Travel Weekly's Michelle Baran is spending eight days on an Eastern Mediterranean cruise with Contiki, getting a better sense of how the 18 to 35 set travels. Her second dispatch follows.
On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being a snooze cruise and 10 being a booze cruise, I’d give this Contiki trip a 7.
There are partiers, those who invested in the unlimited drink passes sold on Louis Cruises’ Cristal (our home for the week), and they’ll be damned if they don’t make that investment worth it.
An Aussie sitting next to me at dinner the other night admitted he was out of cash and had to borrow money from his brother to splurge for the unlimited-beverage package. I nodded, encouragingly. This in between sips of the two beers he was nursing simultaneously. (To his credit, he only ordered one, but the waiter threw down a second just for the heck of it.)
On any given night at the ship’s disco, you can find an energetic group of Contikiers mixing and mingling, sipping cocktails and groovin’ on the dance floor. But the party scene is by no means out of control, and there are plenty of non-Contiki passengers partying, too.
Many people in the Contiki group are not getting their drink on at all, hitting the hay early to get some rest before excursions. With culture-heavy destinations like Istanbul, Jerusalem and Cairo on the agenda, there is much more to this trip than drinking and dancing.
Whether Contiki markets itself as such, the tour operator has a party reputation. But I have spoken to a few dozen people, and all say that it’s not all about partying on Contiki trips, and that the partying isn’t that crazy. Many said certain itineraries lend themselves to partying more than others.
When asked if the partying aspect of the tour is because Contiki markets it as such, or if it is simply a byproduct of the age group, many have said it’s a bit of both.
A guy from California who has traveled with Contiki eight times told me what the Contiki youth think of other tours.
They call them "Antique-y," he laughed.
I asked a group on the sun deck the other morning for a synopsis of the night before, inquiring whether anyone got sick or if there were any hookups.
The answers: No and no comment.
Yes, mini-dramas are unfolding nightly, tension between a couple of girls here, some flirtation there. But isn’t that part of the fun? Doesn’t all that contribute to the success of the Contiki product?
I’d say it absolutely does.
Click to read Michelle's first dispatch.