This Mediterranean megaship odyssey feels like time travelling

Cruiser numero uno Christopher Columbus perches atop his harbourfront column, but my Barcelona taxi wheels right past him, heading for the cruise terminal.

CC’s brave little bath toy, Santa Maria, weighed 100 tonnes, carried 40 people and changed history. I board a 145,000-tonne behemoth, Norwegian Breakaway, that’s about to float 4000 people in search of the Old World. Our 11-day, 11-port itinerary from Barcelona to Venice is a fast-forward sampler of cities that have been, as well as much else, the cradles and graveyards of Mediterranean culture.

Life in the sea lane

Despite its Scandinavian branding, the Breakaway is a very American entity. From the technicolour face of Lady Liberty on the bow to the queue for latte grandes at its Starbucks, all is supersized. There are 18 guest decks, 15 restaurants (serving 72,000 fresh eggs a week), 190 different kinds of wine, 1550 crew and 13,000 lifejackets. Plus, the mandatory casino, gym, spa, bling shops and kids’ zones. This is my first time aboard a mega-liner. “Gobsmacked by the size” should suffice.

Launched in 2013 and recently refurbished, the ship eschews chintzy chandeliers, wave pools and mini-submarines. Its cabins, 2011 in all, range from top-deck luxury Haven suites to “interior staterooms”, aka no-window bargain studios. My roomy, sunny, Deck 12 balcony cabin is a ripper: 20 square metres, brilliant king bed, desk, sofa, fast satellite Wi-Fi and a sleek bathroom that beats the squeezy, Tardis-with-taps arrangement often found on ships.

“Boomer-and-Adjacent” might be our general demographic bucket. About 80 per cent of passengers are North Americans. The rest, of various ages and nationalities, includes a fair scattering of Australians, recognisable by accent. Albert (“call me Bert”), a retired IT man from Perth, declares his simple mission: “The wife and I just want to sit in the middle of history with a bottle of champagne and a good plate of cheese.”

Ports that call

We cruise by night, docking at a new port each morning and exiting by sunset, with our times ashore ranging from six to 11 hours. In my cabin I find a compendium of 280 excursion options, from hop-on, hop-off buses to bespoke specials. Some passengers join tours almost daily, others explore solo, and some are happy to never leave the ship.

“Mallorca is a paradise, if you can stand it,” reckoned writer Gertrude Stein with caustic ambivalence. Three other mega-liners are already in port at our first stop, Palma de Mallorca, with their passengers flocking to see the giant, 14th-century La Seu Cathedral. It was built, I read, atop an ancient mosque that in turn was built over a Christian church – a textbook example of the “layer cake”, if not crumbly filo pastry, theory of serial Mediterranean settlements.

And so it is, with each port having its own storied layers and unique roll-call of tribes, princes, popes, doges, dictators and invaders. At Cannes, our next stop, a church and Norman tower on the hill suggest the basic template: crosses and castles. At the foot of the hill, the pattern is updated with money-pot superyachts lazing stern-to around the harbour quay.

Livorno, which England’s 19th-century “Grand Tour” set such as louche Lord Byron knew as Leghorn, is the departure point for tour coaches heading inland to Tuscany’s greatest hits including Florence and Pisa. Docking here, as in many historic Mediterranean ports, is a spectacle that would blow the mind of any 16th-century Medici. Breakaway, almost one-third of a kilometre long, tip-toes into a gap more suited to Roman galleys than today’s floating city blocks. Hanging a nifty three-point pirouette, it reverse-parks perfectly to settle alongside the dock. Unseen bow-thrusters and rotating stern pods are the secret.

Civitavecchia is billed as the Port of Rome, even though the Italian capital is 70 kilometres. (By that logic, Jervis Bay could call itself the Port of Canberra.) Again, a caravan of waiting coaches departs from the ship, heading to the Eternal City and its meccas like the Vatican, Colosseum and Villa Borghese. As fate would have it, the Sistine Chapel has gone into lockdown for a papal convocation, or conclave. Cardinals trump tourists.

