A Quick Recap of My 2024 Mediterranean Adventure (with Photos)

For our 10th wedding anniversary, my wife and I took a 10-day cruise in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. We’d never traveled to any of these countries, nor had we left the country since becoming parents. So this trip was a new experience, and long overdue.

It was a joy to see how people live in this part of the world and see new cultures — both similar and different from our own in the U.S. To share some of that experience with you, I thought I’d share some of the things we learned and places we saw.

If you want to check out some of the best photos I took on this trip, take a look at my account on Pexels. You can even download the images and use them for free.

Venice, Italy

Our cruise sailed out of a port a few hours away from Venice, so we took a bus ride, and then a short water taxi into the city.

There is really no city in the world like Venice. It was built in the middle of a swamp to protect them from invaders, largely because the early Venicians were better merchants than they were soldiers.

Despite that, they conquered most of the other cities we visited on our trip during the height of the Venecian Republic.

Since then, Venice has been conquered, but by tourists. It’s one of the most heavily touristed cities in the world, and it’s crowded on our trip even though we came in the “off-season”.

There are more than 100 islands that make up the city and these are connected by over 400 bridges. Most of the streets are narrow and windy, until they suddenly open up into a beautiful square full of people. We went on a short tour to see some highlights and finished our visit by grabbing pizza and lasagna at an authentic Italian restaurant.

Koper, Slovenia

We didn’t know what to expect from Slovenia, but it surprised us by being one of our favorite destinations. Maybe it was the lack of tourist hordes, maybe it was the quaint town center, maybe it was our delightful food tour, or maybe all of the above. But Koper was a lovely spot.

Slovenia was once ruled by the Venecians, then Austia-Hungary, then a part of Yugoslavia. Today, it’s one of the safest countries in Europe, and the third-most densely forested (behind only Finland and Norway). The city was also celebrating its 1,500 anniversary that month, which is old, but not as old as some of the places we were about to visit.

It was also interesting to learn that so many of the cities on the Adriadic Sea were established in part because of their access to salt flats. People could mine salt, which was important during the Roman Empire and used as currency. Also, the guy who invented the thermometer was from Koper.

This was genuinely the one country I’d most eagerly visit again if only to visit the picturesque Lake Bled and their capital city of Ljubljana.

Split, Croatia

Split is the home to the remains of the retirement palace of one of the Roman emperors. He’s long gone, but you can still visit what’s left of his summer home, which takes up the majority of the old city in Split, built in 350 AD.

We didn’t do a tour of the city, but walked around by the waterfront and up a massive hill for an overview of the city. At the top of the hill, we found what claimed to be one of the oldest Jewish cemeteries in Europe.

Split also has the highest number of Olympic medalists per capita in the World. Each one of their medalists had a plaque along the waterfront.

A trend we noticed in Split that happened everywhere else was the ever-presence of stray cats. Apparently, the people love the cats because they kill the rats that come from ships. Makes sense.

Kotor, Montenegro

Montenegro is the only country whose international name is in Italian (yep, even Italy’s own international name is in English). It means “black mountain” which is clear from the presence of the large, dark mountains along the coast.

It is a naturally beautiful country but has a dark history. Because they were often fought over by the Romans, the Ottomans, and many other empires, the local people often had to hide out and make their living in the mountains. This has led to the stereotype that Montenegreans are lazy. They don’t do much to change that perspective because they have a 10 Commandments of Laziness and an annual laziness competition.

We went on a tour that took us up a mountain and to their old capital of Cetinje and through the big coastal city of Budva. They’re trying to join the EU, but our tour guide said they kept getting put on the waitlist.

Dubrovnik, Croatia

I was probably most looking forward to Dubrovnik, and it delivered on my expectations. Most of this was because Dubrovnik is where much of the HBO show Game of Thrones was filmed. So we went on a tour to see the highlights.

Dubrovnik has a similar old town fortress from olden times, but theirs sits on a rocky outcropping overlooking the sea. You can also walk around the mile-long city walls (which we did) to get a panoramic view of everything.

