Silver Dawn: 12-Night Mediterranean

Athens cruise port is in Piraeus, a busy port city about 10 kilometers southwest of central Athens. Piraeus is its own city, not just a terminal, and it handles cruise ships, island ferries, and commercial traffic all at once.

Santorini cruise port is one of the most visually striking arrivals in cruising. Ships anchor in the flooded caldera of a volcanic crater, with the whitewashed villages of Fira and Oia perched dramatically 1,000 feet above on the cliff edge.

Istanbul cruise port is one of the most extraordinary arrivals in the world. Ships sail up the Bosphorus Strait between Europe and Asia, past Ottoman palaces and Byzantine ruins, and dock at Galataport, the underground cruise terminal in the Karaköy neighborhood right in the center of the city.

Istanbul cruise port is one of the most extraordinary arrivals in the world. Ships sail up the Bosphorus Strait between Europe and Asia, past Ottoman palaces and Byzantine ruins, and dock at Galataport, the underground cruise terminal in the Karaköy neighborhood right in the center of the city.

Katakolon is a small fishing village on the western coast of the Peloponnese, with a permanent population of only about 700 people. It exists on cruise maps for one reason: ancient Olympia, the birthplace of the Olympic Games, is 45 minutes inland.

Ravenna is a mid-sized city of about 160,000 people in Italy's Emilia-Romagna region, sitting on the Adriatic coast south of Venice. The city served as the capital of the Western Roman Empire, the Ostrogothic Kingdom, and the Byzantine Exarchate, leaving it with the finest collection of early Christian and Byzantine mosaics anywhere outside Istanbul.

Trieste sits at the northeastern corner of Italy, pressed against the Slovenian border at the head of the Adriatic Sea. The city has about 200,000 residents and a distinctly Central European character that sets it apart from other Italian cruise ports.