Wanderlust & Wishes
Welcome to "Wanderlust and Wishes," where two adventurous moms, Julie and Krystle, take you on a global journey, sharing their passion for travel, theme parks, cruising, and more!
Join us as we uncover hidden gems, explore bucket-list adventures, and dive into the sights, sounds, and stories of our favorite destinations. Whether you're a seasoned traveler or dreaming of your next getaway, let Julie and Krystle be your guides as we embark on this adventure together!
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Wanderlust & Wishes
Episode 79: Greece with Virgin Voyages: Dining, Entertainment & Adult-Only Vibes
On this week's episode, Krystle and Julie are joined by their friend and fellow travel advisor, Margie Reynolds, to dive into her incredible Virgin Voyages cruise around the coast of Greece. If you’ve been curious about what sets Virgin Voyages apart, this episode is for you!
We chat with Margie about the full Virgin Voyages experience, including what makes this cruise line truly unique as an adult-only, boutique-style cruise brand. We break down everything Sailors need to know:
✨ Dining (including Virgin’s no-buffet, elevated restaurant model, foodies dream cruise)
✨ Entertainment (edgy shows, live music, pop-up performances)
✨ Spa & Wellness (The Redemption Spa, thermal suite)
✨ Specialty Experiences (tattoo studio)
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Welcome to Wonderlust and Wishes, the podcast where we explore the world one destination at a time. I'm Julie. And I'm Crystal.
SPEAKER_01:As travel agents with fantastical vacations, we are here to share our passion for travel and help you turn your wonderlust into reality.
SPEAKER_02:From hidden gems to bucket list adventures, join us as we dive into the sights, sounds, and stories of our favorite destinations. So grab your passport, pack your bags, and let's embark on this journey together.
SPEAKER_01:Hi, everybody. Welcome to episode 79 of Wonderlust and Wishes. Today we are welcoming back our friend and agent, Margie Reynolds, to talk about her trip with Virgin Voyages. Hello. Hi, we're so happy to have you back. Thanks. Just to give everybody a little bit of a background on Virgin Voyages, we're going to ask Margie a little bit more details on her specific cruise, but just as a reminder that Virgin Voyages is adult only. It's an adult-only cruise line. They have a very modern, kind of super yacht type inspired cruise experience. We actually were just talking about how sometimes they have a little bit of a reputation of being a party ship, but Margie's going to debunk that for us. They have four different cruise ships right now. They have the Scarlet Lady that debuted in 2021, Valiant Lady debuted in 2022, the Resilient Lady debuted in 2023, and the Brilliant Lady that debuted in September of 2025. So just recently. One of their um kind of the things that they're known for is it's always included with every Virgin Voyage's fare. They have changed some things recently, and it doesn't mean that it's not always included, but they've kind of broken things out a little bit so that you can see the different cost of everything instead of it being all included in one big lump sum.
SPEAKER_02:So just recently in October is when they just started listing it out. People want to see what's what they're paying for. So it's more of a tiered fare model. It's called the Voyage Fair Choices. So basically they have a base, essential, and premium. Your base is your lowest price, your non-refundable, your fewer perks, your essential is closest to the system model. It's a mid-tier flexibility, and then premium is your highest non-suite tier, more flexibility and extras, like your bar credit, your earlier dining reservation window, better Wi-Fi. Gratuities are separated from the fare now. Prepay is usually around$20 per sailor per night. Onboard is a couple dollars more. Virgin says the total cost of a voyage does not change. They're just, like we said, listing it out. Now there are different Wi-Fi tiers depending on your fare. More dining reservation windows, also varying by tier base gets 15 days before sailing, essentials 45, premium is 60, similar to like other cruise lines and your status, kind of. And then changes to flexibility. So like your refund, your name and date changes, cabin changes, etc. Arnie, where did you go? What ship were you on? Tell us all the things.
