Fall 2025 – Venice to Istanbul on Explora I My latest Distinctive Voyage

It’s Venice to Istanbul and on to Athens, if you want.   Explora Journeys is brand new and its website is giving me fits.  So now all the ports are in here.  You can wait a long time for Explora’s website to respond.  I’m cutting them some slack because they’re new.

Explora Journeys is the privately-owned luxury lifestyle brand of the MSC Group, headquartered in Geneva, at the heart of Swiss luxury hospitality. The brand stems from the long-held vision of the Aponte-Vago family to redefine the ocean experience for a new generation of discerning luxury travelers, drawing on the Aponte family’s 300 years of maritime heritage. Their aspiration is to create a unique ‘Ocean State of Mind’ by connecting guests with the sea, with themselves, and like-minded people.

The Itinerary is great.  It starts in Venice, which isn’t downtown Venice anymore.  We’ll go a few days early for that.  The site has more detail, so I’ll leave the instructions in before show you the ports:

First click on (or copy and paste) (and if this doesn’t work go to explorajourneys.com, fill in the three search criteria with Mediterranean, Oct, 2025 and 2 people.)  Then scroll down for the October 18 sailing – 11 nights.

https://booking.explorajourneys.com/touchb2c/?inJsonGet=%7B%22packageCodes%22%3A%22EX20251018FSAIST%22%2C%22runSearch%22%3A%22true%22%7D

 When you get there and click on Details all you get at first is an ad exhorting you to buy by July 31 for the best price.  (Always a good idea.  You can cancel without penalty for a good ling time, but you might never see today’s price again.)

Give the web site some time.  Click on Explora I, first,b efore you click on Itinerary.  There you will see the vision for Explora Journeys, and all about the ship.  Note the smallest cabin is 377 sq.ft., half-again as large as a regular balcony cabin on most other lines.  Check out the 9 different restaurants, for your choices of cuisines.  OMG There’s even a creperie and it came in under the bars. 

After you have been at the site for a bit “Details” opens up properly and it’s quite grand.  Click first on “Itinerary”.  You’ll never be able to do everything it suggests for every port, but there are some truly stunning ports on the itinerary.  We’re hoping for an end to the war in Gaza, mind you, else the overnight in Haifa will doubtless be replaced with something tamer.  It will be a highlight for me if we can go. 

Then check out “Suite Categories” to choose your level of comfort.  Some of them are bigger than my apartment. 

If the site never worked or you didn’t bother, here are the ports we will visit:

And we’ll end in Istanbul, which is worth more time, unless, you, like me, want to go on.

 I think I will add the next ten days as a full paying passenger, kick back, relax, and enjoy more of Greece and Turkey, a lot more.  If even one of you wants to join me, I will. I have two nibbles so far.  This should be the link to the full 21 night adventure: https://booking.explorajourneys.com/touchb2c/  but it didn’t work for me.  Best look it up at the first Explora link above.  Call me if you’re having trouble, we can do it together.  Maybe try this one Explora Journeys   Or just feast your eyes on this full 21 day journey:

Ending in Athens.  I’ll take you to the yacht club in Pireus.  It’s brilliant.

Who’s interested?  Who’s coming?

And if none of this floats your boat, come back to Asia with me in the middle of winter.  I’m revisiting one of my hometowns.  It starts on January 4, 2025, and sails, Singapore to Hong Kong! 

.  43-DAY CORAL TRIANGLE, GREAT BARRIER REEF & FAR EAST (hollandamerica.com)

I have no idea why none of you has jumped on to that one, but there’s still time and you’ll be glad to have seen Hong Kong through my eyes.