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Americans: GET OUT AND VOTE (and don't forget to enjoy free Starbucks coffee, Ben & Jerry's, and Krispy Kreme afterwards...) American readers, it's election day! I encourage all of you to head out early to your polling stations and cast your ballots for the candidate that you feel is best suited for the job. As an added incentive and thankyou for doing so, Starbucks truth about enzyte is giving away FREE 12 oz. (tall) drip coffee after you vote. The details of why they are doing this, and the details of the offer can be found in the following ad that Starbucks put out last weekend: Later in the afternoon, between 5 and 8 PM, Ben and Jerry's is giving out free ice cream scoops. The details (and participating locations) can be found here. Krispy Kreme is also handing out free "star shaped donuts with patriotic sprinkles" to voters. You must be wearing an "I voted" sticker in order to recieve this offer. Details are here. In addition to these prominent offers, many local establishments everywhere are offering free Voting Day deals to encourage people to GET OUT AND VOTE! Last May, my good friend Rick Ingersoll (FrugalTravelGuy) and his wife Katy recieved a complimentary cruise as a settlement for a cancelled cruise earlier in the year. They couldn't use the free cruise in the allotted time, so they offered it to me to use, free of charge, as a thank you for helping to create FrugalTravelGuy.com. I accepted their generous offer, and planned to take the cruise for the first week of October. For those who aren't familiar, easyCruise is a no-frills, Europe-based cruise line (run by the same company as easyJet). Food and entertainment is at a minimum, and the focus is more on the ports of calls than the cruise experience itself. Rick and Katy paid just under $300 for the 7 day cruise for the entire cabin. The prices have recently changed to include food and daily housekeeping (it was a la carte before), so prices have gone up a bit, but can still be considered budget by almost all definitions. The following is a review of the cruise that I just returned back from. It was overall a great trip, much different than I had expected. I'll break my review down into sections for easier reading. I'll also leave this near the top of the blog for a while, so you all have a chance to check it out. For those wondering where the new BRGs are, check below this post! General Information: My 7 day easyCruise took me from Athens, Greece, through the Aegean Islands, stopping in the ports of Kalymnos, Kos, Syros, Paros, and Mykonos (in Greece) and also Bodrum, Turkey. Visas are usually necessary to enter Turkey for all USA and Canadian citizens, however, no visa was required of me as I was staying less than 24 hours. In fact, the Turkish government didn't even bother to stamp my passport. I was free to roam the country, free of charge, for the day. A half-board meal plan is included in these cruises (breakfast, and either lunch or dinner). I always chose dinner, as the food was quite heavy and I was never hungry for lunch. Drinks were not included at all in the meal plan. There is no entertainment on board except a DJ with (and I quote) "mixing some rad tunes". Needless to say, it wasn't the "happening" place it claimed to be, and often times the DJ was all by his lonesome, while singles mingled by the pool. The soundtrack included mostly eighties tracks like "Karma Chameleon" and several old Air Supply "hits". I hid in my stateroom when the tunes started up. The passengers consisted of mainly middle-aged to elderly European tourists, with the odd American couple thrown in here and there. I was surprised that there weren't more people in their twenties and thirties on the ship, especially backpacker types, given the budget nature of the cruise. There was almost no children on board - the only one I saw was the 4-or-so year old daughter of an American couple in their mid-30's (who also seemed to be the only representatives of that age group). The cruise definitely had a small-town feel, and I recognized almost every person after just a couple of days. The guest services agents were knowledgeable, and pressed tours casually, more like a gentle suggestion than any serious sales pressure. From what I gathered in my talks to fellow travellers, the tours were of little value and most people seemed to regret going on them. I never went on one and chose to sightsee on my own. Tours were extremely expensive (upwards of 50 Euros for a 4 hour tour to a local beach, for example). One nice thing about this cruise line is that gratuities were set at a fixed 10%, so you don't even have to calculate anything or determine who deserves what. Everything you buy on board has a 10% gratuity surcharge automatically added. This can be removed from your account if you request, but I seriously hope no one actually did that. You are not permitted to tip above and beyond that amount, and servers will not accept anything more. There is a cashless system on board - you pay by using your room keycard (which has your full name and other information written on it). 