SPEAKER_00:So we we we recently sailed to Greece from Greece on Virgin Voyages Resilient Lady, and we were just talking. All of their ships are very, very similar. You're not gonna go, oh wow, that was this class of ship. This was our second Virgin Voyage, and the ship, we felt like we knew our way completely around the ship after having been on a different one on our first sailing. So we we decided to sail Virgin when I became a travel agent. Virgin had quite the reputation as a little bit of a party ship, and I was very hesitant to book clients, and clients would ask me questions, and I couldn't honestly answer them. So we decided to uh go ahead and book it. Now I'd done a little research, and the founder, Richard Branson, when he started Virgin Voyages, he had never been on a cruise. So he had no preconceived notion. He said, if I was going on a cruise, this is what I'd want. And that is how he kind of created the virgin voyage structure of the cruise. And so we sailed on it a little over two years ago, and we stayed in a rockstar suite, which is one of their luxury cabins, and it was fabulous. But the ship was unlike any other cruise we'd ever been on. It is 18 and above, but that doesn't mean it's a nonstop party. Although, if you want a party, you can usually find one. They had a lot of little nooks and crannies with like a solo or two or three people just playing in a band that you could just sit and grab a drink and enjoy the music. And it wasn't chaotic. It was very calming, a lot of different venues throughout the ship. They don't have a buffet, a traditional buffet like most cruise lines up in the area that would normally be a buffet. They have more like a food truck scenario where you've got the different booths, but you can sit down anywhere and a server will come up and take your order and bring you food from any of the stations. Or if you want to just go directly to the station and get your food, you can do that too. So it's very chill, very laid back. So much is included. You've got your sodas are included and your juices are included, your um, all your basic drinks, anything that's not alcoholic. And then the way they do their alcoholic packages is you can pre-book a bar tab. So let's say I pre-book a bar tab for$300, they give me a bonus for pre-booking that. So I'd actually get a bar tab for$350. But it's not like I only can spend$350 on drinks. If I want to buy my husband a drink, if I meet a very nice person out in the lounge and I want to buy them a drink, it's my bar tab to do with whatever I please. So a lot of people really like that. So often on cruise ships, if you'd buy the drink package, one part of the couple drinks and one doesn't, but you have to buy the drink package for both. This you just buy however much you think you're gonna spend and you use it accordingly. If you have some left over, buy somebody a drink. It's a great way of doing it. And so I like the way they do that. But fast forward at the end of the cruise, we really enjoyed it. So we booked a placeholder. So when we booked the placeholder, it's got to be used within two years, and you don't have to decide what cruise you want to be on. You just book the placeholder that gives you a discount off your next cruise, plus it gives you some onboard credits on your next cruise. So we did that, and we were just, you know, kind of throwing ideas around and we said, hey, we've never been to Europe, let's go to Greece. Yeah, sure, whatever. We figured we'd change it and move it to Miami sailing before it was all said and done. But about a year out, we said, well, maybe we should just leave it at Greece. Let's do Greece. And about six months out, we went ahead and booked everything, the airfare, the excursions and the hotels before and after, and decided we were going to do a Greece trip. So we did. We flew to Greece and sailed out of, I can never pronounce it, Paris, which is the port near Athens, Greece. And it was a fantastic cruise.
SPEAKER_01:Did they have kind of like the rewards programs like the other cruise lines where you, if you've been on one before, you get to book your excursions and things like that earlier? Yes and no.
SPEAKER_00:They do have a rewards program, but one trip's not going to get you much, but they will let you loyalty match. And we are diamond on Royal Caribbean. So we filled out the paperwork to loyalty match, and that moved us up to blue on Virgin, which got us a couple of perks, including a free load of laundry, which we did the next to the last day. So we went home with clean clothes instead of dirty clothes. It was quite wonderful. Interesting. It had a few other perks. I think I got a free cup of coffee every morning. Julie, I think you'll like that. I would love that. And it could be the specialty coffees. I would go up and get me a big fancy specialty coffee every morning. Oh, nice. Free coffee. And I think it had a couple of other perks, but those were really the two that we we used by converting over our loyalty points for another cruise line. So that's cool that they do that because they know it's a new brand and they don't have a lot of high loyalty point people yet.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. We don't talk about that very often. And people don't realize you can loyalty match between royal and celebrity. Celebrity. Celebrity. But it's fun to see that Virgin is letting you do that.
SPEAKER_00:Well, actually, Virgin and MSc will let you port your loyalty points. They're trying to get people, and if they get them at a high enough level, then they'll start staying there to add to that level that they start out at. So Virgin and MSc are both a loyalty matching right now. Interesting. Very smart. So when we went to Greece, we weren't going to fly 11 hours and just jump on a ship. So we did get to Greece about three days before our trip. And we had been forewarned about the time difference. So rather than going, uh getting off the airplane and going to the room and crashing, which is what our bodies really wanted to do after an 11-hour flight, we had an excursion book. So we went to the hotel, checked in, our room wasn't ready. So we went down to the spa. They had a spa at the hotel. We stayed at the Grand Hyatt in Athens. We changed and checked our luggage at the Bell Services and took a cab over to where we had booked an electric bike tour of Athens, Greece. And I had never done this before. And my husband's a bike rider, and I was very nervous about trying to ride a bike. It was so much fun. I didn't fall once. Yay. Excellent. But which my daughter will appreciate because she says I didn't teach her how to ride a bike. And when she did that in New York, she fell. So I did not fall. Always mom's fault. Always mom's fault. But it was so much fun. Um, we even got caught in a downpour and had to bike through it, but it was still fun. We took the outside of the Coliseum. We got to see the guards that are outside of Parliament were marching. That was really cool. Our guide was fantastic. We booked several excursions through Viator for this trip, and every one of them was just spectacular. Viator does a really good job of vetting the companies they work with. And one was not our cup of tea, but still a good excursion. But everything else that we booked was easily a 10 out of 10. This bike tour, I believe it's e-bikes of Athens, was just absolutely fantastic. So we did that, went back to the hotel, just ate in that night, got up the next day, and because we are crazy, we had, again, nonstop excursions. So the second night we um left about three o'clock and we took a bus ride over to the temple of Poseidon to see it at sunset. So we all got to walk around, take some really cool pictures, and then they stayed through sunset. It was just absolutely gorgeous sitting down behind the back of the Temple of Poseidon, which was up on a hill, sitting over on the waters, just absolutely gorgeous. Um, what we didn't realize when we were doing this was that the temple was about two hours away. And so by the time we got back home that night, it was about 11 o'clock, and we weren't actually staying at the hotel again that night. We were moving over closer to the port for our last day. I had some points with Hilton, and there was a beautiful hotel, Isla Brown Corinth, on the beach, and we decided to stay there. So we had to take a cab over to that hotel at 11 o'clock at night and check in. And so if we knew better, you know, we would have flip-flopped the excursions so that we could have enjoyed this hotel. The third day when we were at this hotel, it was absolutely stunning. It had a great pool. It was right on the beach. We had a balcony, even though we didn't get there till late, they had given us a bottle of wine in the room. We popped open the bottle of wine and enjoyed the balcony. I actually had a little bit of work to get done. We were had no idea what kind of time zone our body was on, so we didn't care. We just stayed up and did that. Then the next morning, they had a buffet that included all this Greek food, plus all the American food, because us Americans, you know, we don't like to step out. And it was just an amazing buffet that was included. And we just relaxed and enjoyed all that, and and then we headed to the port. So just tons and tons of stuff getting done.