Cathedrals and castles might be the constants (along with pizzerias and souvenir stalls), but nothing in travel beats serendipity. In Naples, just off Piazza Monteoliveto, I stumble into an obscure 15th-century church dedicated to the comparably obscure St Anne of Lombardy. Its intricate marble floor is inlaid with the headstones of knights and nobles, while a ceiling of vivid frescoes dances above. It’s a budget Sistine, probably one of a dozen or so across the city, with no queues, guards, guides or merch floggers. And it’s a reminder that Renaissance glory was not Rome’s alone.

Dining on

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, dinner is served. I relax deck-side at the Palomar seafood restaurant with Breakaway’s affable general manager, Croatian-born Vuk Malobabic, who runs the ship’s hotel operations. “It’s more like a town than a hotel,” he says as we tuck into a spectacular-looking (and tasting) salt-baked, whole-fish branzino, or sea bass. For dessert, it’s the cosmic-sounding galaktoboureko, a delicious Greek orange custard pie.

“This can be a pretty intense cruise,” says Malobabic. I know the feeling. Forget deck-chair slumbers and re-reading War and Peace, cruising these days is about ceaseless activity and consumption. Resisting the former but embracing the latter, I relax with another drink, watching the ship’s wake recede on the wine-dark sea.

Breakfast, by way of contrast, is where up to 3000 people are fulsomely fed and watered each morning at the capacious Garden Cafe. Extraordinarily efficient chefs and buffet staff keep up a never-ending supply of breakfast staples to this refectory with sea views.

Food is the main onboard excursion. The servings are American-generous, and the service is rapid. Among the outlets that I sample are the Teppanyaki (singalong with yaki udon), the Cagney (excellent black angus steaks, matched wines), O’Sheehan’s Bar and Grill (fries with everything) and the Silver Screen Bistro (triple feature, surf & turf and Wicked). The Savor’s lunch menu features a curious category, “Handhelds”, which decodes not as airport luggage but tortillas and cheeseburgers.

I hit the Ice Bar for fun with vodka and hypothermia but miss entertainments such as Adult Karaoke Madness, Throwback ’90s Party and Free Health Seminar (for tennis elbow, “hot flashes” and such). The big musical productions in the main theatre, including Rumours and Burn the Floor, are a knockout.

The set-jetting agenda

Day seven. Sicily: Messina, place of calorie-bomb cannoli and waiters who look like Al Pacino. Home port, too, of Scylla and Charybdis, Homeric monsters that haunt the Messina Strait whirlpools. Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Normans and Bourbons have all left their traces in the island’s structures, genes, dialects and cuisine, but the recent travel trend of “set-jetting” has seen the classic tales of brave Ulysses and co mothballed, binned, sent to the sheds.

Instead, groups flock to the shooting locations of The Godfather movies. Of course, I take the tour. At one set, Savoca village, the 18th-century Church of San Nicolo is at risk of becoming Chiesa di San Pacino. Around the corner from the crowded piazza I expect to find the chapel of St Francis Ford Coppola.

Valletta, Corfu and Dubrovnik, ancient capitals of memory, coming-up. Three countries, three days. It takes stamina to keep up with the pressure of all this leisure. We glide into Valletta, bastion of the legendary Knights Templar and later the Knights of Malta, and Europe’s sunniest, southernmost capital city. Its Grand Harbour is encrusted with heroic architecture.

There’s too much history to see in five days in Malta, so we do it in four hours. World Heritage fortresses, the limestone avenues and apartments of Valletta, tales of the Great Siege of 1565. The Palace of the Templar Grand Master has a gilded, frescoed cathedral to rival almost anything in Rome, while its Armory Museum bristles with fearsome weapons perfected for mortal, knightly combat.

Malta’s a hard act to follow, but Corfu holds its own with a polished blue sky, balmy air and snow-blindingly white village walls. Greek Orthodox church spires and de rigueur forts. I do a loop aboard a hop-on hop-off bus. With my drive-by look-see complete, I pull up a cobbled, sunburnt square guarded by a chapel and call for a beer. The best things in life, etc.

