Greece and the Sun Princess
- seanick9
- Jun 13, 2025
- 14 min read
When Anna and I were planning our Europe adventure back in February, we had already planned to go to Greece and Spain, but we hadn’t booked any flights yet. We had recently gone on a 3-day fam (familiarization) trip on the Sun Princess boat, for its first US trip to the Bahamas in October- and had a really good time. So we were already somewhat primed for it. So while we were talking about going to Greece first, and then flying to Spain, Anna said “Just for fun, lets see if there are any cruises…” and looked at their cruise schedule to see if they had anything leaving from Athens in late May/ early June - and there it was! A cruise leaving Athens on May 31 and arriving in Barcelona on June 7. It was even the same boat we had been on before, the Sun Princess! It was a bit of extravagance, we even booked a bigger room so Emily had more space, but it was such a blast so I am really glad we did it. As Anna says on her instagram post, we’re already looking to fit another cruise into our schedule.
The time had finally come, and we finished our land-based Greece leg in Athens, boarding the boat pretty early in the day, which was surprisingly easy! The last time we got on the cruise, they had just had to extend the trip a day due to hurricane Helene in the Atlantic before they could disembark in Fort Lauderdale, so our experience boarding the boat had been - wait in a really long line with our luggage for 2 hours, before an even longer line past security to get our medallions. In contrast, this time when our taxi pulled up, a representative was ready to take our bags right in the parking lot, and there was no line at all in security or at the check-in counter. Quite a smooth experience, and we jumped right into cruise life as soon as we boarded.
Emily had a really good time, she was a huge fan of the gelato, the kids club, the pool, and a couple of music shows we went to in the arena. And we were huge fans of the ability to drop her off and go on shore excursions without her! The Sun Princess is the largest boat ever made in Italy as of last year, and has a ton of bells and whistles. The Princess app itself leaves some things to be desired though! The kids club was a great way to entertain Emily, as she even made some new friends on the cruise, since they were also in the kids club most days - and having opportunities for Emily to play with other kids was important to us.
The boat itself is pretty amazing. Princess gives you a little NFC medallion to act as your ID and payment and access card for everything while you’re there, and all the display screens pick up your identity as you’re walking past them and use it to display pictures the staff has taken of you, which just feels a bit like sci-fi. The room doors automatically unlock as you approach them, and the app will let you locate your friends and family on the ship, as well as where you are on the map, which is pretty nice. The food on cruise ships is always awesome, and Princess has inclusive packages, the Princess Plus and Princess Premier, which give you free drinks up to $15 and $20, respectively. Pretty much everything is covered including gratuities with either plan, and we took full advantage.
The restaurants on the ship come in different styles and classes. There is food available a la carte in a couple restaurants. There is also a main sit-down style restaurant that you can go to for breakfast and dinner, one for main cabin folk and one for suite folk. Apparently the room we got, while called a mini suite and large enough for 4 people, wasn’t considered a suite and therefore didn’t qualify for the Eclipse dining room. The line for the main cabin restaurant (“MDR” for Main Dining Room) was always too long, so we never got around to trying it - usually we were in a hurry and just went to one of the a la carte places if we didn’t already have a reservation. The other restaurant options were sit-down experiences that you had to book reservations for ahead of time, and the trick there is to book them as soon as they are available, which is either after you’ve fully paid, or as soon as you board. We booked 4 restaurants as soon as we boarded the vessel early in the day and had most options and times available then.
The Catch
This is a seafood and steak kind of place, which gives you your choice of a few apps, a salad option, main course and dessert. For mine, I did the cold citrus lobster tail starter and the surf and turf which came with lobster tail again and a small filet. This was a quite tasty meal, the beef was cooked exquisitely with butter and herbs, perfectly cooked at medium rare, and the lobster on both courses was very tasty as well. I don’t remember what we got for desserts but I’m sure it was yummy, the main thing I remember was how good the steak was!
Butchers Block
On the second day, we went to the steak restaurant, “The Butchers Block”.
