Visit the glories of Europe – and enjoy emperor-level food and entertainment on the way
Ed Grenby - 2 July 2026
Until the current, slightly awkward confusion between a brothel and a sweet shop, everything was going rather well.
I’ve been attempting to smuggle an education into my children’s holiday by taking them to Rome, Pompeii, Ephesus, Athens and a couple of Greek islands – but by cruise ship, so they can also eat, swim, play video games and generally tween about to their heart’s content.
The compromise has worked wonderfully: days ashore, imbibing the history and culture of Europe’s greatest civilisations; evenings aboard, imbibing endless fizzy drinks and ice creams (I’m being uncharacteristically generous about these as it’s all included in the package).
Only now, at Ephesus, once the second largest metropolis of the Roman Empire, have we hit a snag, because our cruise’s onboard expert has referred to the ancient city’s brothel by the euphemism “candy store”. And now, of course, my kids want to know all about this biblical-era Mr Simms.
It was simpler in Rome. I’d booked a couple of “bonus”, pre-cruise nights there, and its big-hitters needed very little sugar-coating to make an impression on my two boys. The Colosseum comes with stories of gladiators and gore (9,000 animals killed at the inaugural games alone); the Vatican with assassinations and secret escape tunnels.
Me, I’m like a kid in an (actual) candy store, too, with Rome home to my favourite pasta dishes: carbonara, cacio e pepe and amatricana – I have the best of my life at Al 22 Bistrot (jkplaces.com/casa-jkroma/dining).
We also eat like Caesars once onboard the Sun Princess. Anyone who’s been watching Cruising to the Ends of the Earth on Channel 4 in recent weeks knows how splendidly spoilt guests are when they sail with American cruiseline Princess (princess.com), but we were still knocked (almost) overboard by the variety on offer.
Eight speciality restaurants, from sushi to steak-house, meant we never had to resort to the pizzeria, American diner, main dining room, taco joint or buffet – although we very much did anyway. (They were just too tempting not to.)
The boys’ favourite was the teppanyaki restaurant, for the sheer theatre of its all-singing, all-knife-wielding chefs; mine was Umai Hot Pot for the Generation Game fun of watching the kids cook their own dinner, Japanese-style, at our table.
Entertainment was emperor-level as well. We ping-ponged and pickleballed hours away on the sports deck, watched movies under the stars (from loungers and hot tubs!) on a giant screen above the pool deck, and tapped feet to bands of every persuasion (especially the excellent, folk-flecked Irish duo Pint of Plain).
My highlight – literally – was a candlelit cello concert way up in an ethereal glass sphere on Deck 17 called The Dome.
Ashore, we adored Naples: when nearby Pompeii palled, we explored the city’s eerie underground tunnels (galleriaborbonica.com) and joyfully noisy heart in Spaccanapoli (plus more pasta, picturesquely, at the marina below the Castel dell’Ovo).
On Crete, I gave the boys a day off “ruin duty” because we’d seen its myth-wreathed Palace of Knossos on a previous holiday, so we divided the time between beach and a lovely long lunch.
At Mykonos, meanwhile, we pottered happily around its delectable old town, a tumble of dazzling-white sugarcube houses and a tangle of lanes, some so fantastically narrow that I could barely fit through them.
Ephesus in present-day Turkey, though, was the best day of the lot for all of us (and a great example of why cruising works: I would never have schlepped the kids there if it wasn’t as easy as simply waking up on its Doric-columned doorstep one morning).
Its “ruins” (really not the right word, as there are chunks of it so perfectly preserved, it’s like Hadrian and his mates only moved out a couple of months ago) are more impressive than Pompeii’s in places, such as the 10-men-tall façade of its Library or the resonating vastness of its 25,000-seat Great Theatre.
Down the road at Priene is an optional extra that few people choose: another Greco-Roman city, but echoingly empty.
My small Sun Princess group were the only people on the whole site on a Monday morning, and our excellent guide allowed the offspring and me to fall back behind the others to wander its haunting Temple of Athena utterly alone, awe-struck among its tumbled marble and handful of evocatively still-standing columns.
Back on board the ship, swigging an excellent paloma beside one of the pools, I caught the muezzin’s call to prayer drifting from the city’s slender minarets to mingle with the good-time disco tunes that the DJ was using to get people in the mood for another fun evening ahead in the Sun Princess’s two-dozen bars and restaurants.
