Trip Report: Treasures of the Mediterranean Isles: October 2023
We returned home yesterday after our two weeks in the Mediterranean. We traveled from Miami, through Heathrow ( another story entirely!) and went to Malta a couple of days before our October 1 small ship cruise started. We stayed in the Phoenician hotel, steps from the Valetta gate. Fabulous hotel and superb location! In speaking to others on our tour, this hotel was much preferred over the Marriott in St. Julian’s. We had dinner our first night in the hotel, and it was simply delicious. I had lobster pasta and hubby had chicken. Both wonderful. Also the breakfast buffet at this hotel was excellent. But if you want eggs, get in line early as there is usually only one chef each morning!
We walked around Valleta our first day there, wandering in and out of shops just to work off jet lag. For dinner we went to Haywharf, down on the docks in Valleta ( need reservations) and it was wonderful. We shared some starters and some small portions of different ravioli. With a bottle of wine, dinner was about 90€ which we thought was very reasonable.
The next day we ventured out to Gozo by the fast ferry to visit the megalithic site of Ggigantija. Easy to get ferry tickets and then an Uber on Gozo both ways. Very interesting site, which took about 45 minutes to see. We then took the ferry back over to Malta and relaxed the rest of the day. Our welcome dinner was that evening in our hotel. Since our group was about 150 people total, they do separate welcome dinners at each hotel. Our TD was Eddie, accompanied by Sidney. Some people lost their luggage so dress was varied at the dinner. Men, you don’t need a sport coat on this tour. Less than half of men wore one. More on dress codes later on.
Our first day of touring took us out away from Valletta to see another temple at Hagar Qim, which was also very interesting. We got a briefing of the history of Malta, which is really a mixture of so many cultures! Fascinating. Our night was free so hubby and I had made reservations before we came at 59 Republic, which was in central Valletta. Dinner and wine were fabulous! I enjoyed outstanding beef Wellington. Great place….go if you can.
The second day in Valletta was a morning tour of St. John’s Co- Cathedral in Valletta. I will not spoil it for you, but this was one of the most beautiful churches we have ever been in!! Every inch of the interior was decorated with beautiful paintings, tons and tons of gold leaf, and marble floors. We also went to an old Palazzo that has been owned by the same family for multiple generations. Beautiful. That afternoon we boarded our beautiful ship, Le Jacques Cartier. Seamless transfer and boarding, with our first night free on board. We enjoyed dinner in the dining room. Great food and service. Plus you can choose to have a more casual dinner on deck 3 most any night.
There was only one “ dressier” night on board which was the second night on the ship. many people dressed a bit nicer, but nothing too fancy. The TD’s all had formal wear on, but the people on tour were mush more casual. Even though the dining room policy says no shorts at dinner, many nights they were quite visible. No one got really dressed up. Men mostly in slacks and golf shirts, women all over the place, from casual dresses to slacks and tops every night. Our weather was perfect, never higher than low 80’s and no rain at all.
The tour itself was interesting in many ways, with just a few disappointments. All five of our Tauck TD’s were really great. The three stops in Sicily are Siracusa, Taormina, and Palermo. Depending on your excursion choices, you will see lots of beautiful little cities and towns, palazzos, and Greek/Roman ruins. Local guides varied from very interesting and conversational to drone on lectures. Nothing different than other tours, I guess.
Our one disappointment was the excursion to Mt. Etna. The description says the bus, gondola, and all terrain vehicle will take you up 10,000 ft. to see the volcanic craters. NOT….. once up at altitude, in order to actually see any real craters, you need to hike another 20 minutes, uphill, on slippery volcanic ash to see anything else than the smoke coming out of the top mountain. At altitude, that is difficult for many of us. About one third of our group stayed back or turned around part way through, just too difficult. If you choose this excursion, just be forewarned about this little detail that is not spelled out before hand. We had been to Taormina previously, and many on our ship did that and loved it.
Cannot speak to all the excursions on Sicily, but most people were pleased. We had a huge group lunch at a convent one day that was excellent and well executed. We enjoyed Sardinia enough, and chose to go to Nora, an ancient Roman town. Lots of ruins and well preserved mosaics. We loved Bonifacio, Corsica with the little cruise around the bay and then the short tour of town. We stayed a bit longer and had Corsican eggplant for lunch in town. Yum.
Hubby caught a cough and cold from another person on our bus two days earlier. She never covered her mouth when coughing, and had a drippy, gross runny nose. Ugh, some folks just don’t care about anyone else. So he started not to feel well the last 2-3 days in the ship. A few other people seemed to be nursing colds as well. We did hear that one person tested positive for Covid and they isolated the last two days. This caused us to skip Elba and just stay on board. We heard that there were many, many steps up to the village, and long walks to Napoleons house, so glad we made our decision. My hubby got to rest a bit. He tested negative.