This place basically served one thing: beef. They had a couple other meats on the menu, but that was pretty much it. Served New York / Italian style, there was a house chianti on the table, they brought out some special salts and butters, family style appetizers with beef carpaccio, steak tartare, vegetables and bone marrow.
One quirk about this place is they didn’t season the meat, they brought out a bunch of specialty salts and expected the customer to season it to taste. My problem with this idea - I don’t think most customers know how much salt should go on a steak, and so would this not lead to most of the meat being consumed there being under-seasoned, and folk thinking that it was off?
The main course we picked was the t-bone for two, which we ordered medium rare, but despite all the pomp, the main meat was absolutely disappointing, it was nearly blue and sliced into bite size pieces with the bone sticking straight up on the plate in a fancy presentation. Wouldn’t you have noticed you were serving raw meat before you finished cutting up all the way? I looked around for an edible piece, and did eat a couple of the edge pieces which were not still mooing, but left most of it untouched. What made it the most ironic was the fact that we got steak both the day before and the day after, which were both perfectly cooked and delicious, so for the steak place itself to be the one that delivered the weakest offering was pretty sad. I’m sure it was just an off day.
Crown Grille
This is another Steak and Seafood kind of place- and Anna had booked it special for my birthday, along with ordering a cake for dessert. We had eaten here when we were on the ship the first time so knew what to expect - and the food did not disappoint! Again I ordered steak, yes, three days in a row, but this time I was much more satisfied with the result than the night before. The 10 oz ribeye came with sauce options, and the peppercorn brandy sauce with the ribeye was a flavor sensation. Crown Grille had other options, too, if you weren’t a carnivore. Highly recommend getting a res here if you did the upgrade to Princess Premier.
Nakomi Ocean
Our last reservation was Nakomi Ocean, and unfortunately, it basically didn’t work out for timing as we were all very tired after the Sicily excursion, so we decided to just order some room service for Anna and Emily, while I went out and did the sushi by myself.
I had the main sushi offering, the sushi experience, which was interesting and tasted fine but did not live up to just visiting a random sushi place on the west coast of the USA, in terms of fish quality etc. The plating was fun, though, and I met one of the entertainers from the boat while I was there (Tom Timon, one of the circus acts who did sword swallowing on the boat the day before!)
Entertainment
We really enjoyed the “Viva La Musica!” show they do on that boat. It’s kind of the main show, so if you’re there, you should definitely see it! We’d seen the show before on the last time we were on the ship. Emily got to run down and dance with the performers, which she loved, and wanted to do again. Of course we tried to make that happen.
On our second to last night of the cruise, we went to another show, this one was playing covers of many popular rock songs, including some from Heart, Aerosmith, ACDC, even pulled out some extra musicians to play Bohemian Rhapsody and Kashmir - Emily ended up going and dancing with the main singer twice on this show! She was so thrilled to be part of it, and was talking about becoming a performer afterwards. I guess we should sign her up for music lessons!
Excursions
On the cruise, we stopped in 4 ports: Chania Crete, Bar Montenegro, Corfu, and Messina Sicily. I’m going to talk about all the excursions and locations here below, intermixed with some of the other visits to ruins and other places in Greece, since it all kind of blurred together.
Note: we did not book any of the excursions from Princess, we used Viator for the two organized excursions, and for the other two ports we literally just walked off the boat and took the shuttle to town, then organized our own taxis. All four ports worked out great and we were happy with our choices. There’s a time and a place for official cruise-line organized excursions, it’s actually great to just have a place to show up and Princess does a great job! However, with a kid, we wanted more flexibility - and in the end, she only got off the boat for one tour!
Naxos
This was not one of the stops on the cruise, but actually our first main stop in Greece - I just wanted to mention it here since it has some of the interesting spots we saw!