SPEAKER_02:How was boarding in comparison to other cruise lines?
SPEAKER_00:It was so easy. We just walked on, and which is unusual because you're in a foreign port. Now they had a terminal, a small terminal where you could sit down while you're waiting, and then they were calling people by groups, but we had done the splash of romance. So that got us early boarding. So we were in the very first group that goes on. Also, your rock star cabins and your mega rock star cabins get early boarding, and those cabins are ready to go as soon as you get on the ship. But what I like about Virgin Voyages, they're different than other cruise lines. You don't get you don't check in super, super early. I think our check-in time was like between 12:30 and 1, and we were the first group to go on the ship. But also to fast forward to the end of the ship, you don't have to get up at 6 a.m. on the days you depart. We didn't have to be out of our room until 10 30 on the last day.
SPEAKER_02:Wow.
SPEAKER_00:So it's it's it's shifted. I mean, you leave later, but you also get off. You you don't have that mad rush in the morning, which is quite nice. So we got on the ship, um, checked out our room, wandered around the ship and you know, checked where everything was. I was struggling a little bit with the app and all their activities. So I just went up to the coffee shop and they always had a printed form of all the activities there at the coffee shop. So it was a good excuse to grab my cup of coffee, get a itinerary, a printed itinerary, and figure out what we were gonna do for the day. So the shows were very unique. Again, this is an adult-only cruise ship. So these shows are not necessarily G-rated. I would they would lean towards burlesque, amazing singing and dancing, but not a whole lot there in the form of costumes. Just be aware. But the talent level was incredible. These performers, like one of the shows was a drag queen, not something you're gonna typically get on a regular cruise ship, but the drag queen was amazing. So you gotta appreciate the talent. They had some aerialists in the rings doing aerobatics. It's it's just incredible talent level. We did see all the shows. Their theaters are set up much more intimate. They're more like a bar around a stage. Um, and then their main theater on this ship was different than the other ship we were on. On this ship, it was kind of a almost like a theater in the round where they had two stages that came out into the middle of the floor and it was standing room only. There were no chairs. My husband has recently had surgery and was in a wheelchair. So he's not in the wheelchair unless he's gonna be walking or standing for long periods of time. So we had walked down to the the show, and when we saw it was gonna be a 45-minute show that we were gonna be standing the entire time, he's like, I'm out. So we did go upstairs, found out that they had three rows of chairs around the balcony, but the visuals weren't great. But we sat there and watched the show. It was pretty good. Well, the show was excellent. The the view from where we were sitting was only okay. It would have been great from the floor, but I don't like that. If I I want to go see a show, I want to sit down and relax and let the entertainers do all the work. I don't want to have to be doing the work myself. That is very odd that it was standing. I I thought so too.
SPEAKER_02:I thought that was only for 45 minutes. It's one thing for like 20 minutes, but right.
