easycruise one
easycruise one
Basics -
Day 1 - Day 2 - Day 3 - Day 4 - Day 5 - Day 6 - Day 7
easycruise is the no-frills cruise company owned by Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou, who also founded the budget airline easyjet. easycruiseone was the company’s first ship. It has previously sailed in the Mediterranean and the Caribbean but is currently based out of Marina Zea in Piraeus, near to Athens. By the time I finish writing this (and it might take me a while...) easycruiseone could be no more - the boat is currently up for sale and in April 2008 easycruise will be introducing a new, larger ship called easycruise life.
Day 1 - Piraeus
We flew into Athens from Heathrow on British Airways. We had a hell of a tail-wind behind us all the flight as it only took 2 ½ hours, a lot less than I was expecting.
Athens airport (also known as Eleftherios Venizelos, named after a Greek politician; I hate it when they name airports after people and am considering reversing the trend by changing my name by deed-poll to "Heathrow Airport" so that people will think I'm some kind of celebrity when I travel) was purpose-built for the 2004 Olympics and is modern and efficient, making it the complete opposite of that shambles Heathrow. The airport is well-connected to the city and to Piraeus, and we had the choice of going on the express bus, Metro, or the suburban railway. We ended up on the suburban railway mainly because when Dave went to buy a Metro ticket the guy behind the counter told him to get a train ticket instead. The journey wasn't direct and we had to change trains at Nernatziotissa station (where the train to Piraeus was already waiting on the next platform), but according to tinternet there should be direct trains from the airport to Piraeus (maybe we had to change because we were travelling on a Sunday? Or maybe tinternet is just telling me bollocks?). It cost us 6 euros each and took us just over an hour from the airport to Piraeus station and if a pair of clowns like us can manage it then anyone can, although we were later told that the express bus to Piraeus is a lot quicker and so would probably try that next time.
From Piraeus station it's still quite a distance to the Marina Zea where the easycruiseone is docked; you can take a bus (the 904) but all the buses were crowded and I didn't fancy trying to force myself on with a huge bag, and in any case I'm basically an idle bastard so we caught a taxi. Mistake. He seemed a nice enough chap but when we got to the ship he charged us 13 euros for a 10 minute journey, and as if that act of blatant theft wasn't enough I'm sure that I paid him with a 20 euro note which he switched for a 5 euro note and demanded extra money. To put it into perspective when we took a taxi back from Marina Zea to the station (because, despite this experience, I'm still basically an idle bastard) it cost us less than 3 euros. I guess I should have made more of a fuss, but that's not the way us repressed Brits do things so I contented myself to tutting (to myself, of course) and thinking dark thoughts about him (which for us repressed Brits is the equivalent of pissing on his mother's grave...). By the way, this taxi driver was the one who told us that the bus from the airport was quicker, so maybe he was lying about that too. If you do get the bus from Piraeus station get off by the Naval Museum from where it's still quite a long walk around the marina to the ship (easycruise one docks at the end of the breakwater which is on the right as you face the sea, the furthest point out to sea in the marina; the good news is that it'll be by far the biggest boat in the port so you can't miss it). There are more details and a map on the easycruise website.
When you get on the ship your baggage will be searched; they're looking for food (the excuse I heard was that food left on board can attract rats) drink (because they want to sell you their own! If you're carrying alcohol it will be stored in reception until you leave the ship, but you are allowed to bring bottled water on board), and things like hairdryers and travel irons (which are fire hazards). Although your bags can be searched every time you get on the ship this never happened to us; it's only likely to happen if you're carrying bags that obviously look they contain food or drink (supermarket carrier bags spring to mind). A couple of girls told us that they'd had no problems smuggling booze on board, but we didn't speculate as to how they managed this and it might have been rude to ask.