Temple of Dionysus
Fertility cult from as far back as 1400 BC made a temple to the fertility and hedonistic god Dionysus on Naxos. Not a lot left other than a few columns and foundation blocks, but the ruins have been made into a tourist site with some explanations of the meanings. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_of_Dionysus,_Naxos
Temple of Apollo
This is the first main ruin you see from the dock as you’re disembarking from the ferry - the main stone facade from the entrance to the palace is the main thing you can see from the distance, and it’s very large, but once you hike up the hill a bit you can see the restored outline of the building and it must have been quite a sight.
Paleolithic stone tools, possibly from up to 250,000 years ago, have been discovered on Naxos and are currently being investigated as one of the Neanderthal sites of interest. We didn’t see any of them on our tour, but heard about them on one of our other stops so decided to look it up!
Akrotiri Ruins, Island of Santorini, Greece
On this trip through Greece, I’ve gained a much greater appreciation for just having random archaeological sites with artifacts and ruins from previous civilizations, thousands of years old, in your city - Seattle has some buildings that are maybe 120 years old? (Yes, I know the town has been inhabited for thousands of years, but nothing prior to about 150 years ago has survived) And the US in general has some buildings as old as 300 years in the south / east coast… Previously to visiting Greece, the oldest buildings I’d seen before were some old Roman buildings in Bath (UK) and Rome (Italy), both dating maybe 2000 years old. But on this trip through Greece, I visited Akrotiri which was a large city that got buried in lava in about 1600 BC from the eruption of the Thera volcano - and was blown away by how advanced they were even 3600 years ago. The Akrotiri settlement had running sewers, 4 story buildings, frescoes that were well preserved, and many pots that had their intended contents painted on the outside.
The rest of Santorini was fun, but mostly consisted of trying to navigate through crowds of people in narrow alleys, trying to take pictures of the white and blue buildings, and taking a catamaran cruise to the central volcano. I’ll omit all of that for now but you can check out Anna’s Santorini post on our Year of Wander instagram!
Chania, Island of Crete, Greece
On the cruise, we stopped off at Chania, Crete, and walked through the old town. In the midst of the town itself, ran across some ruins that were estimated to date as far back as 3600 BC based on what’s known of the area. The Minoans were among the first seafarers and came from Crete. Seeing some of the ruins from this era of history was really cool. I’m now reading a book called “1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed” in part because of my visit to Akrotiri, and it’s got quite a few references to the Minoans from Crete. Visiting here via just hopping off a cruise ship was fun and all, but someday I’d love to come back and spend a week or two here with a car to get out and see more of the archaeological sites.
Corfu, Island of Corfu, Greece
Here we signed up for a group tour, as I really wanted to see some of the old town in Corfu - it looked like there was a lot more to see than we did though!
The tour itself took us around to a couple of different spots on the island, seeing the views around the airport, going on a boat tour around the bay including some caves in Palaiokastritsa, and a walk through the central old town in which cars were not allowed. This area of the island was largely rebuilt by the venetians. And it showed - if you didn’t know that you were in Greece, you could have been mistaken and thought you were walking down some alleys in Venice, with the tall, narrow buildings and marble facades. The castle up on the rocks was really striking, but unfortunately we didn’t have time to visit that as the tour was only 4 hours.
Stari Bar, Montenegro
For Bar, we left Emily on the cruise ship, in the kids club, and just walked off the boat to explore the town. Princess had organized to have regular shuttles from the port to the town, as the cruise ship was quite large for this port, they had it docked in the industrial port, and had to shuttle us to the town proper. However, we quickly realized the town of Bar was not that interesting. So we chose to take a cab to Stari Bar to see Old town.
Old town Bar (“Stari Bar”) was pretty cool, you had to drive inland a bit (15 minutes or so) to get to the old town, walk up some hills and pay 5 Euros each to enter the old town. This has been a somewhat continuously operated settlement for over a thousand years, with progressively newer buildings built amongst the old, in the prevailing styles, which shows the architectural styles of the Byzantine, Venetians, Ottomans, and many others over the centuries. It was particularly interesting to see the Aqueduct that was built in the 16th century and most impressively was still in use up until an earthquake damaged it in 1979!
