoid Athens airport at all costs” is the reminder engraved firmly on my brain…..never, never again…..and as for the actual cruise….well, I’ll do a good and bad points follow up to this blog shortly….thanks for travelling along with us hope you enjoyed the tour…

Day 8 -3rd June 2024 – Santorini – Greek Cruise and other Places!

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We had planned to go ashore today. It was a tender and Santorini is one of our favourite islands. However my cold got worse and I had a night of coughing it’s not the first time it’s happened whilst we’ve been cruising … I call it Kennel Cough … oppps I meant Cabin Cough… usually brought on by the Ships air conditioning.…. So today’s pictures are taken by John from the ship … we sat watching others tender and the going up and down on the funicular. It certainly looked a bustling small village.

Virgin was also anchored near to us and they had a tall ship excursion.

We went to reception to find out about disembarking tomorrow … it all seemed much the same as normal … all suitcases out side the door by midnight, out of cabin by 8.00am but you don’t have to leave the ship until 3.00pm…. If we had known that we probably wouldn’t have bought a viator excursion to use up the time until our 9.00pm flight.
The day passed in a bit of a haze… packing done … envelopes for our cabin steward and both our dear waiters and before you knew it, it was time for supper… tonight’s menu was probably the least interesting we’ve had all week … but it was fine…

After bidding Saleem farewell and saying that we would see Moogessen at breakfast we retired to our cabin for our last night on MSC Opera.

Day 7- Sunday 2nd June 2024- Sea Day – Greek Cruise and other places!!

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Today is a sea day, our only one… so we had a lie in… I’ve managed to pick up a ‘Cabin Cough’ ….a sniffly cold with a nagging cough which keeps John awake. It’s usually brought on by the ships air conditioning . The good news is my hand, bottom and back no longer hurt from my fall yesterday but my left knee is painful to straighten and bend this prevented a good nights sleep. Today walking has become even slower than usual. Well that’s the medical update !!!!!
We had breakfast in the restaurant selecting what we wanted and Moogessen served laughing and joking with us.

After breakfast we went to guest services to see about having our double charged Corfu excursion refunded to our credit card…. No! They can’t do that … the day before we disembark we can go to a machine and it will refund us in Euros….. we questioned this because it was their mistake not ours but we will end up paying twice for a non sterling transaction and we have to accept what ever exchange rate they give us in Euros…. Ummmmm not very happy that we have to pay for their mistake……. we went to go up on deck… however we were told we couldn’t use the lift because those that failed to turn up for the official Muster drill on Embarkation were doing it in the Theatre… so all lifts were out of use for at least 30 minutes…. John had a few words to say about that especially as due to my knee walking up the stairs in a non emergency situation was not good…. Just as John had finished his reasoned response the lift doors opened and people poured out… at which point the lady said we could use it as it was a ridiculous situation… something MSC should sort out… punishing people who have done the right thing seemed ludicrous… Anyway finally on deck and every sunlounger, on both levels, had a towel or a person on it … not an empty one in sight.. there were no staff preventing the reservation of loungers by towels even though the person probably wouldn’t be using it for hours…. shame !!!
We finally found a table with 2 chairs in the direct sun on the edge of the heaving dance floor…. It was only 10.15am….. more and more people poured onto the floor…

. We sat for about 45 minutes before trying to find a shaded table but the only ones were on the smokers area which was thick with smoke so we gave it a miss and retreated back down stairs to our quiet bar for a game of Canasta… After which we decided to have a before lunch siesta!!! There was a bottle of Prosecco in an ice bucket, a plate of macaroons and two bars of dark chocolate in our room….. we are diamond loyalty and this is what they give you on Dress to Impress night….. Well! The before lunch siesta turned into an all day one….. my body must have been more shaken up than I thought and John, bless him, just looked after me by letting me sleep. I naturally woke up just before 5pm and felt quite a bit better… I showered and did my face and hair ready for tonight’s black tie event…. I wonder if John will be the only one in a Dinner Jacket!!! We will have to wait and see.

We stopped off in the bar near the dinning room for a mock-tail… Aida cruise ship was not far away travelling in the same direction.

We went out to the restaurant at 7.00pm and John was presented with a red paper rose. We were both very over dressed…We didn’t see another DJ or Evening gown….. it was a nice menu which we both enjoyed

The meal seem to take an eternity tonight with the Baked Alaska being paraded at 8.30pm we finally got out at 8.45pm and returned to our cabin… de-robed and had an early night… my efforts had dwindled and I as looking forward to another sleep … Good night everyone.

Day 6- Saturday 1st June 2024- Bari, Greek Cruise and other places.

