The Med Cruise Minus Issac

Before I begin this wrap-up, I’ll answer the three most asked questions about my cruise aboard the 964-foot MSC Magnifica that you’ve always wanted to know:

• How many Europeans can you fit into a standard size Jacuzzi? By all accounts, between 17 and 22.
• Favorite thing you learned during the on-board trivia games? That the Statue of Liberty is named “Carolina.”
• Did you get seasick? No. Not once.

Steaming out of Venice -- at 4 p.m. That's the moon.

With those questions answered, welcome to the Med cruise wrap-up blog! We’ve been planning this thing for better than a year. We’ve always wanted to go to Egypt and see pyramids (more on that later). And with meds and a year to prepare, I figured I could overcome my motion sickness. I did. Let’s hit the highlights (though this blog runs a bit longer than usual).

You should then know we arrived in Venice for our cruise in the Western Mediterranean Dec. 19. The cruise would stop in Bari, Italy; Rhodes, Greece; Alexandria, Egypt; Katakolon, Greece and Dubrovnik, Croatia. We traveled with about 2,200 others on the Adriatic, Ionian, Aegean and Mediterranean Seas. The ship was less than 11 months old. When we arrived in Venice, three inches of snow lie on the ground. When we pulled out of port, around 5 p.m. local time, it got colder. We floated by as the sun set St. Marks Square, then ran inside for the first buffet.

Now, some quick hits before we go on:

• There is no money exchanged on the ship (save in the Casino). Every transaction is done with a small white card. You also can’t leave or get back on the ship without it.
• All announcements are made in five languages: Italian, English, German, French and Spanish.
• I took Salsa dance lessons. Oh yeah. I can swing it.
• Our 5-year-old daughter did not dig the kids club. She lasted about three hours before collapsing into the fetal position and crying. “Kids club” apparently means “Stick 3-6 year olds in a room and let nature take its course” Needless to say, AB spent a lot of time with us.
• As we boarded the ship after our Alberobello, Italy stop, an English women asked the man clearing us to get back on the boat if he was Israeli. He said yes. She then said, “Ah! I thought so! They put Mossad agents on these ships! The Mossad is on these ships to protect us!” Also, she repeated the exact same thing the guide said on the bus to a Chinese man for two hours. He understood English just fine. She called him “Mister Hong Kong.” It could have been a Monty Python sketch.
• Most used phrase: “Card, please?” Or, “I have wronged you. I must give you a chicken.”

Trulli in Alberobello

Accommodations. Our room on the inside of the ship could have doubled as a voting booth. Still, it was all we needed since we were only there to sleep, nap and take breaks from some of the other activities. A full-sized bed, two bunk beds, television, small wet bar, a pair of closets and an airliner-sized bathroom. I would tell you that if you like to sleep on a hard mattress, this one was harder than Nicole Kidman’s forehead after Botox.

Staff. There is a hierarchy of the crew that’s easily spotted. Grey shirted people scrubbed brass and kept things shiny. White shirts cleaned rooms. White vested served food and drinks. White Eisenhower-style jackets oversaw the servers. Orange vests did some other kind of supervision. White and orange jackets managed the dining room and glad-handed patrons. Suits carried phones and kept things moving, like seafaring pit bosses. Uniformed crew members were rarely seen, but kept the Magnifica moving. The captain’s name is Giuseppe Maresca. He looked like Jim Belushi and Roberto Benigni had a son. The underlings came from countries like Indonesia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Philippines and Honduras. The supervisors, leaders and ship’s crew were almost all from Italy.

Food. Americans had the hardest time with the food, since it ranged toward more European tastes. Lots of cold cuts and pastas. Meat dishes were trended from awful to fantastic. Really, save three great evening meals, you could take or leave the food. Our best meal was eaten on shore in Dubrovnik.

Entertainment. There were opera singers, acrobats, lounge lizards and great shows in the theater. Our favorite act were a Russian couple. He played keyboards and everything electronic, but always had on his “This is my passion face. She looked like a jilted Russian bride, who slapped a tambourine on her hip and sang Phil Collins’ “Another Day in Paradise” as if she were calling out the undead for some awful ceremony. Hilarious to watch. Oh, and kudos to the half-dozen people that composed the entertainment staff.