We enjoyed the walk around the city in Stari Bar, and had some Pomegranate beer (Pink Beer) that was quite delicious and refreshing! We had it at a place that was meant to just be a drinks place, but somehow the couple in front of us had convinced the proprietor of the bar to sell them his lunch. Unbeknownst to us, this was not on the menu, so when he brought over this plate of puffed (fried?) bread and cheese, Anna and I were like - We want some of that! So he had to go get some more ingredients and make another plate! Thanks, whoever you were, for being so kind with your personal food for some hungry tourists! (It might have been Granada Caffe?)
Messini, Sicily
This was one of our excursions off the cruise ship. We were probably the most excited for Sicily, both for the Italian heritage, and the fact that both Anna and I were huge fans of the show “White Lotus” which had season 2 filmed in Sicily. We did want to bring Emily along on a tour, so this was the tour that we decided to bring her on. I spent the extra money to get a private tour, which we figured would be better in case Emily was being impatient in a spot, we could just move on to the next one!
One of the towns we visited here was Savoca. One of the filming locations for the original Godfather movie, it was really a quite small town perched on the top of a hill, with stunning views, a beautiful church and a few little cafes and restaurants. The main one we visited for a coffee was Bar Vitelli, and the inside had many props left over from the movie and pictures on the wall from the filming.
The second town was Castelmola - another gorgeous town, which we spent a bit of time walking through - the main sight here was the bar Turrisi, well known due to its many fertility symbols, and again some stunning panoramic viewpoints from which you could see much of the island, and a clear view of the still erupting Mount Etna. (An aside, we did consider the Mt Etna jeep tour as an excursion here, but saw two days before landing a group of tourists being chased down the mountain by flying rocks from the eruption! We half expected our excursion to be canceled, but apparently mount Etna is just a regularly erupting mountain, and most of the time, quite safe to visit even while active).
The third town, Taormina, was stunning. We loved the no-car section between the two castle gates, and the visit to the Four Seasons where much of season two of White Lotus was filmed. We had probably the best pizza of our lives in a local restaurant, along with beer, wine and gelato.
This tour was pretty great, but it left us feeling like there is so much more to see on Sicily, and we would love to come back and spend a longer time here, a week at least! The tour guides were great with Emily, and rolled with us when we had to abandon a site early due to her impatience. (I’m not sure she’s ready to go on proper organized tours yet as she just doesn’t have the attention span to listen to someone talk at her for hours - and come to think of it, I guess I really never did until I was an adult. I’m sure there are kid friendly tours? But for now, I think we’ll stick to the private tours or just going without her, at least in the near term.)
Athens
This is a city that we really only got to scratch the surface of. We stopped off here the first night on arrival from USA to Europe before getting on the ferry to Naxos, and we had another few nights after Santorini and before we got on the cruise. Unfortunately, during our longer stay, there was a taxi strike for two days. I fully support the strike! However, with Emily, it severely limited where we could go as the bus system didn’t seem to align with our objectives, and Emily did not want to walk more than a few blocks on any of our journeys - meaning I did a lot of carrying her on my shoulders, and we didn’t get to as many places as we would have otherwise.
That said, we did get to visit the funicular to Lycabettus hill, the Acropolis, the Laiki Kallithea (Farmers market), Fairytale Cafe, Monastiraki Flea Market, and a playground. I have also heard, though, that it’s great to rent a car from Athens and visit many of the sights that are just a few miles out of town, so maybe that’s a thing we will do next time we visit!
Acropolis
I haven’t read all about all of the various sights here at the Acropolis so will let you do your own research, but it was a great place to visit and we enjoyed both the walk up, and the views from the top! Athens is such an interesting city, just built around all this ancient history, but they just have to make room for it and leave the archaeological sites alone while they continue on with their lives!
Well, that’s all I wanted to say about the last two weeks, so thanks for traveling with us, and looking forward to sharing our next major adventure!
-Nick
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