4 days into the cruise, you are asked to provide a credit card for such incidentals. Your passport is collected before the cruise begins as collateral, as well as to facilitate entry and exit stamps into Turkey and back into Greece. For those who didn't want to pay by credit card, cash was accepted on the final morning of the cruise only. I chose to pay by cash. Embarkation and Disembarkation: easyCruise departs from the port of Piraeus, easily accessible from the Athens airport by subway (around a 1 hour ride). It really couldn't have been simpler to get to the port. Trains left every five to ten minutes or so, and cost around 6 Euros from the airport (one-way). The Piraeus Cruise Ship terminal. Note that this is not the same terminal that the bigger cruise lines use. This is the one for smaller ships, like Windstar and many of the European cruise chains. It's easy to find, at the south end of Piraeus harbor at gate 11. The Ship and its Amenities: The ship was surprisingly smaller than I would have expected. Probably around 1/4 the size of your typical Norwegian or Royal Caribbean cruise ship, as this photo clearly shows (the easyCruise ship is on the right). It seemed like the little runt lined up with all the massive The easyCruise ship, shown here in the port of Kalymnos, Greece. Note that this cruise ship IS NOT wheelchair accessible, for those who may need such access. In some ports, it was easy to get on and off the ship via ramp from deck three, but in others, you HAD to climb a steep staircase up to deck 6. The cruise ship in dock at night, shown here (left) in Mykonos' new port. Quite easy on the eyes. Sunrise on the sky deck, a perfect place to get away from the crowds and bury your head in a book while the sun rises. That is, until they all wake up and it gets noisy. My stateroom, which was quite comfortable and very to-the-point. This is minimalism done right, with just enough comfort to get by, and still maintain a welcoming aura. The state rooms were large - I'd say 100-200 sq feet or so, with two twin beds, separated by a good 4 feet or so, and a ton of room to walk around from the foot of the beds to the door (around the same length of the bed, if not a bit more). The linens were replaced every day, and everything The view from the foot of the beds to the door. There was tons of closet space, way more than could be expected. Tons more than Norwegian offered on the Alaska cruise I took in 2001. The bathroom was spacious and clean, not like the closet that was both the shower and the toilet on Norwegian cruise lines (which I sailed a few years before). There was a real faucet (not one of those painful spring-loaded types that seek to annoy the user), and the shower flow was decent and strong, with good temperature (only once did I have problems with water temperature). The only downside is that the bathroom had NO electrical outlet, so anything that needed to be plugged in had to be brought all the way to the beds. The restaurant/bar area. The ship only had one restaurant, a branch of the Greek cafe chain Flocafe. The menu was sufficiently varied and completely what you'd expect in any standard, cafe-style family restaurant in Europe. The ship had two bars, the one inside the restaurant (less popular), and the deck 6 "chill out bar" - basically a group of couches set out in the corridor along deck 6, with a bar at its end, always packed with tourists imbibing their holidays away. Drink prices were not unreasonable, about the same as in any bar anywhere, really. There were daily happy hour specials, where beer and wine could be had for as low as 2 Euros. For dinner, I bought a 1.5 liter bottle of water each day for a mere 1.50 Euros. The price was 0.80 Euros for a 750 ml bottle. No drinks are included in the meal plans, including soft drinks and water. Absolutely no drinks from the outside are allowed (they do search handbags upon arrival) so you're pretty well stuck with paying their prices, but as you can see, that's not something to scoff at. There were two sun decks - the deck 7 main area, where many people claimed the sunbeds and stayed there for hours on end, and the upper deck 8 area, where a few beds were claimed by those who didn't mind the wind. There were a total of 25 beds, for roughly 250 passengers. So, people came early, and left late. I only got a bed when I headed here before breakfast hours, while people were still sleeping. There was a heated pool right next to the bar and restaurant, and three hot tubs (which didn't seem to work, they were all freezing, but the pool was at least 100 degrees F, so that made up for it). The pool was a bit dirty, though, with an oily film on it (I doubt it was cleaned once during the entire cruise). Needless to say, I only used this amenity once. The hot tubs seemed clean enough, probably because they were too cold to use! The aforementioned cold tubs. Two of them weren't terribly cold, but one seemed to have the A/C directed through it somehow - it was almost freezing. This may have been intentional, but I can't see why. In addition to the amenties shown above, there was an on-site gym/fitness center (free of charge) which I didn't use (but probably should have), and a spa, which seemed to be popular with the ladies on board (deep massage and other treatments were around 30 Euros for 20 minutes). The Food The food was decent - not terribly fancy or gourmet, but fairly standard, down-to-Earth Greek cuisine. I enjoyed 5 of the 7 dinners I had - their main problem was not knowing how to cook chicken, it was always terribly dry. But, their selection of fine cheeses and fruit, and their salad bar made up for that. It was great to be treated to free food, and to try most of the Greek cuisine I wanted to try. |