SPEAKER_00:It was a 45-minute show. So I I thought that was uh a little weird, but you know, it it is what it is. The casino is smoke-free, which I enjoyed. We're not really gamblers. Uh, we did pass through it to get to the shows, and so I I appreciated that we weren't, you know, going through a nice smoky room. They do have a separate casino slightly off that from what I understand is much smaller. We didn't check that out. So that's kind of interesting, kind of nice. The dining is all specialty dining. You book your dining before you get on the cruise, and uh, based on your cabin level, and now based on your tier of uh the pricing tiers, you get your availability to book your dining. We did the wake, which is their steak restaurant, uh, twice, including brunch, which they do offer a bottomless mimosas. And you know, if you're on a cruise ship, don't have to drive anywhere, it's a lovely thing to do. But the the steak restaurant was top-notch. We really enjoyed that. Their Italian restaurant is extra virgin, and it's really good. It's not your Olive Garden type Italian. They've got a charcuterie board, they've got the first dish, which is your pastas. I think I had steak both times we did the Italian restaurant, and it's just really, really good food. They do have two restaurants that are a little bit more experimental, if you will. They have the test kitchen, where for the menu you get seven words. That's it. And then they will bring you something for each course, and you can pair that up with a different drink for each course if you want, but that is an extra charge. We thought the test kitchen was now my husband loved the food, but it wasn't a lot. It was very dainty little portions. And then to me, I I didn't eat very much of it. It was, you know. Now the presentation was excellent. They brought one thing in a container that was smoked, and so when they open the lid, the smoke comes out and there's your dish. So it was very entertaining, but not my cup of tea. So um, we didn't actually do that on this cruise. We did it on the first one and decided not to do it on this one. Razzle Dazzle, we did. It's also a little experimental, but it the food was good. I could find plenty of things I liked, but just wasn't the menu that I preferred. We did not do pink agave this time. We did it last time. It's their Mexican, it was very good Mexican. We just liked extra virgin so much we kept going back and going to the the steak. It's hard to go wrong on a good steak. Oh, and then they have a Korean barbecue restaurant. Oh. And it's very fun to do early in your cruise because you're bound to meet somebody because they will seat you at a table for six, no matter how what the size of your party. And so when we did it two years ago, we sat with two other couples that did not speak English. And it was very interesting to a meal with, you know, two other people, four other people at your table that don't speak English. And we did a lot of hand gestures and, you know, basic words we we could figure out. And, you know, they were a super sweet couple. We had it was a young couple and then their parents. And the young couple spoke a little smattering of English, and my husband speaks a little spattering of Spanish. So we were able to communicate a little bit, but uh the their parents didn't speak any English at all. But we had a fun time. This time everybody spoke English. We had a lot of fun. It winds up being about a two-hour, two and a half hour meal because you're doing drinking games and they they it's very loud in there as they get everybody involved and you're cooking your food right there on a grill in the middle of the table. So it's very interesting. And we did run into the couples a couple times on the ship, you know, and said hello. It was fun to make friends that first yeah, I think it was our second night we did that. So that was that's a lot of fun. But it's it's quite the show. So we only did that one time. It takes up your pretty much your whole evening. Now they also have a pizza place on the ship where they don't do pizza by the slice. You pre-order it, they hand you a buzzer, and then it's right next to an outdoor uh venue right there on the deck that is just beautiful. So we just took our buzzer, grabbed a drink, sat outside and enjoyed the ocean air for about 15-20 minutes. The pizza was ready, and it's a full pizza, freshly baked, and it's very, very good. So I think we did pizza twice. So the food on board, you always hear people talk about the food. It's very good. They go out of their way to make sure that whatever you want, it's available, the different tastes. And you know, if you mess up like we did the first time, we didn't know that we had to pre-book our dining. It didn't mean that we didn't get to eat. We just didn't always get the you know, six o'clock dining slots. I think several nights we were eating at 9:30. Well, we're okay with that. I think one night we ate at five just because we were booking dining at the last minute and we wanted to try all the restaurants. So if you it's your first virgin cruise and you mess up and you don't get everything booked way in advance, you'll be fine. They're gonna let you eat. You'll be absolutely fine.
SPEAKER_01:What is your favorite of all the restaurants that you was it the one, the steak restaurant?
SPEAKER_00:It was probably a toss-up between the Wake, which is the steak restaurant, and Extra Virgin, which is their Italian restaurant. Both were excellent.
SPEAKER_01:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:So I really liked that. Now the rooms are spacious. They're, I mean, there's still a cabin on a cruise ship, so they're not a five-star hotel, but there's plenty of room. The bed's very comfortable. They do have rooms that will accommodate up to four people where they can shift it and and do the upper bunks. So you can really turn this like say you've got a bachelorette party that's going. You can get the cost of the cruise down a lot by double bunking, and the rooms are big enough that it's not unbearably uncomfortable. It's a lot of cool technology. You've got an iPad, you can put the different lights on. So I think one of them was like mood lighting, and it's it's very dim and and romantic, and you operate the TV, you operate the curtains by the iPad. So when you come in, you want the curtains open, you hit it on the iPad, and the curtains open up. So it's very high-tech. All your movies were on the iPad. That was fun. So that's really cool. You order room service, room service is included. So we did order room service one morning, and it's not your typical cruise where you hang the slot on your door and you get pastries and coffee. We had a full breakfast, bacon and eggs, grits, the whole nine yards, and they bring it in this stackable with all the plates stacked. And it's so cool the way they they transport the to-goat the room service meals, but very, very good, fresh, hot, excellent food. I mean, they do a really good job with the the food on the ship. I'm shocked they had grits. I guess they knew there'd be southerners.
SPEAKER_01:I guess so. I guess I I mean, because there's places that we go, like in the United States, that we can't get grits, you know, like you go outside of the a southeast and people look at you like you've lost your mind when you ask for grits.