The next step was registration; this took a bit longer than I was expecting, partly because there were so many people waiting to register and partly because when they did register they all seemed to be asking exactly the same questions of the staff at the reception desk (which were covered anyway later that evening at a welcome meeting). Another delay was that we had to register a credit card at reception; this is something that is not mentioned on the easycruise website but when you're checking into the ship you now have to give your credit card details; 50 euros per day of your cruise is then "set aside" on the card, meaning you can't access those funds on your credit card (although no money is actually taken from your card until the end of the cruise). If you don't have that kind of money on your credit card, or don't want to register a card you can make a cash deposit instead; if your on-board account exceeds your cash deposit you'll have to top it up (any unspent cash is returned to you when you check out of the ship). When you've registered you're given your ID card; this is very important as it acts as your room key, and you need to have it swiped every time you want to leave or get back on the ship. In addition, every time you buy something on board rather than paying in cash you have to hand your card over and whatever you've just bought is added to your on-board account. (You can check up how much you owe on your account any time at reception, half way through the cruise you're given an itemised interim statement showing exactly what you've spent and when, and you get another one when you settle your account at the end of the cruise. You're also given a little booklet containing a map of the ship, details of where all the passenger facilities are, and a greeting from Stelios himself, bless him.
After checking in it was time to have a look round the ship (this was Dave's third time on the easycruiseone so he knew pretty much what was what). Starting off in my room (or cabin, to use the nautical term), based on my previous trip in easycruise2 it was about what I was expecting; we had compact twin rooms (one each, thank God!); the beds are 2 mattresses on a raised platform at one end of the cabin, with a shelf above one of the beds. The beds seemed a bit bigger than on easycruise2 (my feet didn't hang off the end of the bed this time!), and unlike easycruise2 there was a drawer for storage under each bed. All cabins have a porthole (or round window, to use the non-nautical term); I was on deck 2 which was close to the waterline and the porthole didn't open; I don't know if those on higher decks were able to open theirs. There wasn't any air conditioning in the cabin, although there was a dial in the ceiling that could be twisted round to open or close it. What it actually opened or closed I have absolutely no idea. Anyway, my room never seemed to get too hot, although I didn't really spend all that much time in it. Each cabin has an en-suite bathroom with a toilet (nautical term = "head"), basin and mirror, and a shower. I could fit into it easily (the shower, not the toilet) so so can you. I'll basically stick to what I said about the cabins on easycruise2; for one person they're fine; for two you'd either have to midgets or sharing with someone you really, really like.
easycruiseone has six decks (I was going to say "floors to use a non-nautical term" but I think I've already beaten that "joke" to death...). The bottom deck is for the crew, and is off-limits to passengers. Deck 2 is passenger cabins, Deck 3 has more cabins, the ship's reception area (which is open 24 hours a day), the main exits, and a couple of "chill-out zones" - areas of comfy looking chairs and sofas which seemed popular with people who wanted to read or who wanted to play the board or card games that are available from reception. Deck 4 has cabins at the front and the main bar and restaurant, the imaginatively-titled "Restaurant on 4" at the back. More on that in a minute. At the back of Deck 5 is another bar, now known as the "Flocafe on Pool" (previously the "Sun and Moon Bar") which is an outdoor bar complete with some tables, benches, and an out-door hot-tub. More on that in a minute too. I think I probably spent more time on this deck than I did in my cabin. Also on Deck 5 (but indoors) are the sauna and a spa where you can get massages and all sorts of cosmetic treatments that have names I couldn't even begin to hazard a guess as to what they meant. At the front of Deck 6 is the "Wellness Zone" where you'll find a couple of exercise bikes and a treadmill. I stumbled across it by accident once and never returned... There might also be some sun beds up there but I couldn't swear to that. There's one small lift at the centre of the ship as well as a central staircase and stairs at the front and back of each deck. easycruiseone isn't huge; less than 90 metres long, with 108 cabins.
