Our Oceania Cruise Itinerary
It’s been almost a week since we’ve been back from our Oceania Cruise, and I’m still trying to process everything we saw and did! This is our second cruise on Oceania together, and of course, we filmed most of it! Our cruise series should be debuting on YouTube in the coming weeks. I wanted to share with you our full cruise itinerary in case anyone is interested in what our entire trip looked like. I will also be doing individual blog posts on each place/port for those that want more detail.
Our Flight
We flew United from Denver to Munich, Germany. We always try and take the Dreamliners as they are a bit more comfortable than some other planes. The flight was about 9 hours and we made sure to have someone there to pick us up to transport us to the hotel when we got there. This was booked through RhomTrip.com.
Munich, Germany
We stayed 3 nights in Munich at the Hilton Munich Park. Main reason we booked a Hilton is because we are Diamond members, but we suggest skipping this one! I’ll explain more in a detailed post. Getting around is fairly easy with Uber. We didn’t take any longer day trips because we were still beating jet lag and easing into the trip.
Getting to our Port
Our cruise was leaving out of Trieste since Venice stopped allowing cruise ships to dock in the area. We decided to opt for a train ride to get there instead of a flight. We left Munich in the morning from the train station, which took us to Venice S. Lucia. Then we had to hop on a different train to Trieste about an hour after arriving. I booked both trains through RailEurope.com. We upgraded to open air first class (not the individual rooms) for the long train ride, which was worth it. I’ll go into further detail about the experience on a detailed post.
We set up a transport through our hotel to pick us up from the station when we arrived in Trieste. This was very convenient and saved us the hassle of finding a taxi that could fit our luggage.
Day Before our Cruise
We stayed over night in Trieste at the Hilton Double Tree Trieste. We really liked this hotel, even though it was a little expensive. It was unique and beautiful, and only minutes from the port. They were able to set up a van to take us to the port the next morning at 10:30am. The earliest we could embark on Oceania Riviera was 11am, so this worked out perfect.
Boarding our cruise
We got to the terminal in plenty of time. We made sure the luggage tags Oceania provided in the mail were attached to each suitcase, and dropped those off first. Then we went through the process of checking in. We booked the Penthouse suite while my parents booked the Oceania suite. I do recommend when booking to find out what side of the ship you will get the best views. Unfortunately, we got the wrong side this time, but my parents were on the correct side! Do keep in mind, you can explore the port you’re leaving from as long as you’re back in the correct time.
Our Ports:
Trieste, Italy
Split, Croatia
Bari, Italy
Kotor, Montenegro
Kavala, Greece
Istanbul, Turkey
Izmir, Turkey
Crete, Greece
Athens, Greece
Disembarking our Cruise
Our cruise felt like it flew by! We had one day at sea, but even so, we would have loved to have been on it a couple more days. Disembarkation day is a bit chaotic. Employees are stressed because they have to turn over the ship while simultaneously working around guests. You have to have your suitcases outside your cabin the night before, which means anything you need for the morning, you will need to have in your carry-on/backpack. You also choose what time you plan to get off in the morning ahead of time. We were able to choose 8:30am, which was so much better than the earlier times we chose in the past. Disembarkation is fairly straight forward. The cruise director will call your tag color and number when it’s time for you to leave.
We organized a transport through our hotel to take us from Piraeus (where we ended our cruise) to Glyfada (where our hotel was).
Glyfada, GReece
Instead of staying in busy Athens, we decided to stay in a quieter beach town. The hotel we stayed at was a cute boutique hotel called Brasil Suites. We used the 3 nights we stayed there to come down from our cruise and enjoy the area.
Getting Home
We flew from Athens to London via Aegean Airlines. It wasn’t the most pleasant flight of all time, but wow the Athens airport has come a long way in the past 20 years! We decided to stay 2 nights in Windsor instead of hoping on the long flight home so that we could relax a little. Our usual stop over is at the Runnymede on Thames hotel, which is always a pleasant experience. It’s also fairly easy to take an Uber over to Windsor town.
We flew the same type of United Dreamliner back to Denver.
That pretty much covers our itinerary. Like I said, we will be making vlogs and blog posts of the places we went. Also, feel free to contact us with any questions you may have! If you aren’t already subscribed to our YouTube channel, please do as it really supports our work. :)
