Our first cruise was on the Carnival Magic during it's inaugural season in 2011 for our 30th Wedding Anniversary and it seemed only fitting that we repeat the experience for our 35th on Carnival's newest ship, Vista.
We spent a couple of days in Athens pre-cruise and made our way to Piraeus via taxi. The embarkation process was really impressive, we arrived at just about the time suggested on our boarding passes and sailed through (forgive the pun). It was a hot day and the registration took place in one of those semi-permanent canvas structures with an array of really good AC units. We were in our cabin within half an hour of getting out of the taxi. Bags arrived about 15 minutes later.
We treated ourselves to our first balcony as an anniversary present and it made a nice change but we'll reserve that luxury for special occasions in the future as we found that we spent very little time in the cabin anyway.
Decent sized cabin, large TV and a small to average balcony. Exactly as we expected from a brand new ship.
Stayed a couple of nights at the Polis Grand Hotel. Very friendly and helpful staff. Clean and spacious room. Excellent food, the roof top restaurant and bar have a view of the Acropolis which is beautiful lit up at night.
Old French port. Not much to write home about.