Author: jillreider1

November 7-12, 2024 Now I’ll do a quick recap of the rest of our cruise adventures. November 7 & 8. After Olympia, we stopped in Athens for 2 days, while some people got off and others joined the ship. The first day, we had no excursions, so I did laundry in the ship’s Launderette on…

Wednesday, November 6, 2024 After seeing the ruins at Olympia, we were shuffled back on the bus for a short ride to a nice hotel, Touris Club, where the owner, Mrs. Vasso, greeted us and led us to the dining room where there were tables laid out for our lunch around the edges of the…

Wednesday, November 6, 2024 (Sorry about the long blog silence – we did not fall off the boat or get captured by pirates! We were just so busy adventuring that we needed what little downtime we had between excursions and eating to really chill!) Our Olympia day adventure started with an 8:00 am meetup at…

Tuesday, November 5, 2024 We decided to do something a little more active to try to work off all of the extra calories we’ve been enjoying on the ship, so we went mountain biking on mountainous Corfu! No e-bikes – these were regular people-powered bikes! Our trip was 17 km or 9.5 miles heading up…

Monday, November 4, 2024 After overnight cruising from Dubrovnik, Croatia, we arrived at Kotor, Montenegro at 7:00 am. We enjoyed a lazy morning since our scheduled free tour of the city wasn’t until the last one of the day at 2:15 pm. The excursions every day are very nice, but it is nice to not…

Sunday, November 3, 2024 Another peaceful night cruising south along the Dalmatian Coast from Split to Dubrovnik, Croatia. We never saw the old walled town of Dubrovnik, but we did have a very fun drive back north along the coast to learn about oyster and mussel farming, wine tasting, and olive oil production, while enjoying…

Saturday, November 2, 2024 After a peaceful overnight cruise, we awoke to beautiful coastline views of the Dalmatian Coast. Shortly after, we pulled alongside the Split harbor pier with views of downtown Split and the walls of Diocletian’s retirement palace, finished in 304 A.D. He was the only Roman Emperor to abdicate his throne and…

Friday, November 1, 2024 After a 45-minute boat ride from the ship to the dock by the Piazza San Marco, we enjoyed a few hours wandering around Venice on a beautiful sunny pleasant morning. We had about an hour and a half by ourselves before we had to be back at the Piazza to meet…

We flew overnight from Chicago O’Hare to Paris Charles de Gaulle airport on Air France. We knew we were leaving the U.S. just sitting at the gate waiting to board with all the French speakers surrounding us. We had a long layover, so I caught the last episodes of a series I had been watching…

29 October 2024 We fly out of Grand Rapids to Chicago O’Hare airport tomorrow, and in the evening fly overnight to Paris, France, change planes and on to Venice, Italy. Viking Cruise personnel will be there to greet us and take us to the ship for our cruise to Istanbul. We hope to take lots…