Lindos and Rhodes

Travel. First port: Bari, Italy. We did not see Bari. Instead, our excursion took us to Alberobello, Italy. It’s a place known for dwellings called trulli, where, you would swear, gnomes lived. They are small houses with conical tiled tops. The town is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site. Most of the trulli have a rune (no kidding) painted on top of the roof, usually of Pagan or Christian origin. The residents are friendly. The knickknacks are worthy of purchase.

After a day at sea, we arrived at our next port: Rhodes, Greece. Great sunny day. Saw the place where the Colossus of Rhodes supposedly stood and took a quick city tour (including viewing the city’s acropolis). However, we were encouraged (but a friendly, Australian-raised  Greek cab driver) to go to Lindos, about 27 miles on the other side of the island. Lindos is a small town on the sea with more trinket shops and the bleach white buildings seen in so many representations of Greece. I don’t know that we needed to go to Lindos, but we also had a gabby cab driver who gave us tons of background.

Alexandria, Egypt. The only place we needed to have our passport stamped. We chose an excursion that had us on a bus for better than seven hours. The travel took us from the port of Alexandria to Giza, to the Pyramids there. Also, the Sphinx. We also explored Saqqara, Egypt, taking rides over the dunes in a Range Rover and on a camel seeing the six-step mastaba (we LOVED both of these things). We also had a buffet meal at the Saqqara Country Club, where we ate pigeon, and popped into a place that makes papyrus before our long ride back to the ship. All good Warning! As it turns out, Egypt is the “Pros Versus Joes” of hustling. Our tour guide warned us about the people who’d try to sell us stuff, but she said it in the same way a doctor tells you that you might experience some “discomfort” when passing a kidney stone.

After another day on the water, we rolled into Katakolon, Greece on Christmas Day. The sight of the original Olympics. Our tour guide had this amazing, feathered “Mom from Saturday Night Fever” hair and talked a storm. Unfortunately, the actual site where the games took place was closed. What we learned is that the games were performed by naked men for religious reasons. That NBC has not demand this of the modern games strictly for ratings escapes me.

The final stop: Dubrovnik, Croatia. The old part of the city is an amazing fortress like enclosure. Plenty of nooks and crannies to walk in and around.  We also had the best meal of the trip at a restaurant near where our bus dropped us, bowls of Spaghetti Bolognese. Nice people. I’d like to get back there soon.

There were two nights where 50-75 mph wind was common. Not gusts. Sustained. One night, it really rocked the ship and got my wife sick. More impressive? As the ship rocked in these tropical storm-like winds, the Russian gymnasts were performing their act. Curtains swayed. On-stage furniture moved. Impressive, really. My wife tells me the ship had “stabilizers” of some kind. They worked well.

The ship docked in Venice at 7:30 a.m. Dec. 27. We had to be out of our room by 7 a.m. We waited in the theater until 10 a.m., and caught our train home at 1 p.m. Aside from waiting in the free bus line for 70 minutes, no hitches – and the bus was free.

Some final thoughts:

• As we waited in the on-board theater to leave, my wife met an American woman who lived in Qatar. She hated almost everything about the cruise: food, entertainment, locales, ambiance and more. As they talked, the same woman also let her son throw up in his hand and complained when the staff didn’t rush to clean it. She also let her sons run rampant on the stage and elsewhere even after the staff asked her politely to stop.
• The destinations were more exciting than the cruise. I don’t gamble and surprisingly, I didn’t have one drink the entire time. This had a lot to do with our daughter becoming a more integral part of our itinerary after the “kids club” turned into a “fight club.” Still, there was plenty to do and fun to be had at almost every turn (and the sports bar got a crisp, clear ESPN America signal.
• We had great table mates for dinner, also Americans living and working in Germany.
• Again, thanks to our friends in Germany and Italy. Without their help, we couldn’t have gone.

In closing, I’d go again. However, I’d go warmer, though I’m told these things are pure hell “in season.” At Rhodes, the cab driver said five or six ships come per month during the off season. In season, that number runs in the hundreds. Hundreds. That’s thousands of people trying to cram into the same spots. Still, warmer.

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