O.K., on to the food and drink on board, getting our priorities right we'll start with the drink. The only place to get draft beer is in the Restaurant on 4 and the only type of draft beer is Heineken. If you want bottled beer (from either bar) you can have Heineken again, Amstel, Carib, or canned Murphy's stout. For God's sake avoid the vile "Amstel Pulse" which Dave accidentally ordered when we'd drank all the Heineken on board; apparently it's low calorie and low carbohydrate which for a beer makes about as much sense as non-vegetarian tofu. It was vile, and we both struggled manfully to finish our bottles. And the prices? Expensive. For a pint of draft Heineken you'll have to fork out 5.50 euros. A 330 ml bottle of beer will set you back 4 euros. As I said, expensive but look at like this; you can book a cabin on easycruiseone for £20 a night. They have to make their money someway and if they do it by marking up the beer then that's fair enough. In fact, as beer swilling goons like me are basically subsidising the costs of everyone else's cheap cabins, if you ever see me on easycruise I think it's only fair that you buy me a drink to say thanks... OK a quick rant- whenever we drank on shore we tended to drink Greek Mythos beer, which is lovely stuff. So why don't they sell it on the ship? I think I'll send Stelios an email to suggest it... For those that aren't beer-monsters there's a decent range of wines (7 white, 4 reds, 2 rose), all of it Greek (don't turn your nose up, Greek wine can be lovely stuff, but I'll come back to that later) with prices ranging from 14 to 28 euros per bottle. You can also get spirits or cocktails, but these work out even more expensive than the beer. Apparently there are also soft drinks available, as well as tea and a variety of coffees. They went untasted by me. Now some good news - Happy Hour is between 7 and 8 pm, and all alcoholic drinks are half-price during this time (apart from bottles of wine, although if you drink it by the glass you'll get it half price). Do as we did and try and get as much down you as possible during Happy Hour (they have no objections to you buying 2 or 3 drinks just as the hour is coming to an end either, so you can keep some in reserve for later).
We ate on board a couple of times, both in the Restaurant on 4. The restaurant and bar on deck 5 are now operated by Flocafe, which I think is a Greek company (they also have restaurant by Marina Zea). There's a decent range of salads, snacks, pasta and other main courses, most of which have a distinctly Greek influence (fried squid, pasticcio, moussaka). Prices for a main course range from 8 to 15 euros (for the beef tenderloin). For some reason I had the burger both times I ate, and it was fine, a proper thick meaty burger rather than some thin, limp McDonald's equivalent, and which came on really nice fresh bread and came with potato wedges, salad, and a choice of barbeque or cheese sauces. Dave had the chicken olivada once, which he said was fine if a little small and for various reasons I can't really remember what he had the other time. Apparently you can have breakfast on board, but due to factors beyond my control I never made it there in time.... As I said, I thought the food was fine and also reasonably priced (especially compared with the mark-up on the drink). There's enough range (7 salads, 14 main courses) so that if you really wanted to you could eat something different every day, and there's also plenty of choice for vegetarians. Still, even though there were more things to choose from I didn't think that the menu was as adventurous as that on easycruise2 (or as cheap; which is probably why easycruise2 went bust!). And Dave said he'd preferred the food that was available on his previous 2 trips on easycruiseone. At the end of the day though you could go through the entire trip without once eating on board so just look at the restaurant on the ship as a back-up in case you're too lazy to go ashore, or if you can't find anywhere else to eat (which only happened to us in Kiato).
Day 3 - Ithaca
Some time late on Tuesday morning the ship sailed into the harbour at Vathy, capital of the island of Ithaca. For reasons that may have been in some way connected to the previous evening's wine consumption I wasn't out of my cabin to witness it... Ithaca is one of the Ionian islands, to the north of Kefalonia, and according to legend was the home of Odysseus, hero of the Iliad and the Odyssey. "According to legend" can be translated as "there isn't any actual evidence for it" but in fairness to the island apart from the obligatory Odysseus hotels and tavernas, a rather camp statue of the man himself in the town, and the identification of a few sites on the island and places mentioned in the legends they don't push the dubious connection too far.
Ithaca was the only spot on the itinerary where there wasn't a pre-arranged tour, although it was possible to sign up at reception the day before to go on one of two trips (which, as they set of at the same time meant you couldn't do both of them, a fact that appeared to cause a great deal of confusion among certain passengers...), either a long hike to a couple of the sites associated with Odysseus or a coach trip around the north of the island (which according to some of the people we spoke to who went on it involved a rather unpleasant combination of narrow, steep twisting roads and a slightly too large coach). We opted for a lazy day and signed up for neither.
