Trip Report: Athens and a Mediterranean Cruise

Trip Report: Athens and a Mediterranean Cruise
Lounge Reviews: The Club CLT and Centurion Lounge Charlotte Airport
Flight Review: Lufthansa A340-600 Charlotte-Munich
Lodging Review: Academias Hotel, Autograph Collection, Athens
Our Time in Athens, Part I (Acropolis and Museum)
Our Time in Athens, Part II (Roman Agora, Hadrian’s Library, Ancient Agora)
Our Time in Athens, Part III (Kerameikos, Temple of Zeus, Panathenaic Stadium)
Our Time in Athens, Part IV (Restaurants and Observations)
Ship Review: Viking Neptune
Our Time in Ancient Olympia (Katakalon, Greece)
Our Time in Corfu, Greece
Our Time in Kotor, Montenegro
Our Time in Dubrovnik, Croatia
Our Time in Zadar, Croatia
Our Time in Venice, Italy
Flight Review: Iberia A330-300 Madrid-Chicago

When we returned home from our October 2022 European trip that included a Viking River Cruise on the Seine, I received the standard follow-up phone call from our sales rep to ask how the trip had gone. Of course the other part of his job was to try to get us to sign up for another cruise. My travel companion and I discussed it and tried to get some other friends to come along on a 2023 cruise but it just wasn’t working out. So instead of taking another river cruise, we thought we’d try one of Viking’s ocean-going vessels for a Mediterranean cruise. By completing our payment before the end of 2022 we were eligible for $200 of shipboard credit that could be applied to anything from spa treatments to shore excursions. That sounded like a good deal to us so we booked a tour on the Viking Neptune, which was only put into service in November 2022. While we had done a western Mediterranean cruise in 2008, only two ports of call overlapped with the Neptune’s itinerary.

Even though the cruise began in Athens, it did not include any time in the city itself unless you paid for the $599 pre-trip extension. I had spent time in Athens in 2007 on a Greek islands cruise but my friend had never been there and we knew we could do it more cheaply thanks to hotel points. So we left the US on a Tuesday, arriving in Athens on Wednesday and had two full days in the city before boarding the cruise ship on Saturday.

Booking the flights

As usual, we booked our own airfare using our airline miles. While we typically leave from Chicago, where my traveling companion lives, in November 2022 we found connecting airfare on United through Newark directly to Athens for just 33K miles in economy. While my friend had a number of ORD-EWR flights to choose from, the only MEM-EWR flight available at this price left Memphis at 6 AM and then had an 8+ hour layover in Newark. You can imagine I was not excited about that! It also broke the promise I’d made to myself not to cross oceans in economy. My friend was ok with it as she’s retired and trying to conserve her miles. We went ahead and booked the flights because they were so cheap and I could not find any business class flights on our travel day for what I considered a reasonable price.

Fast forward to July 2023 and I found flights on Lufthansa out of Charlotte for 70K Aeroplan miles.  I transferred 70K American Express Membership Rewards points to Aeroplan and paid taxes and fees of $74.66 USD/$98.30 CAD.

Now my problem was getting to Charlotte.  There is no non-stop United flight (a Star Alliance partner of Air Canada and Lufthansa) between Memphis and Charlotte so trying to get to Charlotte on the same ticket would have meant changing planes – assuming I could even find domestic award space. But there is an American Airlines non-stop and while I often cannot find saver award space between Memphis and DFW or Chicago, I had multiple saver-level options to Charlotte. But rather than using 25K American AAdvantage miles I opted to use just 15K British Airways Avios + $5.60 to get me to Charlotte in domestic first class. I also made sure that there was another MEM-CLT flight after mine, just in case of delays, and I’d still have time to get my bag checked in for my Lufthansa flight.

So our outbound flights were as follows:

10/17 1151 ORD – 1510 EWR on UA 2471 in economy
10/17 1750 EWR – 1010+1 ATH on UA 124 in economy for 30K United miles + $5.60 (a bargain!)
These flights are shown in red on the map.

10/17 0925 MEM – 1209 CLT on AA 1790 in domestic first class using 15K Avios + $5.60
10/17 1830 CLT – 0915+1 MUC on LH 429 in business class
10/18 1110 MUC – 1435 ATH on LH 1752 in intra-Europe business class for 70K Aeroplan miles + $74.66
These flights are shown in green on the map.

As you can see, my friend was due to get to Athens 4+ hours ahead of me. Before changing my booking I double-checked with her that she didn’t mind hanging out at the airport and she said she didn’t so I went ahead and changed my flights.

Our flights included travel on United Airlines, American Airlines, Lufthansa and Iberia Airlines

For our return trip I booked a flight to Chicago, hoping to be on the same flight as my friend who was using her United miles to fly Lufthansa back to Chicago but it never worked out. Instead I flew Iberia to Chicago via Madrid and then bought a cash ticket on United to get back to Memphis.

Our return flights were:

0630 VCE – 0730 MUC on Air Dolomiti 8199 (flying for Lufthansa) in economy
0925 MUC – 1155 ORD on LH 436 in economy for 33K United miles + $59.45
These flights are shown in cyan on the map.

0625 VCE – 0910 MAD on IB 3249 in intra-Europe business class
1135 MAD – 1415 ORD on IB 6275 in business class for 49K British Airways Avios + $181.65
2010 ORD – 2153 MEM on UA 1612 in domestic first class for $253.90
These flights are shown in orange on the map.

I really wished I could have been on the Lufthansa flight (in business class, of course!) with my friend as it got to Chicago so much earlier and I could have taken the mid-afternoon flight back to Memphis. But unfortunately after the flights in the 2 PM – 4 PM window from Chicago to Memphis, there are no more non-stops until the 8 PM hour which meant I had to sit at O’Hare for nearly 6 hours. But at least it gave me plenty of cushion if my flight from Madrid was late (which it was). The sad part is the only lounges I could access were over in Terminal 5 and one of those is the Swissport Lounge which One Mile At A Time refers to as the Worst Lounge in the US and I probably wouldn’t have been able to use with my Priority Pass anyway since they restrict that to those on outbound international flights in business or first class. No matter, I passed my time having a relatively leisurely dinner and hanging out in the gate area at the end of the B concourse where there were plenty of available electric outlets (that worked!) and writing up the post about the Iberia flight.

Booking the hotel

For our three nights in Athens we had hoped to be able to use some of our Marriott free night certificates that come with our Marriott credit cards. But we have the old cards whose free night certificates cannot be topped off with additional points so we’ll save them for another trip. Instead we redeemed 135K Marriott points and 12 EUR for our stay at the Academias Hotel, Autograph Collection in a Deluxe Guest Room with 2 twin beds and a city view. While my Gold status didn’t get us upgraded to a suite (which would have had only one bed), we did get upgraded to the top floor and had a view of the Acropolis.

Our cruise ship

It had been 15 years since our last ocean-going cruise and with the nearly-new Viking Neptune we were excited to see how the details we enjoyed on the river-cruising longships would translate to a larger vessel. After embarking in Athens, our cruise included two stops in Greece: Katakolo, which is near Ancient Olympia, and the island of Corfu. Next up was a stop in Kotor, Montenegro which was a new country for us. Two stops were planned in Croatia, in Dubrovnik and Split although the weather changed our plans and the stop in Split became a stop in Zadar. Our final destination was an overnight stop in Venice, though we were actually docked a bit outside in Chioggia as parts of the Venice lagoon is now off-limits to cruise ships.

In the end

We had a great trip and I got to add a new country to my list! If you’ve visited any of these cities, please let me know as we discuss them over the next several days.