11 night Ascent: Italy, Greece, Turkey with teens- review
We cruised June 15-26 on the Ascent and I thought I’d leave my thoughts here.
Background: for the last few years, we’ve done 2 cruises a year, mostly Disney, mostly out of Florida. Did Princess in Alaska 3 years ago, and 8 nights on the Reflection for spring break a couple years ago. Really liked celebrity besides not having self service laundry rooms/ironing. We tried to book Princess for this cruise but they were mostly sold out when I started looking a year ago so we went with Celebrity. Liked the itinerary, length, and price compared to Disney and have had very poor service and food on Disney for recent cruises.
Pre cruise: We did 4 nights in Paris and 4 nights in Rome before the cruise. Two teens, ages 16 and 17 who had never been to Europe before. I’ve been to a few places in Europe, mostly in college, never Italy.
Unfortunately the airline lost our luggage and it never was reunited with us so that was stressful.
Paris was wonderful for us- we were there in between heat waves and temps were mainly in the low to mid 60s for our time there, which was plenty warm enough for us. Every area we went to was charming and lovely. I wish we could have spent an extra day or two… would I have enjoyed Paris in the triple digit temps? Probably not. Our time there was perfect though. We did a day at Disney for the kids which was fine, it was our worst weather day and I was on the phone with the airline most of the day trying to figure out where our luggage was so that made it less enjoyable.
We flew Wizz Air to Rome via Orly. Everything about that was a bit of a clusterfuck. I thought Orly would be better than CDG but it was very chaotic and confusing for us.
We stayed in Testaccio in Rome. We liked the neighborhood we were in and found local shops to frequent for breakfast/pastries and coffee and basic needs. We mainly used Ubers to get to the touristy areas, though they weren’t terribly far.
Rome was definitely warmer than Paris, but not unbearably hot. Highs during the day in the upper 80s, cooler and comfortable at night. Again, I feel like we lucked out with weather.
I was honestly dreading Rome- I’d never been so was worried about being unfamiliar, and just thought it was going to be hot and crowded everywhere. Again, I was pleasantly surprised. I never found anything terribly crowded… we didn’t have to wait in lines at the Vatican museums or the Colosseum, and we really enjoyed just wandering around the city, especially at night.
We spent one day taking a day trip to Ponza which was a great way to escape the heat and the people. We did a 5 hour boat ride around the island with multiple stops to jump off and swim and explore caves.
We also did a pizza cooking class in Rome which was really great- my kids weren't excited for it but it wound up being one of their favorite things we did.
I booked a car to take us to the port- originally I planned on taking the train but just decided to avoid the hassle. Every car ride I booked showed up on time, before and after the cruise. I wasn’t sure how reliable these services would be, given the fact that you don’t prepay, but they all showed up and were very good with communicating and confirming.
We were all squeezed into a standard room with an infinite verandah. I was really on a budget and couldn’t swing a suite or two rooms… I was very worried about us being in such tight quarters but we made it work. However… compared to other ships I’ve been on in similar sized cabins… I do think they could provide more storage space. There could be shelves and/or cabinets above the desk and bed. It just felt like for 11 days we had very few places to put things, especially for 4 of us. I feel like there was more storage on the Reflection.
My kids really didn’t go to the teen club- we were kind of busy with it being such a port intensive cruise and we were trying not to be out too late on the ship so we weren’t overtired on our excursions. There were, in my opinion, a lot of kids on this sailing of all ages. Babies, young kids, teens. Lots of people say celebrity isn’t for kids but plenty of kids on this cruise.
The service was wonderful. We went to the MDRs most nights. I had reservations each night for different ones, but after dining in all 4, we went back to Normandie for the remaining nights because we really enjoyed our server there and they always made sure to seat us with him. (We also did one night at Le petit chef which my kids really enjoy but the food and service was also excellent).
I booked our own excursions (mostly on viator or TripAdvisor) everywhere but in Istanbul. In Istanbul we did the night tour the first night- which my kids loved because of all the cats they found- and then the boat ride and bazaar the following day- which my kids didn’t enjoy except they found more cats. I’d skip the bazaar unless you really want to go there. Even our tour guide was telling us how terrible and tourist trappy it was before they dumped us off there.
In Chania, I booked a paddle boarding tour which wound up just being our family and it was wonderful- sup n blue with Socrates. Only issue is he was super laid back and we went over the time and I was worried about getting back to the ship on time (I always want to get back with plenty of time when we do our own thing) so I was a little stressed towards the end but otherwise it was an amazing experience.
We hired a private guide in kusadasi for Ephesus which was wonderful, but then they bring you to a rug making business and sort of trap you in the showroom with a salesman who throws dozens of rugs in front of you trying to make a sale. They’re beautiful to see but it does feel like a lot of pressure and slightly uncomfortable. Overall though we enjoyed kusadasi and really loved Ephesus…. Again my kids esp loved the cats.
Our Santorini and Mykonos days were swapped with less than a day’s notice. I had private tours scheduled in both and lucky for us, our tours were able to accommodate us on the new days. I’ve heard horror stories about how crowded Santorini can be but we didn’t have issues with cable car lines and our tour guide seemed to take us places that weren’t too crowded.
I originally booked a private guide for our Naples stop to take us around the Amalfi coast but my husband really wanted me to add Pompeii… so I switched us to a group tour that included it. It was fine but Pompeii was very hot and my kids were not as impressed with it- I kind of wish we’d kept our private tour guide and stuck to the amalfi coast but again, it was fine.
Generally, booking the tours on our own saved me lots of money and were more personal, and they were all very good about the ship’s timing. I never had a problem finding the guides which I was also worried about.
We had a 3pm flight out of FCO so no rush to get off the ship, and I never encountered any lines for the customs entry or exit which made me feel like I’d done something wrong.
Overall this was a wonderful trip for our family- I was worried 3 weeks together would be too much but we were very sad when it was all over.