trip report: athens to venice on cruise ship

brandy · Post by **brandy** » Fri Aug 03, 2018 11:48 am

I recently returned from a cruise and thought I would give an update.

Ship: Seabourn (owned by Carnival--their high end ship) All inclusive. No tipping. Unlimited alcohol.

Two days in Athens pre-cruise: No problems eating in Greek restaurants. Much easier to eat in Greek restaurants than Florida restaurants as food is unprocessed and a lot of options on the menus that are naturally GF.

Cruise ship: Every night after dinner I had a meeting with Maitre D to discuss dinner for the following night.
My dinners were put in as "special orders, " the day before. The GF bread sticks that came with my dinners were awesome. The Thomas Keller dinner/restaurant was one of the best meals I've ever had. (I don't get out much.) No issues on cruise ship and I tried a lot of fruits I've never seen before.

Italy (Brindisi)--southern Italy--The boyfriend and I walked in a tiny grocery store which was about double the size of an American convenience store. Yea!!!!One whole endcap of gluten free products near the front of the
store--bread, crackers, bread sticks etc! Yea!!!I picked up some crackers for our train ride to Leece.

Croatia (Zadar)--The boyfriend and I toured another grocery store. This was about 10 x the size of the
grocery in Brindisi. Zero GF items in the store and I walked every aisle.

Italy (Venice)--We stayed 2 days in Venice post cruise. I knew that dining in Venice was expensive and
problematic (tourist menus) due to two prior visits prior to MC diagnosis in 2010. I spent about 5 months
researching restaurants in Venice (there are thousands). I started a dining thread on the Flyer Talk Italy forum and folks really helped me there. Trip Advisor is known for having a lot of fake reviews for Venice
and European restaurants so I avoided restaurant reviews on Trip Advisor. Thanks to the folks on
Flyer Talk I narrowed my pix to 60 restaurants, then 10 then 5 then the 2 winners. I had my hotel
make reservations for lunch 2 weeks out. Both restaurants were great and we ended up with the
best seats in the house I think due to the hotel making the reservations. I felt sad seeing many
many people eating heaping plates of plain wheat based spaghetti with olive oil (no meat or sauce) for 12-15 Euros from the tourist menus at other restaurants. Spaghetti is not typical of the region but it is a high profit dish to serve tourists. Venice is more known for risotto or polenta.

I also emailed my hotel in advance to request some GF bread for breakfast. My hotel went above
and beyond. I ended up with the yummiest GF chocolate filled croissants.

Overall I thought it was easier to eat GF in restaurants in Italy and Greece than in the southeast US
due to foods being unprocessed. I had a lot more food choices than I get in Florida restaurants.

I had printed GF cards in Croatian, Greek and Italian but most of my servers spoke good English.

Brandy

Post by **tex** » Fri Aug 03, 2018 1:18 pm

Great cruise! Great review!

Thanks for sharing.

Tex

Grahm · Post by **Grahm** » Fri Aug 03, 2018 1:23 pm

Brandy,

That is awesome, so glad you took the time to share!!!!

Love,
Connie

brandy · Post by **brandy** » Fri Aug 03, 2018 4:13 pm

Thanks Tex and Connie! It was a nice break!

Deb · Post by **Deb** » Fri Aug 03, 2018 4:22 pm

I'm jealous, Brandy. I've always wanted to try the Seabourn line. The trip sounds great! Deb

Marcia K · Post by **Marcia K** » Fri Aug 03, 2018 5:58 pm

Thanks for sharing, Brandy. It's great to hear that your trip was so awesome!

skp · Post by **skp** » Sat Aug 04, 2018 7:04 am

Brandy,
Thanks so much for your post. It provides advice to all of us who may be planning overseas travel.

Susan

eshuler · Post by **eshuler** » Tue Aug 07, 2018 4:59 am

Italy is actually a great place for Celiac/gluten-free. They have a high prevalence of diagnosed Celiac (4.9-5.7 out of 1000) and because food is so important to their culture, they have mandated that gluten-free options be available in every public establishment that provides food (schools, hospitals, airports, etc.) They don't want anyone to be left out of eating because of a disease. Diagnosed Celiacs even get food vouchers every month to offset the cost of gluten-free food. Pretty cool.

It doesn't surprise me that you had such a great experience in Venice and Brindisi. I'm very fond of the way the Italians handle the gluten-free issue (though priority is given to Celiacs, rather than "just" gluten-free).

So far, out of 13 countries I've traveled in, Italy has been by far the easiest to eat in, followed by Eastern European countries that have a meat and potato or corn based traditional diet.

I had printed GF cards in Croatian, Greek and Italian but most of my servers spoke good English.

These make such a big difference when traveling! I have my Celiac cards on my phone and can get them in 63 languages from www.celiactravel.com. I do donate $5 per card, just because it is so invaluable to me in my travels. I also use the Arabic card in my daily life here in Amman. Super helpful!

Thanks for the post and I'm glad you had such a pleasant trip!