Mediterranean cruise review for the orient line's Crown Odyssey!

This will be our first attempt at writing cruise reviews, so please bear with us as we do not know what we are doing.

Some basic facts about the Crown Odyssey

The Crown Odyssey has a gross registered weight of 34,250 tons, holds 1,026 passengers and about 470 crew. It has 10 guest decks and cruises at 20 knots.

The Deck Officers are Scandinavian, the crew is Filipino, and the Social Staff is British and American.

We had to fly to Athens from Boston, so we spent a couple of day in Boston before heading to Athens.

We boarded the ship after three fantastic days in Athens where we visited the Parthenon and other impressive ruins, shopped, and took a tour or two. 

Our cruise begins in Athens

The ship cruise began in Athens stopping at the Greek islands of Mykonos, Delos, Santorini, and Rhoades, and in Kusadasi Turkey, and finishing up its cruise at Istanbul.  We spent two days in Istanbul, falling in love with the city, and departed back to the U.S. to write our cruise reviews.

On the first evening we found ourselves seated in what we considered a poor location....just outside the door to the kitchen. My wife Kathy, being slightly on the assertive side, complained to the maitre de.  The next meal we had a great table with several lovely couples.  We seemed to get special attention from the maitre de for the rest of the trip. LOL. Useful advice for cruise ship passengers for our cruise reviews.

One thing to remember on a cruise ship...complain if there is something you are unhappy about.  The crew makes every effort to keep you happy. 

The food was just as good as expected, and the serving staff friendly and attentive.

We had a very funny waiter who had many talents...he could fold the napkins to look like just about anything, and could do magic tricks.  Dinner was always an experience.  For us, meal times are some of the most fun and memorable times. We really enjoy meeting the other people at our table.

The shows put on by the crew are well worth attending. 

The "at sea" days on the ship when we didn't have any ports to stop in were great too.  It was nice to just lay back in a lounge chair sipping a "drink of the day", and relax.  Plenty of swimming pools to cool off in when it gets too hot.

We enjoyed the casino for brief periods. We found that if we spent too much time in the casino, we ended up spending too much money!

There is always something going on on the ship, more than we could keep up with, what with movies, shows, bingo, mock horse racing, talks about various things like when and where to shop for the best bargains in jewelry etc.

Tours were extremely well organized and included some fabulous places. We took tours in Athens, Delos, Kusadasi and the ruins at Ephesus and Istanbul, but wandered on our own through Mykonos, Santorini and Rhodes, well, I guess we did go on a tour in Rhodes too come to think of it.  

The tours are really great if you are interested in history, and the guides often have good advice about what to see and do after the tour is over.

Every where we went we had a wonderful time both on and off the ship. We are definitely hooked on cruising! We will certainly be doing more cruise reviews of the ships we sail on.