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Well!! our clocks went back an hour as we crossed over to Italy….. this is always a problem when you’re at sea as you never know whether your phone alarm will have caught up with the time zone … it hadn’t so the alarm went off at 5.45am…. Checking it with my watch I reset it and had another hours shut eye!!!!
We had learnt, at supper yesterday, from a very helpful couple from Sidney, Australia; that the breakfast in the dinning room was quick, quiet and tasty so we gave it a whirl. Sure enough it was great… we were seated straight away and had a MSC Express … bacon , eggs, tomato, mushrooms and hash brown. Also a 8 /10 cup of coffee … yeah …We were in and out in less than 30 minutes.

Todays excursion meeting venue was in the Cotton Club.. Although the meeting time was 8.00am we didn’t actually leave until 8.20am as the ship was late docking.

We were quickly on our bus as soon as the gangway opened.
Today we are visiting Alberobello. This literally means “beautiful tree”. It is a small town near Bari in the heel of southern Italy. It has about 10,200 inhabitants and is famous for its unique trullo buildings. The trulli of Alberobello have been designated as a UNESCO site since 1996. Alberobello is known as one of “The most beautiful villages of Italy”. The bus took about an hour to get there and it parked up a 10 minute walk from the town square.

Unfortunately it began to rain quite heavily just as we arrived.
The guide told us that in the 15th Century a tax Levi was put on all new houses. The oldest buildings were circular in shape and the newer 16th century ones were square. Her tour took us around the streets of the oldest ones. They are all made from white rock bricks which fit together like Lego with no other materials holding them together.. all have conical roofs with drainage channels which either ran into their own private wells …

Our guide pointing out a private well.

…or into the street and down into the river at the bottom of the hill. Today’s main road is where the river used to be and that’s where all the houses got their water from unless they had their own well. The roofs, like the buildings, are self supporting, held together in their conical shape by the forces of nature.. equal pressure on all sides. The roofs were embellished with decorative pinnacles representing the signature of the architect. Over the front door is an extended slab. If this is pulled out the front section of the roof collapses. It was designed like this so that in olden times when the inspectors came to tax the houses the owner would quickly pull out the slab so that the inspectors saw a lot of rumble and an unfinished house so no tax was levied. Our guide laughed and said Italians have been dodging paying taxes ever since!!!!

We walked up and around the streets …

The architects signature on the top of the roof.

A lot of the trulli houses are now shops.

At the top of one of the streets we came across the Church of St Nicholas.

Coming back down the quaint stone street I managed to slip as I stepped down one of the steps and landed flat on my bottom… thank goodness for the copious amounts of padding. No real damage just some aches and pains, dirty white trousers and a thumb which is more painful than normal… a big thank you to the elderly gentleman and our New York living Mexican acquaintance who rushed to my aid and helped me up. Amazingly the rain suddenly stopped. We sat having a much needed drink in the town square.

Slippery steps

We returned to the coach in good time, as it departed back to the ship promptly at 13.00.

Our journey back to the ship was slightly longer as a road was closed and the bus had to U-turn… but we were back shortly before 2.00pm.
The ship was filling up with new cruisers. Bari is a start and finish point, which we hadn’t realised. In fact we were in the minority getting on in Athens. Luckily most the newbies had yet to discover the buffet so we had a relatively quiet lunch, followed by rest up time and a couple of paracetamol to help the now sore and achy knees and derrière!!!

We had our usual table in the main dinning room restaurant, thanks to Selvina who seats us each evening.

Another pleasant menu. The ship was still docked when we sat down and there was some lovely street art/ murals. Part way through our meal we started to sail away and we were treated to a rather nice sunset, across the wake of the ship ( surprising as we’ve hardly seen the sun today). A lovely sight.

After our meal we headed to our usually quiet bar only to find it heaving with people. There was some ABBA music playing and everyone was dancing … we think it’s a school holiday in Italy because our new cruisers have a massive amount of children with them….. I know I am old school but I really dislike seeing babies being shaken about in the arms of their hip-hop dancing parents… it can’t do the babies brains any good and children dancing on the dance floor when adults are trying not to squash them at 10.45 pm is not good… it’s adult time….Like I said I am old school….

We finished our drinks quickly and headed for the quiet sanctuary of our cabin…

A big shout out for Hannah who once again sorted our website out for us… I don’t know what I’d do if she wasn’t willing and able to sort all my blunders out… THANK YOU…. If any of you have WordPress sites and need a hand just drop me an email and I’ll ask Hannah if I can pass her details on to you.
Also before I say goodnight I am sorry if anyone’s emailed us on 2jsworldofadventure@gmail.com

I won’t be able to get back to you until next Wednesday because I have no internet on my iPad and I can’t remember my password to log in on my phone…. Sorry… if you’re desperate for a reply just fill in a comments/feedback on the website and I’ll pick your message up like that …. Sorry

Good night one and all.