SPEAKER_00:So go virgin voyages. They they they really are. And and again, they've got some unique areas, like they had one bar called the Social Club, and it had tons of board games. It even had rock'em sock'em robots set up on the table. So I mean, and remember, this is an 18 and older cruise. So it made you feel okay as an adult to play a kid's game. Right. Because you knew it was there for you. It wasn't there for the kids. There weren't any. They had swings in one of the rooms right off of one of the bars that you could just sit there and, you know, just swing. So it's it's kind of fun. It lets you be a kid again, if you will, but without the kids on a ship.
SPEAKER_01:Right. You have you have permission to use those areas.
SPEAKER_00:Yes. You're not taking a game away from a child because they're not there. You get to be the child yourself and have fun. And every day when we walk through, because it was on the way to our cabin, we would see crowds of people playing board games, playing Scrabble and Monopoly. Um, they always had trivia going. They had just it was a lot of fun. It's it's not designed to be risque, it's designed to be fun. And uh during the days, it was just very normal cruise ship, lots of people wandering around. The pools we thought were a little crowded, not a whole lot of pool area. And we are pool people, so that was disappointing. But this cruise was so port intensive, we only had the one C Day. And so, and we were in the pool for about an hour and had about enough of that. And that would be my one downfall on this ship is that the the pools are kind of crowded and not a lot of pool room. But their their spa is nice. The we did get manicure on our first cruise because we had some onboard credits. And instead of being locked in a room while you're on this cruise ship, you're looking out onto the ocean while they're doing your manicure, which is quite nice. Yeah. And then the splash of romance included three hours in their thermal spa. So we have done that before, thought that would be really nice. Again, I was a little disappointed with their thermal spa. The salt room, uh, I've done a salt room before where the whole room is salt. This was just a sauna with a little spritz of salt every two minutes or so. So it wasn't really a salt room. The hot tub, it sat on the side of the hot tub for four. You could not get two adults in there comfortably. So it wasn't really, you know, a relaxing hot tub where you could sit in there and enjoy the hot tub. They had two plunge pools. Plunge pools aren't really supposed to be for communal hangout. So those were small too. Um, but that's fine on a plunge pool. The um they had a what was called a, was it the warm pool or something? It was about a 12 foot by 12 foot pool right next to the hot tubs, and it was very cold. So that that wasn't super cool. And then the thermal loungers themselves, I'm used to thermal loungers being just a chair that's heated with the tiles. And this was a circle, like a seven foot in diameter circle that was not heated super well. And it was, it was packed the whole time we were there. But um, as it was changing hands, I did ask somebody if I could just check it. It wasn't warm. I mean, it was warm. It wasn't like a normal thermal spa. So we were disappointed in that. We would not book the Splash of Romance again for that reason. We would book it again. Um, I felt it paid off with the fresh squeezed juice every day, the bottle of champagne, the early embarkation, and the little appetizers they brought to our room. That was well worth it. The the thermal spa was a nice addition, but I wouldn't do it for that. I would do it in spite of that. You only had one sea day. What ports did you visit? Well, we visited Santorini, Roads, Bodrum Turkey, and we were supposed to go to Mykonos, and Virgin's known for their overnighters. We were supposed to do Mykonos overnight, so two days there, but the weather was bad. And it's funny how we found out we had actually booked a tour through Viator, and we got an email from the tour company the day before and said the weather's gonna be too bad. We're not gonna be able to do this tour, so we're gonna just refund your money. And then about three hours later, they announced on the cruise that the weather was so bad they weren't gonna be able to dock in Mykonos. So instead, we switched to Crete and we went to, I believe it's pronounced Chania, but it's Crete, and we went there instead and we were looking at the different excursions that Virgin offered, and most everything was just a beach day, and that's kind of what we had done on all of our other excursions. So we opted not to do it. We just took, they were taking a shuttle, was taking people downtown, and we walked around Crete a little bit, and we were gonna grab lunch, but it seemed like most of their places were like grab and goes. We found one place and it looked like it was very expensive. And we weren't, we were just looking for to grab a quick bite at like a coffee shop type place, and we just didn't see that. So we walked around, went back to the shuttle, went back to the ship, and just went up to the food truck gallery area and ate up there. It was it wasn't our favorite uh stop, but we did have excursions scheduled in the other three, and we are kind of crazy. We're on a cruise ship, and we actually booked three excursions that were ships. So we did one while we were in Greece before we got on the ship. We did an all-day, it was called an all-day cruise, and they took us to three different islands, and we just stopped and swam in the water. The water in Greece was just beautiful. You didn't even need a floaty, it was so much salt, you were just buoyant. I am not a great swimmer, and we just absolutely loved it. In Rhodes, we did the same thing. They took us and showed us some of the sights around the island from the viewpoint of the ocean, and they they pulled up at three different areas and let us get off and go swimming. They served some light food and and drinks on the ship. We did the same thing in Turkey and Rhodes. And then in Santorini, we actually did a bus tour. We had been forewarned that in Santorini, the cable car that takes you up to the main land from where the the boat's tender is a madhouse. And we got there about an hour before our excursion started because we we had to make sure we got on an early enough tender to not miss our our excursion. So we just grabbed breakfast at a little shop on the water right there, and we watched as this line just went crazy with people trying to get on the cable car that goes up to the main island, uh the main land uh town. And so we were glad we'd done what we did. So we got our got connected up with our tour guide, and then we took a ferry that went over to the other side of the island, and there we picked up a bus, and the bus took us up this zigzaggy road all the way to the top up in Santorini, where you could look down and see the famous blue roof. And that is there, but that's really the only one. So everybody that takes a picture of Greece in Santorini, it's that one blue roof.