I treated myself to a facial on the ship and it was lovely. The spa was very nice, so make appointments as soon as you board!!
We disembarked in Nice. Probably about 20% of people extended for a few days. We enjoyed walking around this beautiful city for a little shopping, and also went to the Chagall Museum, which was outstanding.
Flew home back through Heathrow. We made all the flights, but our bags did not. Luckily, we received them last night, all intact. Now we just deal with unpacking and my hubby now testing positive for Covid. I have a runny nose, but am negative. The joys of travel! However, this was a wonderful trip, with gorgeous weather, nice people, excellent service and some really lovely places. If you are planning this tour, go and enjoy. Any other questions, feel free to PM me.
Comments
So sorry to hear the negatives about the tour Marla. Please test yourself again in a couple of days, too soon to test yet. Either way, being with a Covid positive spouse, you need to mask and isolate for several days.
Marla - Thanks for the comprehensive review and the thoughtful line spacing between paragraphs.
Regarding Mt Etna, if you chose to do it, was there enough time to hike up to the top and back?
BKMD, When we visited Mount Etna earlier in the year, , we walked around the Silvestri crater which was about 6000 plus feet, or there about. We thoroughly enjoyed it and it was an easy hike. As the tour is ship based, you have to allow going up the winding roads to get there in a coach. I’ve no idea what time the activity choice actually leaves the ship or how long it takes from where the ship is docked. But you could do that hike with your eyes closed BKMD. I can’t recall whether we had a lunch and wine tasting before or afterwards. Etna was one of those dream come true viistes for me.
Excellent review. I am currently on this trip in the opposite direction and having a splendid time. The ship is lovely, the crew is outstanding, the destinations are interesting. We stayed in Nice 5 days prior the tour starting.
My one and only slight complaint would be that instead of so much constant lectures during the excursions on ancient ancient and more ancient history which I know is equally important, I would like to learn about daily life, the school system and education. Hearing about taxes or the medical system of where we visit would be as interesting too. Just my opinion. At times, the local guides give me the feeling they have memorized their lecture on ancient history.
I’ve been on three small ship tours. Lectures are very poorly attended.
I’m with you, I like to learn about the country I am visiting. I find that when tour guides or the tour director is talking on the bus about the country, there are a certain number of people, judging by the talking that goes on while they are speaking, that are just not interested. I notice that far less information is given on toirs than when I first started traveling with Tauck.
I would expect a lecturer to memorize his facts without referring to notes, there’s nothing worse than a guide or lecturer not knowing answers.
I am assuming that those who want to learn can get hold of the books suggested by Tauck in the reading lists they provide. I would prefer to not have to do this but that is the way it seems to be going.
Has anyone else noticed this trend?
@ British: we are both isolating. Hubby taken some doses of Paxlovid and already better. We will test again mid week.
@bkmd…on the Etna excursion, there seems to be plenty of time to hike around, although those that did followed an assigned alpine guide up to the craters. The entire excursion was about 6-7 hours, and we had lunch at the Alpine Village, which was very nice.
Ourtravels34 enjoy!!! We loved the ship and crew. Hope your weather is cooperating. It was my feeling some of the local guides don’t speak English very well, so the tours seemed like rote memory.
Marla526: I am enjoying the tour very much. This is like a luxury camp for adults on a beautiful ship! My husband did enjoy the Mt Etna excursion. He thought it was fascinating. I took another excursion that day because I simply knew that I would not have enjoyed Mr Etna as much. We share the day when we met up. Everyone is happy.
I know people are going to react differently to this but really, when you are a guest in a foreign country, how can you expect them to speak English without an accent . Ok you have to listen carefully to understand but I just don’t get the attitude that everyone should speak English.
British - there's a difference between expecting the local population vs. the GUIDES to speak English well. We're paying for a premium tour and should have premium guides. I agree there's not much you can do about accents. Hey, sometimes I have trouble understanding the accents of people from the UK, especially when it's not the "proper" London accent.
US - UK: Two countries separated by a common language.
I wholeheartedly agree with British. I have said many times that we are the guests in other countries and should respect their culture, their norms and their language. It also goes a long way when you make a reasonable attempt to speak a few kind words in their language. As someone who studied comparative linguistics, I relish the opportunity to hear foreign accents and languages. This is merely my opinion and, as such, it is not my intention to start a debate.
When I was flying I found it interesting that I could understand the French more easily than the English. I always recall the day when the English controller responding to me said, “Who was that calling with the American accent?”