Drum roll. Beautiful Dubrovnik, long famous for its towering, Ottoman-proof battlements and sea of terracotta-tiled rooftops. Here too, history has been sidelined by a facsimile, with Dubrovnik now best known as the body-double for Kings Landing in television’s Game of Thrones series.

Stradun, the old town’s glorious ceremonial promenade is packed to capacity. And this is still early May, Europe’s off-off-shoulder season. I reach a spot known as the Jesuit Staircase, which looks puzzlingly familiar. Then it hits me what it really is: the long flight of steps that GoT’s Cersei Lannister descended naked on her infamous Walk of Shame.

Further north on the Croatian coast, Split is all light and marble, Roman walls and Adriatic blues. Aboard a ship with 4000 of your newest besties, you rarely see the same person twice, but I spot Bert from Perth and his wife feasting at a quayside cafe. History, including Roman Emperor Diocletian’s massive summer palace, is all around them. With the first bottle of Dom already upended in the ice bucket, they’re enjoying the seafood. Cheese is to follow. Mission accomplished.

Bonjour Trieste

Our voyage is advertised as ending in Venice even though its harbour has been closed to cruise ships since 2021. On our 11th, still-sunny Mediterranean morning we find ourselves and our suitcases being smoothly whisked ashore at the Venice-adjacent port of Trieste, 156 kilometres away.

By 10am, we’re all “debarked”, air-kissed and onto airport buses and taxis, heading to whatever life holds next. By noon, a new contingent of wide-eyed passengers will begin queuing, with Breakaway waiting ship-shape again and ready to roll.

The details

Cruise
Norwegian Breakaway’s 10-day Mediterranean: Italy, France and Spain cruise, departs October 28, 2025, from Barcelona. From $2270 a person, it includes complimentary dining in six restaurants, as well as theatre shows and live music. Value-added More At Sea packages cover speciality dining, premium beverages, Wi-Fi and excursion discounts. See ncl.com

Fly
Qantas flies daily from Australia via London, Paris or Dubai, with connections to Barcelona. See qantas.com

Five armchair cruise experiences

The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean
If you do have time to read at sea, try British historian David Abulafia’s history of this “middle of the world” sea and its peoples. As a liquid frontier linking rather than dividing Europe, Africa and Asia, the Med is where religions, armies and political systems have crashed into each other, and evolved, from prehistory to today.

The Odyssey
Apart from the Bible, Homer’s epic poem is probably the Mediterranean’s longest-told tale. In it, Odysseus, the king of ancient Ithaca, battles his way home after the Trojan War to reunite with his wife Penelope. A widescreen version, told by Christopher Nolan, is coming our way in 2026. Filmed in Morocco, Greece and Italy, The Odyssey is slated to be the first blockbuster shot entirely in IMAX format.

The Poseidon Adventure
Paul Gallico’s novel about an ageing cruise ship, SS Poseidon, on its final voyage from New York to Athens, is hard to find in a ship’s library. The tale of a liner capsized mid-ocean by a rogue wave and of its passengers fighting to survive, it is preferably read in a lounge chair at home rather than a deckchair at sea.

The Med as a movie set
Long before “set-jetting” was coined, the Mediterranean was home to cinema culture, from Biblical plots to sci-fi sets, from rom-coms to swords-and-sandals epics. Immediately after World War II, Cannes, the setting for classics such as Hitchcock’s thriller To Catch a Thief, established what is now the world’s most famous film festival.

Rick Steves’ Mediterranean Cruise Ports
Prolific American travel guide author Rick Steves covers 23 Mediterranean ports, “hidden gems” and all. His practical strategies include how to choose the right cruise, self-guided itineraries in each port, and the best sights, museums and local cuisine. Includes colour maps for those who don’t like apps.

The writer travelled courtesy of Norwegian Cruise Line.