The cocktail ingredients, the soundscape, the history and hedonism, the whole week – everything felt perfectly balanced.
I’ve been attempting to smuggle an education into my children’s holiday by taking them to Rome, Pompeii, Ephesus, Athens and a couple of Greek islands – but by cruise ship, so they can also eat, swim, play video games and generally tween about to their heart’s content.
The compromise has worked wonderfully: days ashore, imbibing the history and culture of Europe’s greatest civilisations; evenings aboard, imbibing endless fizzy drinks and ice creams (I’m being uncharacteristically generous about these as it’s all included in the package).
Only now, at Ephesus, once the second largest metropolis of the Roman Empire, have we hit a snag, because our cruise’s onboard expert has referred to the ancient city’s brothel by the euphemism “candy store”. And now, of course, my kids want to know all about this biblical-era Mr Simms.
It was simpler in Rome. I’d booked a couple of “bonus”, pre-cruise nights there, and its big-hitters needed very little sugar-coating to make an impression on my two boys. The Colosseum comes with stories of gladiators and gore (9,000 animals killed at the inaugural games alone); the Vatican with assassinations and secret escape tunnels.
Me, I’m like a kid in an (actual) candy store, too, with Rome home to my favourite pasta dishes: carbonara, cacio e pepe and amatricana – I have the best of my life at Al 22 Bistrot (jkplaces.com/casa-jkroma/dining).
We also eat like Caesars once onboard the Sun Princess. Anyone who’s been watching Cruising to the Ends of the Earth on Channel 4 in recent weeks knows how splendidly spoilt guests are when they sail with American cruiseline Princess (princess.com), but we were still knocked (almost) overboard by the variety on offer.
Eight speciality restaurants, from sushi to steak-house, meant we never had to resort to the pizzeria, American diner, main dining room, taco joint or buffet – although we very much did anyway. (They were just too tempting not to.)
The boys’ favourite was the teppanyaki restaurant, for the sheer theatre of its all-singing, all-knife-wielding chefs; mine was Umai Hot Pot for the Generation Game fun of watching the kids cook their own dinner, Japanese-style, at our table.
Entertainment was emperor-level as well. We ping-ponged and pickleballed hours away on the sports deck, watched movies under the stars (from loungers and hot tubs!) on a giant screen above the pool deck, and tapped feet to bands of every persuasion (especially the excellent, folk-flecked Irish duo Pint of Plain).
My highlight – literally – was a candlelit cello concert way up in an ethereal glass sphere on Deck 17 called The Dome.
Ashore, we adored Naples: when nearby Pompeii palled, we explored the city’s eerie underground tunnels (galleriaborbonica.com) and joyfully noisy heart in Spaccanapoli (plus more pasta, picturesquely, at the marina below the Castel dell’Ovo).
On Crete, I gave the boys a day off “ruin duty” because we’d seen its myth-wreathed Palace of Knossos on a previous holiday, so we divided the time between beach and a lovely long lunch.
At Mykonos, meanwhile, we pottered happily around its delectable old town, a tumble of dazzling-white sugarcube houses and a tangle of lanes, some so fantastically narrow that I could barely fit through them.
Ephesus in present-day Turkey, though, was the best day of the lot for all of us (and a great example of why cruising works: I would never have schlepped the kids there if it wasn’t as easy as simply waking up on its Doric-columned doorstep one morning).
Its “ruins” (really not the right word, as there are chunks of it so perfectly preserved, it’s like Hadrian and his mates only moved out a couple of months ago) are more impressive than Pompeii’s in places, such as the 10-men-tall façade of its Library or the resonating vastness of its 25,000-seat Great Theatre.
Down the road at Priene is an optional extra that few people choose: another Greco-Roman city, but echoingly empty.
My small Sun Princess group were the only people on the whole site on a Monday morning, and our excellent guide allowed the offspring and me to fall back behind the others to wander its haunting Temple of Athena utterly alone, awe-struck among its tumbled marble and handful of evocatively still-standing columns.
Back on board the ship, swigging an excellent paloma beside one of the pools, I caught the muezzin’s call to prayer drifting from the city’s slender minarets to mingle with the good-time disco tunes that the DJ was using to get people in the mood for another fun evening ahead in the Sun Princess’s two-dozen bars and restaurants.
The cocktail ingredients, the soundscape, the history and hedonism, the whole week – everything felt perfectly balanced.