unknown:That's it.
SPEAKER_00:But but it was very pretty, a lot of stuff, very, very little green on the in Santorini. It was like all built out.
SPEAKER_01:The it's a bunch of buildings and built into this land.
SPEAKER_00:The side of the the mountain. Yeah. Yeah. And so you saw a lot of the the buildings and stuff. And then we went around and we went over to the coast on the other side of the island. And we we didn't go swimming there because we didn't have a lot of time. So we just sat and grabbed some appetizers and a drink and enjoyed the view. But again, a great tour guide. Another tour with Viator that was just excellent. We I mean, every one that we went on, we we just absolutely loved. They did a great job. So you did your
SPEAKER_01:For that particular day, you didn't book the excursion through Virgin, you booked it through Viator.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. Yes. We actually did not book anything through Virgin. Um I felt that their their tours were a little bit pricey for what you got. Okay. And Viator now has what they call a cruise ship.
SPEAKER_02:I loved this feature. Yes. You put a click your date and your your cruise ship and it pulls up each of your ports and your what you already knows the times. Yes. What time is supposed to get on and off? And it's so fun.
SPEAKER_01:I love that. That was going to be my next question. So that answers my question about because that's always a nervous thing for me is booking things through third parties. I always worry about that because of not getting back on the ship in time.
SPEAKER_02:You didn't ride the donkeys in San Turini.
SPEAKER_00:We did not. We saw the donkeys though. And they the poor donkeys looked like they were overworked. So we gave them a break. Poor donkeys. So but I mean we we we loved all of it. The water in Greece is just absolutely spectacular. It was comfortable. It was easy to swim in. At one point, we were in the water and we were talking to the guide and we're like, well, how deep is it here? And he says, it's about 20 meters. And I'm like, wow, 20 feet deep. And he goes, No, 20 meters. And we could look down and see the bottom of the ocean.
SPEAKER_02:Wow.
SPEAKER_00:So it was it was amazing. It was just such beautiful water, such beautiful scenery all along the coast. It would be nice to go back and stay in Greece. But we decided that the the flight was terrible. And we're going to go back to Greece once I retire and I can just take one of the repositioning cruises from the US over to Europe, do the summer or the winter in Europe, and then take a repositioning cruise back to the US. The flight was brutal.
SPEAKER_02:Because you were there, what September August? August. That's right.
SPEAKER_00:We got lucky on the weather. It was nice weather. It was warm, but it wasn't brutal. And multiple people told us that over and over and over again that, oh, you're lucky you weren't here last week. Last week it was just blazing hot. And we felt it was kind of hot. So I can only imagine how bad it was the week before. So we just got really lucky with that.
SPEAKER_01:What was the vibe like of the other people on the ship or the fellow guests? Was it a lot of couples or was it like bachelorette parties?
SPEAKER_00:I mean, you actually saw a lot of families. We met a couple that was traveling with their 22-year-old son. We met more than one couple, a couple of couples were on their honeymoon and they were on the ship. We met some people from Europe. One couple was from Scotland and one was from England. I forget where at in England. And so they probably get, you know, on the Greece tour more Europeans traveling. But it you didn't see large like parties partying. You saw a mix of everything from couples in their 20s to couples in their 60s. It wasn't just, you know, everybody's 30 and partying. Right. It was just a whole smortgage board. And you didn't see everything wasn't just couple, couple, couple. Like you saw a lot of families, but the family was, you know, with their adult kids.
SPEAKER_01:Right. Yeah. And it's it's funny because to be honest with you, I didn't that like didn't even pop in my head as an option. I wasn't even thinking about it that way.
SPEAKER_00:So that's that's it's at one point Virgin did run a kid sale free promotion, but the kids had to be over 18. Oh, I thought that was funny. Yeah, that is funny.
SPEAKER_02:Plus, I I follow a family on on Instagram, and I don't know if they're on your sailing or one right next to it, but it was the same kind of thing. They have like three grown sons and they all took their wives, and then mom and dad, they all went, left the kid, like the grandkids home, but it was like this family trip with all the adults.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, next time we really want to take my my grown daughter, the other two prefer to travel. We'll just go to Disney with them. They've got the littles. And I'm usually the babysitter, so if I go with them, they have the babysitter built in. So next time we go, we would like to take my youngest who doesn't have any kids. So we thought she would have fun.
