Oceania Regatta

We had an amazing 3 weeks away cruising the med with Oceania cruises on one of their smaller ships the Sirena. Georgie from Global Journeys organized our flights and cruise and was super helpful giving lots of info and options and answering all my questions, there were many as we had never cruised before. Our cabin was in a great position, the views ...read more were spectacular and was amazing waking up in a new location every day. We got to see so many places and everything went very smoothly with the whole trip from start to finish.

A most enjoyable 10-day cruise to places of historical significance. Our favourite place in Turkiye was Istanbul where we spent an extra couple of days in order to take in the Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia, Topkapi Palace, Basilica Cistern and Sirkeci Station, the old terminus of the Orient Express. Bodrum in Turkiye, particularly the Castle and Museum ...read more of Underwater Archaeology, gave an insight into how ancient cultures dominated the area over the centuries. We also got an interesting demonstration of Turkish carpet weaving. In Ephesus we learned the origins of the Nike fashion brand name and logo.

The highlights of Greece were the tours through the island of Syros and its narrow streets only accessible by donkey and through the islands of Santorini & Mykonos with their windmills and numerous other tourists. In Athens we enjoyed the tour to the Acropolis as well as watching the changing of the guard outside the Parliament House. All this was done whilst temperatures reached the mid 40's C and preceded the evacuation of some islands due to bush fires after our cruise.

Oceania Cruises was well organised with a good itinerary, good food and reasonably priced excursions. The Nautica is a comfortable ship with a quality feel about it and we would definitely sail with them again. And finally Global Journeys and Georgie Walpole were very helpful and great to deal with throughout the booking process.

This was a 24 days cruise from Portsmouth, UK to Barcelona, Spain, travelling through western coastal France, top of Spain, Portugal, Canary Islands, Morocco. As always the cuisine was superb, the service was great. Many of the crew were new, they were most pleasant and tried very hard, but much more for them to learn. Many fellow cruisers agreed that ...read more after COVID the standard in Oceania has dropped. This is a coast saving strategy, we suppose. Fellow cruisers are experienced travellers, very friendly group, almost all are over 65. My photo was taken in Madeira, an island off the coast of Africa.