There were plenty of tourists here too, but people were friendly and the streets were clean.

We ate a nice seafood meal in the center of town, near where they filmed the ‘Stairs of Shame’ scene from Game of Thrones. Then we visited the oldest continuous pharmacy in Europe and the store where neckties were originally invented. Who knew?!

Dubrovnik was also the scene of a siege during the Yugoslavian Civil War over 30 years ago. The bravery of some international journalists reporting on the situation caused the rest of the world to intervene and protect the people and the history city.

Korfu, Greece

We rode a hop-on bus to visit part of this large northern Greek island. The bus took us by two forts, which we explored, several museums, and their historic Old Town area with shops and churches.

The highlight of this port was Mouse Island, which according to legend, was what Odysseus’ ship was turned into by Posideon after the famous Odyssey ended. This helped to highlight how much older and more historic everything in Greece was compared to the other places we visited (which were all much older than anything in the United States).

Apparently, music is an important tradition on the island of Korfu. It’s where the first modern Greek music school was established and home to the guy who composed the first Greek opera, and the other guy who composed the Greek national anthem.

Korfu was unique compared to the other two Greek islands we visited due to its rich flora. Both Santorini and Mykonos were relatively arid and had little agriculture. By contrast, Korfu had a lush diversity of plants. It’s just not as famous or popular as either of the other two.

Santorini, Greece

Real talk: Santorini was the most overrated place we visited on the cruise. It was the most tourist-dense — four large cruise ships were pouring people onto this tiny island (in the off-season). And there were only three ways to ascend the cliffs to see the cities:

• Spend hours in line for a rickety cable car
• Overpay to ride a smelly donkey up a windy path
• Walk behind the donkeys up the same steep path

We chose the last choice and spent an hour dodging donkeys and donkey droppings up a cliff. This was after we waited hours to get a tender off the cruise ship because of the choppy waters. So I’m certainly a little biased and bitter about the sub-optimal conditions when visiting Santorini.

We did get to see the sunset while eating authentic Greek gyros on a rooftop restaurant overlooking the ocean — so that was pretty nice. We got to witness the city of Fira light up as night descended. Then we got to descend down a dark cliff path and try out best to avoid stepping in donkey doo.

Mykonos, Greece

Our last stop on the cruise was to the wildly popular island of Mykonos. It’s a jet-set hotspot among global celebrities, which has made the prices of hotels and rental homes incredibly expensive. At the peak of tourist season, there are about 20 tourists for every 1 native islander.

Basically, everyone who lives there works in the tourism industry. They work every day for eight months during the tourist season, and then have practically no work during the remaining four months. It also takes about three weeks to receive an Amazon delivery.

Mykonos is dry and windy, which makes it difficult to grow crops or fish. They do have beautiful beaches, which is what attracts the celebrities. All of the buildings also have to rigidly stick to the same white and blue color patterns to keep the Greek aesthetic look. Before the tourists, their entire industry was using windmills to grind flour, so the windmill is the official symbol of the island.

The island originally became popular because it was located close to Delos, the supposed birthplace of the Greek gods, Apollo and Artemis. We got to see that island in the distance, and visit their Old Town, which was similar to that on Korfu. It was also in the Old Town where I had the best gyro and Greek parfait I’ve ever eaten in my life.

Traveling Home

We ported out of Athens, Greece after our cruise. I wish we’d gotten to see more of this historic city other than the rushed bus ride to the airport. However, we did get to glimpse the Parthenon and the first modern Olympic stadium on our route.

We caught a short flight to Istanbul for our connecting flight back to Atlanta. Istanbul has perhaps the most luxurious airport I’ve ever seen — it’s like an upscale mall on steroids.

Turkish Air is also much nicer than American Airlines. Which helped since we had a 12-hour flight home. I’m not kidding you when I say I watched five movies on our way back. Maybe my favorite was Nick Cage’s hilarious new meta-movie, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, which was partially shot around Dubrovnik.