SPEAKER_01:Other than your excursions that you did through Viatour, what else did you pay extra for? Did you pay anything extra for anything else?
SPEAKER_00:Well, we had a$600, what they call sailor loot from pre-booking. So when we booked our onboard credit, so we had that. And then we were like, oh, it's an eight-day trip. We we probably need more for alcohol. So we bought a$500 bar tab. Maybe there was two of us for eight days on a cruise ship. And on the last day, we were trying to figure out what to do with our extra money. We had so much money left over.
SPEAKER_02:Did you get a tattoo at the tattoo parlor?
SPEAKER_00:We did not get a tattoo, but Dave did get a haircut, and he looked quite fabulous. He he got a haircut on the ship, and the guy did a great job. He he was looking at me kind of strange. I'm like, can I film this whole thing? And he's like, Why? Travel agent, I'm getting content, you're fine. But he did a really good job. We did not get tattoos, although there is a tattoo parlor, if that's something that you think you want to do on the cruise ship. We did not use the we did not get pedicures this time, but last time also as a travel agent, if you take training and stuff, you get some extra onboard credits. We had used some of our onboard credits last time to get pedicures. And that was really fun. Like I said, the spa looks out onto the ocean, so it's really nice. I mean, the ship does everything well. I mean, from the small little venues, every little area felt like its own unique personality. So if you wanted to go listen to acoustic guitar in a small little pub, you could do that. If you wanted to go down to the manor where they were playing disco and everybody's dancing on the floor and it was a little crazy, you could go do that. But everything was kind of segmented off. So if you didn't want to do something else, you didn't have to. And the shows are very well labeled, so you know what you're getting into. If you don't want that, you don't have to go to that. Right. They're not sneaking in names, and you get there and you're shocked. It very clearly states what you're going to see.
SPEAKER_02:Did they participate in the themes nights?
SPEAKER_00:We had good intentions. We both wore red to dinner. Um and then, because they have Scarlet Night, which is when they go kind of crazy. And we both wore red to dinner. And then we kind of were like, you know, we could go watch that new movie that we hadn't seen yet. We've got a bottle of champagne in the room. We're like, okay. So we went back to the room with this flash of romance package, you get a bottle of champagne. So we were still drinking on that bottle of champagne. So we went back to the room and watched a movie instead. But that, you know, it's it's fun. I've got friends that have done the Scarlet Night. And at the end of the night, everybody's in the pool with their red clothes on, and that's not my cup of tea.
SPEAKER_01:Oh. Yeah, I think that's probably where a lot of people, if you've seen videos of those things or pictures of that, of that particular night, that's where people get their perception that it's a party ship.
SPEAKER_00:24-7 the way the ship is. That's not. And you know, again, it's it's not even that crazy. It's just they're being silly. It's more silly than crazy. But, you know, I would rather just I never have two hours to sit still and watch a movie. So it was wonderful to just sit still and have a glass of champagne and watch a movie with my husband. So that was fun.
SPEAKER_02:Did your room have a hammock?
SPEAKER_00:It did. All the balconies have a hammock, their famous red hammock. And I confess that most of the time when I was on the balcony, I had work to get done. So I'd sit in the chair and put my feet up on the footrest and have my computer in my lap. But once or twice I enjoyed that hammock and pulled out my book and read for a little while. Very nice. So, and their bathrooms are really nice too. Now, if you get the rock star cabin, the bathroom is bigger than my bathroom at home. Okay. Wow. But the regular cabins, it is still a fairly decent sized shower with a glass door. So it's it's a nice cabin. They they've got them well situated. I mean, it's it's better than a lot of cruise cabins I've been in.
SPEAKER_01:What about like toiletries and stuff? Do they have toiletries that are are they worth using?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Yes, they do. They have good toiletries in the showers. It's not, you know, one thing for your shampoo, your soap, and your conditioner like some cruise lines. So they did have shampoo, soap, and conditioner. I like that. Yeah, that's I I thought the brands were fine. Okay.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's one of the things I I like that about Disney because they have like their toiletries are nice and you don't have to worry about bringing your own. But I know that's not the same on all cruise lines. So speaking of other cruise lines, how do you obviously the adults only thing is different, but otherwise, like like service, food, shows, those those kinds of things, excursions. How does how does Virgin compare to other cruise lines?
SPEAKER_00:Well, there's a cruise line for everybody. And that's one of the reasons that we originally went on Virgin. I wanted to check it out for myself because you don't know until you've checked it out. And Virgin's fun. It's a good way to go. If you're a foodie, it is a fantastic ship because there's just so much different types of food and it's really done well. Again, it's there they're so different. Every cruise line and even within cruise lines, the different ships just cater to so many different people that it's important to know who you're working with. If I was working with a couple or a group that was all over 18 and they were a little bit more looking to play around, it's a great ship. There's like the board games and there's the different rooms. If I was looking at a couple that wanted to go something very quiet and very sedate, I might choose a different line and go on one of their older ships where they can save some money and it's just not going to have all the fun stuff to do, but it's still a cruise and it's still a lovely way to go.
