Date: June 10th to 19th, 2023

Part two of my 2023 "European summer" was visiting my mom in Bulgaria, where I arrived from Slovakia. I flew into the Burgas airport Monday June 5th. My mom was waiting for me alraedy. She came with one of her acquaintances, a Czech lady living in Lozenets for decades and supplementing her retirement income by working as a driver. I next spent few days resting at mom's apartment pool and the Lozenets beach. I have more pictures from here in Part 3 from my return with Sandra. This 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), where we took a 12:05 Ardatur 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 hour later at 17:30, but this timing is completely unrealistic given the border situation. It literally took over 2 hours just to cross the border. The length of the queue was not that long but every single piece of luggage needed to be scanned. 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 just did not 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, we took a taxi to the Karakoy district where we were staying. Karakoy is right next to the Galataport cruise terminal. According to websites lke Rome2Rio, this a 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 about 10 blocks away (to his credit, Karakoy is very congested with tourists). I ended up paying him "only" 20 euro, but I feel even that was a ripoff. This was my first introduction to Istanbul. While it is a very interesting city with amazing history, I felt that everyone was out here was scheming to scam me. This is a very different vibe than Bulgaria where really the only risk is that many shop owners do not speak English. The scamming didn't seem to be limited to the streets. We stayed at a really nice hotel called Royal Tophane hotel. The next morning, during check out, the owner wanted me to pay him more money despite me having pre-booked 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 such a bait and switch. Then on the streets, you have shoe shiners who always just happen to drop their brush in front of an unsuspecting tourist, hoping to transform the generosity of the person noticing it into a tip following a "free" shoe shine.

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. Then 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 little while to realize that you first need to enter this area by passing through security where your bags (if you have any) are checked. There are several entrances, including at the Peninsula hotel and the more appropriate passage through a small shopping mall in an old post office building. Then on the other side you have 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 access to the ships only to the ticketed passengers. When I passed in the morning, there were already 3 cruise ships docked, but neither was our MSC Splendida. It was still on its way. Being a cruising noob, I wrongly assumed that cruise ships arrive 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!

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 hang out, again, having cakes and Turkish coffee, until it was time for embarkation.

Embarkation

The embarkation process was really smooth. I have read various public forum complaints of long embarkation times, but this was not the case with MSC. From the public area of Galataport, you enter a cruise building which mainly serves as the upper terminal for several flights of escalators that take you underground. There is even a road access here presumably for 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 were once again heading back up an escalator, but this time one on the other side of the raised platform. 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 $1199.0 per passenger. Taxes and port fees added additional $130.46. This is also per passenger. The fare included free mineral water and 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 balcony room #9076.

Day 2: Dardanelles and Greek Islands

And our adventure has 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, all my travels have been on land. Cruising offered 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 by 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 narrrow 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 to basically just hang out. MSC seems to be really big on various giveaways, as there were many opportunities to get free glasses of champagne. I even ended up winning a bottle of sparkling wine 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 encontered 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 crows -and there were crowds! However, one thing not to miss in the buffet is the pizza including one made with 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 one year later, in June 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 yet another 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 the weather was beautiful, we settled in an outside seat to have a quick lunch. Well, our timing was phenomenal since just as we were about to wrap up, 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 sewers. Other diners, along with the populace off the streets crowded into the restaurant.

But the rain eventually passed, and the Noah's ark island eventually 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 hits 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 also went to see the main theater evening variety show.

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