We spent what was left of the morning exploring Vathy town. Vathy is built around a huge natural harbour (one of the world's largest, I've been told), home to a few small fishing boats, surrounded by green hills that in turn climb into some high mountains. The town itself is a thin ribbon of buildings around the water's edge, a collection of multi-coloured cottages, tavernas and shops, with a few graceful churches. Basically, if you were asked to picture an idyllic Greek island village it would probably look something like this [the preceding paragraph is © 2008].
The town isn't big; it took me less than 15 minutes to walk from where the ship was docked round to the opposite end of the harbour, and I wasn't hurrying. Although many buildings on the island were destroyed in an earthquake in 1953 it still looks picturesque enough, and some of the churches at least seem to have survived the earthquake (who says praying doesn't work?). On a more practical level Vathy also boasts a post office, a small supermarket and some other food shops, some tourist-tat shops, a moped rental outfit (which we resisted the temptation of, wisely I think), some cafes on what passes for the main town square, and a decent collection of tavernas and restaurants.
Having skipped breakfast, as usual, we settled down for a quick snack at one of those main square cafes. Well, I settled down for a quick snack, that fat bastard Dave decided to order a huge pizza, although in fairness to him he did let me have a slice of it, and very nice it was too. After that we decided to go on a hike; the fact that we had no directions, a map, or a compass was no obstacle to us. As you might have guessed, neither of us was in the boy scouts. At least not when we were boys....
Dave's Rough Guide mentioned a long walk to some Odysseus-connected spring that was supposed to be sign-posted, but having walked round the length of the harbour front we couldn't find the damned thing (a lady on the boat who did eventually make it to the spring told us that the sign-post was at the end of the walk, which probably explains our inability to find it) so instead we decided to improvise. Normally that's a recipe for disaster, but this time things worked out pretty well. The route we took went past the town's small archaeological museum and then we turned right (in-land, up-hill, and away from the town) when we reached the yellow church with the tall spire. It was a pretty challenging walk (by our standards) climbing up the side of a pretty steep hill, and very energy-sapping (by our standards) especially as it was a hot day and once we'd left Vathy there wasn't an open taverna to be found. The amazing scenery of the interior of the island more than made up for our exertions, and after a few treks up dead-ends in an unsuccessful attempt to reach the actual summit of the hill we carried on heading in-land and were rewarded with the views of the coast on the other side of the island; a deserted bay, a pristine looking beach, and deep turquoise sea. Something rather like this in fact.
Having had a glimpse of such a Paradise we decided that we could hardly turn back, even though there didn't appear to be any tavernas there either, and so we headed off down the other side of the hill towards the sea (although there was the nagging fear in the back of my mind that once we actually reached the beach Dave might suggest a spot of skinny-dipping, in which case I'd probably have sprinted all the way back to Vathy and locked myself in my cabin for the remainder of the week...). Anyway we made it, and although up-close it was a bit of a disappointment (the thing about deserted beaches is that there's no one around to clear up all the crap that washes up) the water was still clear and cool (I know this because I dipped my fingers in it; no skinny dipping for us, we being manly men), the fresh sea air was most invigorating, and we had the sense of achievement of reaching a place untouched by human footfall since someone had lit a camp fire there a day or so previously.
Of course, the problem with marching miles to these deserted coves is that you then have to march all the way back again... But we made it, and in the end it took us only about an hour to walk back to Vathy, partly because we walked straight back without taking any of the diversions we'd taken on the way there and partly because we had the thought of a cool Mythos spurring us on...