I agree British, we should not expect everyone to speak English in other countries, should be very pleased that some do.
I was a docent for six years, so public speaking is something with which I am familiar. If you were on one of my tours, you would not need a VOX. I always spoke slowly and with enough volume that even those in the back could hear me clearly. For some reason non-native English speakers seem to think speaking rapidly displays their knowledge of the language when the opposite is often the case. There was a time when I brought my crew to the Vatican museum, and I had purchased a guide book that I was reading to my crew as we toured the museum. I stopped at one point to discover that I now had twenty Japanese tourists that had joined my group.
Hope no one thought that I was complaining that local guides may not speak English well. Not my point at all…..what I felt was that some of the local guides recited facts and ran on, sometimes without a breath in between. That made it feel like it was memorized and a playback. It was the style of delivery, not the actual language.
When I gave tours I had about three hours of material ‘memorized’, but I only had forty-five minutes to present it. I could tell from the expressions of my tour group if they were interested or not. If not, I would move on to a different part of my three hour inventory. I never took questions in the middle of my presentation in one area … only at the end when we were about to move on. At the end of my presentation most questions had been answered without interrupting the process.
Marla526, thank you for your comprehensive review. Though not on our bucket list, it was very interesting to hear about your experiences - both the good and the so-so.
This thread led me to the book "The Great Siege: 1565". It's very interesting and an easy read. If you have any interest in the history of Malta, I'd recommend it. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00J48FFMM/
Marla526: I knew exactly what you meant.
British - re: the information given on trips - I think that depends on the trip and the director/guide. We were disappointed on our recent Grand Canadian Rockies trip with the lack of information on local culture and history. It was basically a bus drive with a babysitter trip.
We heard how much it costs to buy a house several times. We heard little about the indigenous peoples' history or history of early settlements. There was a LONG boring podcast on the Hudson Bay Company on a long bus ride. Remberence Day occurred during the trip and the only thing conveyed was the mistreatment of native children in the Canadian schools. The TD was immature and somewhat dense, and conveyed the history incorrectly. A trainee TD (with experience from another company) provided an excellent, short summary of the geological facts of the Rockies.
We had no local guides on this trip and missed them. The few Tauck trips where there were detached TDs and no or few local guides, we rate at the bottom of our list.
While I do research and read about places I go to both before and after the trip, it is enhanced on a tour. Our 2022 Sicily trip was a shining example of a balance with local guides and a knowledgeable TD.
I know what you mean bucket list. Our only really bad TD was on a US tour, an old guy who had been with the company for years, we met people who had him on trips before, years before, they had complained and he was still working with Tauck.
I guess your TD was new. I always think out of the box….maybe the more experienced TD was learning to take over the tour because there had been negative feedback about the new one and he was about to be retrained or kicked out. who knows. Tauck lost a lot of great experienced TD’s during the Pandemic. I guess there is a less experienced pack of TD”s out there. We once had a TD who’s mother died while we were on a trip with him, he never said a thing…it was at the start of the pandemic with all the added stress of a tour that would end abruptly with shutdown. He only got a bit grumpy once when we all kept asking him questions he could not just know the answer to. We only found out months later what he was dealing with. We had Tauck TD who had had a big relationship end, a couple of us had to put our counseling hats on to help that one get through it. I often wonder if these TD’s have personal stuff going on, like we all do, and try to carry on without anyone knowing…only super humans can do that all the time.
I guess others would say, why didn’t you ask about the indigenous people etc. remember Tauck’s motto, if you have a problem, say something before it becomes a complaint. This would have been pretty easy to say as it would show interest. A call to customer relations or an email would definitely be worth it as the forms at the end of the tours are pretty useless for full feedback. I’ve only had to call a few times about disappointment. One was the same tour as SeaLord took a few weeks later and he reported the same as me to Tauck and I recall we both got good feedback for suggestions. I would hope that Tauck would listen to you after being on other tours. They do get reports about us all from the tour directors, so they know if we regularly complain or not.
I guess everyone has different interests, the Hudson Bay company was huge in changing Canada, it’s history, indigenous people, immigration and wildlife. I would have been interested.
Non e of this helps you and your disappointment for a premium cost trip. Every time we sign up for a Tauck trip, I think, oh dear, will this be the one that is just terrible!
Let’s all hope for continued wonderful tours. As one particular girlfriend always reminds me, we have first world problems or sometimes she says we have rich peoples’s problems. Most of us sure do!
Marla - I am just seeing this now, 100 days out from our tour. I kept looking specifically at "Treasures of the Mediterranean" and didn't get the more general category, so I had not seen this. Thanks so much!