We did back to back cruises on Royal Caribbean’s Vision of the Seas out of Venice Oct 2016. We’ve experienced several other cruise lines (Carnival, DCL, NCL) as well as RCL in the past. We had both done Venice before so spending a lot of time there wasn’t a high priority. I'm going to cover Kotor, Montenegro; Corfu, Greece; Athens, Greece; Mykonos, Greece; Argastoli (Kefalonia), Greece; Dubrovnik, Croatia; Ephesus, Turkey; Santorini, Greece; and Olympia (Katakolon), Greece.

How this came about - the 2nd cruise was planned already but then we got to thinking that we'd be all that way with airfare already paid for and we looked to an outside cruise vendor and the "add on" of the first cruise was beyond reasonable (less than $100/day pp) so we said let's do it.

Arrived 2 days early in Venice airport and because we got in late we opted stay up near the airport, choose Park Junior in Quarto d’Altino. Getting through the airport was super easy, including baggage collection, customs and immigration. The hotel set up our airport transport, which was late (they arrived about 30 mins after our flight was scheduled land and we had gotten in about 15 early so we stood around waiting outside for a bit, getting nervous as to if they would come, plus where they wanted to meet was not where anyone else was so it didn’t exactly feel safe. But he eventually arrived and got us to the hotel. Check in at the hotel was easy. Room was older but spacious, small shower, fairly comfortable bed, quiet with good sized balcony. The main reason we picked this hotel was it was cheap. Breakfast in the morning was fantastic, huge selection, friendly service, nice views. Read more