SPEAKER_01:You're paying for all the extras. So if you don't want all those extras, going on an older ship is better.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Yeah. And then Virgin, I just think offers so much because you can do the inside cabin very, very inexpensively, as well as you can do their rock star suite, which is absolutely amazing. We we really got spoiled doing that rock star suite. They actually have a turntable in your room and they give you three albums and it's hooked up to Bluetooth that you can listen to albums in your room. And if you don't like that one, they've got a record stand there on the ship, and you just take your album down and trade it for a different album. And if you want to buy an album to take home with you from the cruise, you could. That's fun. You've got the the different levels on the ship where you can, you know, if you're in the rock star or the mega rock star, you've actually got a separate Richards rooftop, which is a sundeck with a couple of hot tubs, a separate bar that's exclusively for the rock star cabins. And so that's nice. So what I like about the cruise lines, the newer cruise ships, they are separating them so that you can have a vacation for every budget. Yeah. So did you do the placeholder? We did. We we booked another placeholder. What I like about Virgin's placeholder is you don't have to commit to anything. You're putting down the deposit. We it was$150. And what that gets me is if I book a cruise with Virgin within the next two years, I will get$150 off the price and I will get$150 on board credit for sailing with them. Nice. So it's a nice perk. And if I don't, if I don't book within two years, I will lose the$150. But I can convert that to future cruise credits. So if I book within three years, I would get that$150 towards another cruise. So I don't lose it altogether as long as I go within three years.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's nice. They are definitely trying to um get the return people, you know, return guests.
SPEAKER_00:And and I think they are getting it from the difference. When we booked this cruise, it was very inexpensive. And a girlfriend of mine decided she was gonna come with us about four months before we left, and we repriced it and it was more than double what we had originally paid for it. Wow. And uh she decided she was gonna opt out at that price. I think Virgin's doing well, and their pricing is going up a little bit because of it. But again, you can put four people in a room. They've got inside state rooms. There's things that you can do to keep the price down, but then the all the venues are available to everybody, and it's really a fun chip.
SPEAKER_01:Well, and also your friend was booking like four months out, and you probably booked it month. Two years out, yeah. Yeah, you were well in advance, so that's that's also gonna make a huge difference in your your pricing for sure. Oh yes. Okay, so that definitely answers would you go again? Because you already you did your We did. Yeah. What are you thinking about for your next itinerary? Do you have any idea? We're probably just gonna do something easy out of Miami.
SPEAKER_00:We have been having fun just doing short little cruises, just taking long weekends, so it doesn't just kill the schedule.
SPEAKER_02:Is there anything that you packed or things you wish you would have had unique to burgeon compared to other cruise lines? I know we talked about toiletries, but is there anything else that they do or they don't do that you wish they did?
SPEAKER_00:It it's pretty good. I mean, they've got everything there. They even provided you tiles when you went out on your excursions. They provided you tiles to take with you right there in your room. You didn't have to go check them out. They the your room steward brought them. It's not like a traditional cruise where you've got everybody getting together for main dining, where you have a formal night and a this theme night. They've got the the themed nights where you got scarlet night and everybody dresses up in their red. But other than that, it's very casual. You would see people decked out to the nines to go to the steakhouse, and you'd see people in shorts and a t-shirt going to have dinner somewhere else. So again, it's a very you do you have a great time. This is all about you type cruise ship.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, that's awesome. Thank you so much, Margie, for coming on again. We love having you on. And I on my bucket list is to one day go on a cruise with you. So that I think it'll be a super fun time. I am ready. Anytime you want to go on a cruise, you just tell me and we'll set it up. Yes, for sure. For sure. And I'll go down and get coffee with you every morning, Julie. I would love it. Oh, my specialty coffee. My shaking espresso. I love my I love my espresso. Remind everybody where they can find you on social media.
SPEAKER_00:I am all for fun travel on Instagram and on Facebook. It's Fantastical Vacations with Margie and Jessica. I actually work with my daughter, who's much better on social media than I am. So we work as a team and uh I get to do all the fun trips and check everything out, and then she tells the world about it. So it's a good team. Yes, you guys are a great team.
SPEAKER_02:We love Jess too.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, we do. Yes, we do. Yes, I like her myself. Would she come on that trip with us? Absolutely. Okay, yeah. We would love for her to come too. I'm in. If you all are interested in booking a Virgin Voyages cruise, please let us know. We would love to get you on one of the four cruise ships with Virgin Voyages. We hope you've enjoyed this episode. I definitely did, and I'm probably speak for Crystal. We love having Margie on. We love hearing about all her adventures. We hope you all have a great week, and we'll talk to you next week. Bye.
unknown:Bye.
SPEAKER_02:Thanks for tuning in to another episode of Wonder Lust and Wishes. If you enjoyed today's episode, don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform.
SPEAKER_01:And remember, the world is full of wonders waiting to be explored. Until next time, happy travels. Bye for now.