Day 0 - Getting ready

Last year we were discussing interesting travel with our friends Betty and Dave and thought that it would be interesting to take a cruise along the Adriatic coast. We had previously taken Viking river cruises and were very impressed with Viking so decided to sign up for the Viking sea cruise.

Viking advertises "small" ship cruises which "only" have 950 passengers. This is small compared with other cruise companies that have 3,000 to 5,000 passengers but is much larger than the river cruises that only have about 160 passengers.

Unfortunately, Betty and Dave weren't able to travel with us but when we shared how much we had enjoyed our river cruises with our friends Jeanne and Scott, they thought it would be fun to join us on this trip and signed up for the same cruise. We are looking forward to traveling together.

The cruise doesn't provide for any time to visit Venice so we decided to arrive 3 days early to spend time in Venice. We are a bit uneasy about the crowds after reading several articles about how Venice is being "loved to death" by tourists but the situation isn't going to improve. At the end of our trip we are spending an additional day in Athens before returning.





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