Prologue

In August 2018, Don and Mary-Theresa Madill had gone on the Viking Grand European Tour from Amsterdam to Budapest. However, due to low water levels on rivers, the Viking Bragi longship on which we were booked was not able to get to Amsterdam and we began the cruise on the identical ship Viking Skadi; it would be necessary to transfer at some point by bus to the Bragi. It turned out that even more bus transfers were necessary. For this inconvenience, Viking offered to give us credit on 25 % of what we had paid for this cruise toward a future cruise.

Rather than booking another river cruise (because of our earlier misfortune), we decided on the Empires of the Mediterranean ocean cruise. At least the ocean would not leave us high and dry. Because we wanted to stay a few extra days in Athens at the end of the cruise (and to save on the cost of the flight offered as part of the Viking package), MT booked our own flights and arranged for our own transfers to the ship in Venice and from the ship to a hotel in Athens. At the scheduled date, depending on one’s level of accommodations on the ship (ours was Deluxe Veranda 2), we were able to go online and reserve shore excursions (one included at each port call) and some of the optional excursions (at additional cost). Despite other room categories selecting before us, we were able to get all the excursions we selected and at times of our choosing, which sometimes allowed us to have two excursions on the same day. At a later scheduled date, we were also able to reserve two special means, one at the Chef’s Table (Jul 30, the only date still available) and one at Manfredi’s Italian restaurant (6 Aug). We had also read in the Cruise Documents that guests celebrating a special occasion could contact Viking at least 2 weeks prior to departure in order to make their day memorable. So MT called Viking agent Diana and explained that part of the reason for our cruise was to celebrate out 45th anniversary, which was on Jul 27, 2 days before departure; Diana said that was OK and we just needed to notify the staff when we came aboard. We did so, and they scheduled us for another special dinner at Manfredi’s on Aug 3.

 Map of our Empires of the Mediterranean cruise.

6939c Cruise summary showing our stateroom 4043 and ports by day.

Don took lots of photos on his Nikon digital camera, and MT took some on her iPhone. Her photos from the iPhone are identified by the annotation “MT” at the beginning of the photo caption in this blog.

The following posts are a day-by-day account of our cruise in 2019 based primarily on Don's notes and supplemented with MT's notes. When information from other sources is added—for further explanation to readers or to satisfy our own curiosity—that is set off in a text box (like this one). Occasionally, photos from other sources (such as the public domain Wikimedia Commons) are used for clarification; the sources are identified, as required, at the end of the photo caption.