Unfortunately by the time we got back to Vathy the archaeological museum had closed so we decided to find a bar instead. Actually the bar found us... As we were walking past one a couple of blokes we didn't initially recognise started waving at us and calling us over. I'm not one to resist an invitation like that, especially when it's coming from bar, and we got a bit closer we recognised them as a couple of the easycruise crew, Konstantinos the barman and Giorgios (George) the DJ who were off-duty and having a couple of drinks with one of the girls from reception (who's name I'm afraid I can't remember) and they invited us to join them, which was very considerate of them. So rather than the quick drink to slake our thirsts that we'd been planning on we spent a very pleasant couple of hours which involved a handful of beers and a wide-ranging and rather eclectic conversation (can conversations be eclectic? I don't see why not...). Anyway, I can't remember the name of the bar but it was on the other side of the road from the water front, right at the furthest end of the harbour and pretty much opposite the entrance to the harbour, a big building with a lot of tables and fat palm trees in the courtyard, set round what appears to be a pool (which is actually part of the harbour; there's a tunnel going under the road, which means that the pool is full of fish; try crunching up some crisps and throwing them into the water and you'll soon attract hundreds of the buggers. You might want to bring a net...). There's only one bar in Vathy that looks like that, so it should be easy to find. Dave also had a look inside the place (he wanted to check out the toilets; it's a proclivity of his...) and reported that it looked rather posh inside. It might have been a restaurant too for all I know, all I can tell you is that they serve Mythos and crisps.
After that we headed back to the boat for a very leisurely, Heineken-fuelled evening. We took our normal place on the outdoor deck on deck five and before long Dave ended up in the hot tub; to cover my shame and avert my gaze from such a grotesque spectacle I caught up on my postcard writing but, shamefully, at a certain point in the evening I'd sunk enough Heineken to overcome any inhibitions I had previously had, and I'm afraid I have to report that I ended up in the hot tub too.... A quick word about the hot tub. First of all it's pretty small; 6 people can fit in it reasonably comfortably (possibly less if 2 of them happen to be me and Dave), but if you tried to fit any more than that in I think you could officially classify it as an orgy. Second, there's only one tub. If you want to wait until it's empty before getting in you might be waiting for a while. So, if there's space in there hop in and introduce yourself. Naturally, for a repressed Brit hopping into a hot-tub with a bunch of complete strangers is a bit of an alien concept, but after you've done it once you'll get used to it. Hell, even I was getting the hang of it by the end of the cruise, although that probably had something to do with the rivers of Heineken I was knocking back...
So anyway, back to the hot tub. How to describe such pleasures? A band of angels spraying your body with warm champagne? OK, that'd probably be a bit of an exaggeration, but by crikey it felt pretty damned good in there...After an hour so I felt rejuvenated enough to have walked all the way around the island. The only downsides are that you have to get out of the tub to stock up on fresh drinks and it can be so hot in there that your beer can get warm quickly (obvious solution - drink the beer before this happens...). Needless to say that wasn't the last time I ended up in there, but I'll come to that later, and I'm now trying to figure out a way of fitting a hot-tub into my flat. It'd probably mean getting rid of my kitchen, but what the hell... And I could always use it to boil eggs.
After a few hours of such indulgence we headed back into town in search of a bite to eat. We'd spotted one or two rather fancy looking restaurants on our earlier explorations but we both felt in need of something a bit more down to earth, and substantial. We ended up in a place called Kalkanis Taverna, which seemed to be full of fellow easycruise passengers, but which best of all had a collection of rather fat waiters which I always find, as regular readers of this site will know, is the sign of an impending good feed. We weren't disappointed. Dave had the chicken souvlaki, big chunks of marinated grilled chicken on a spit. I had a mixed grill, which was a combination of lamb and chicken kebab meat, but it also came with liver (which I'm not too keen on; most of that got fed to a cat...He seemed to like it.) Very nice it all was too, far tastier and much less fatty than what you'd get from a kebab shop in the UK, and it was the first time I've been served kebab meat on an actual plate! You live and learn. The taverna has its own website.
Anyway we headed back to the boat, and had a couple of quick ones for the road on deck 5. The hot tub was still open (officially it closes at 12 but they were flexible about this; as long as people were still in it and the bar was still open they seemed to keep it going) and I was tempted, but it was absolutely packed so it had to wait for another day...
Ithaca was one of the days on the cruise I enjoyed most. The feeling of being on an island helped, as did the fact that Vathy is such a charming town. But I think the main thing was that in the middle of organised tours it was nice just to have a free day, where we could do as much or as little as we wanted, and at our own pace (or lack of it).
Basics -
AUSTRIA - BULGARIA - CUBA
- CZECH REPUBLIC -
LITHUANIA - POLAND - SLOVAKIA - SLOVENIA