Prologue

 

This post is based primarily on Don's notes, occasionally supplemented with MT's notes from our cruise in August 2022. When information from other sources is added—for further explanation to readers or to satisfy our own curiosity—that is set off in a text box (as this one).
Most of the photos that accompany this post are from Don’s camera (with a caption indicating the time it was taken); those from MT’s iPhone are indicated by “MT” placed at the beginning of the photo caption. Photos from any other source (such as the public domain Wikimedia Commons), occasionally used for clarification, indicate that source in the caption.

In 2020 and 2021, we had two Viking cruises cancelled due to COVID restrictions and received several thousand dollars in two vouchers to apply to apply to future cruises, good until 2023. In 2022, we began looking for cruises again and first settled on the Central America and Panama cruise in November 2022. Since that did not use up all our voucher credits, we began looking for a short cruise to use the balance. After selecting the Ancient Mediterranean Treasures cruise for August 2022, we discovered that the Viking agent had applied all our voucher dollars to the August cruise, covering more than what we had reserved for that cruise with some optional excursions, and that, once a voucher had been applied to one cruise, it could no longer be used on another cruise. After appealing to several levels of Viking supervisors, we finally managed to get our second, smaller, voucher applied to the cruise in August.

Map of Ancient Mediterranean Treasures cruise from Viking Daily newsletter.

Itinerary for Ancient Mediterranean Treasures cruise from Viking Daily newsletter.