[rewind] 7.16.13 - Greece

     Our original cruise itinerary promised an Athens excursion, and we booked a private tour a month in advance in preparation. Unfortunately, there was a large 24-hour strike in Athens on the 16th which meant that all forms of public transportation would be shut down. Therefore, our cruise was re-routed to Crete instead and our private tour was fully reimbursed. We have no hard feelings, although we would love to see Athens someday...

Heraklion, Crete
    Confession: We thought Crete was its own country so we were secretly thrilled at the new route plan. Turns out Crete is owned by Greece, but we feel as though it's big enough to count as a place of its own. It is quite a large island some distance away from the Greek mainland, after all. :) We cruised into the port of Heraklion and, having done no research whatsoever on this unplanned stop, we decided to explore it on our own.
     We took a city bus to Knossos and explored the ancient palace ruins where King Minos was said to have ruled and where a minotaur was said to have been born by his wife. Slightly unbelievable...but worth the trip nevertheless.

     After touring Knossos, we explored the streets of Heraklion in search of Greek gyros. We found the perfect place.

Katakolon (near Olympia)
    After walking non-stop in three consecutive cities (Venice, Dubrovnik, and Heraklion), we dedicated our stop in Katakolon to be strictly a beach day. Dave swam in the Mediterranean sea for the first time. It was gorgeous.

 

     We had just one more full day left on Norwegian Jade before returning to our initial departure point: Venice. Nicole was very excited to take more pigeon pictures... But since that was still several hours away we took pictures on the boat instead.

 

-David & Nicole

[rewind] 7.14.13 - Croatia

     Dubrovnik is a beautiful city along the Adriatic coast of Croatia. For a fee of 90 kuna, you can walk the one hour distance on top of the city wall. breathtaking. One of our very few regrets from the entire trip was that we didn't bring our bathing suits when we left the ship. We had no idea that Dubrovnik offers incredible cliff jumping opportunities. We watched enviously for a while...and promised ourselves to return someday with swimsuits. Inshallah.

It was evening when we said "Zbogom" to Croatia from the ship

     After leaving Croatia, we spent a full day on the ship. On the boat we gorged ourselves with plenty of incredible meals (including lobster and more gnocchi), spent hours sunbathing next to the pool, perfected the sport of shuffle board, and enjoyed entertaining theatrical productions every night.

Next stop: Greece!

-David & Nicole

[rewind] 7.12.13 - Venice

     We thoroughly enjoyed two nights and one full day in Venice before departing on Norwegian Jade en route to Croatia.
     Because we had to book two nights in Venice so spontaneously, we opted to save money by booking two different hotels (one night in each). This was the cheapest option, ensuring that we were close to the airport to accommodate our late arrival. Both hotels were reasonably priced and offered free, phenomenal breakfasts. We had carefully calculated the best walking route between the two hotels while we were in Morocco and were fully prepared to walk the 30 minute distance to avoid further bus transport costs. This plan would have been perfect... if google maps had actually pinpointed our two hotels correctly. Instead, we walked 30 minutes with our luggage only to discover that the two hotels were actually within sight of each other. We laughed aloud when we realized what we had done and, unwilling to walk the 30 minutes back to where we started, jumped on a bus back to our original starting point.
    After checking into our second hotel (which was actually a 2 minute walk from our first hotel), we ate at a restaurant solely because its name was associated with one of Dave's favorite soccer players: Del Piero. A second selling point was that they had gnocchi, which Dave has become obsessed with ever since he first had it in Milan (and rightly so).

     Then...we left for Venice! Venice is beautiful...as long as you don't have to carry any luggage with you. The city demands a lot of walking over a lot of bridges; however, the views are totally worth it. We were quite content to simply walk around the city all day taking pictures and eating gelato. Nicole particularly enjoyed taking pigeon pictures in San Marco Square.

Venice from Rialto Bridge

@ Rialto Bridge

San Marco Square

We left Venice mid-day on the 13th for our very first cruise.

Last morning in Venice pre-cruise

      With 2 pools, 4 hot tubs, daily theatrical productions, more than enough all-inclusive restaurant options, a new animal towel every day, shuffle board, etc; we were ready to say "ciao" to Venice. :)

The view of San Marco Square/Venice from aboard Norwegian Jade:

Tomorrow: Croatia!

-David & Nicole

[rewind] 7.7.13 - The Rough Start

   If you recall, we booked a 6 night cruise back in January and we have been anxiously looking forward to it ever since. Nicole had been checking for updates on our cruise constantly, and had been carefully reading every e-mail detailing important information about our trip. Unfortunately, Orbitz failed to send us the most important e-mail of all...

    On July 7 Dave was glancing over our paperwork one last time (which we had just printed) and noticed a "mistake". Our flight had changed by 9 hours, with an arrival time scheduled in Venice for 4 hours after our cruise was to depart. We frantically double checked our e-mails and confirmed that, indeed, we were never notified of this flight change. (Orbitz would later tell us that they sent out 5 e-mails with flight change notifications back in March...but they didn't). We were days away from our departure so we had to remedy the situation fast.

    To make a very long story short...

• We spent a total of over 10 frustrating hours (in a span of 4 days) on the phone with Orbitz customer service
• The only free-of-charge flight change offered to us was one that left two days earlier than planned
• Thanks to our hefty complaints for not notifying us of our flight change, we were able to get Orbitz to give us a $100 voucher to help with our new hotel costs
• In spite of the fact that we agreed to the 2-days earlier flight adjustment on July 7th, we were not given flight confirmation until July 10th (less than 12 hours before our departure)
• We successfully obtained tickets and flew out on July 11th, the day after the start of Ramadan (in fact, our landlord brought us our first fitr feast the night before our departure. yum)
• We promised ourselves never to book flights through Orbitz ever again

    Thankfully, we had no further flight complications. And in the end, we were actually pleased to have two extra days in Venice prior to starting our cruise. We will tell you how incredible Venice was tomorrow...

-David & Nicole