Cruising The Arabian Gulf On The Lovely MSC Euribia

Introduction

Welcome to our first trip report here at Grand Voyages!

In this trip report I’ll discuss our trip around the Arabian Gulf on the MSC Euribia plus our pre and post cruise time spent in Dubai.

Initiating in Dubai we had ports of call in Doha, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, and Siri Ban Yas island. I look forward to going into more detail on each of these ports in separate installments so stay tuned for that.

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Earlier in the year I watched a You Tube series on the MSC World Europa cruising the Arabian Gulf and thought that’s a voyage I would love to take. Having traveled a few times to the region (Dubai and Abu Dhabi) there’s still a couple places that would be cool to visit by Sea rather than plan individual trips to each of them or travel by overland.

At some point I went over to my favorite cruise research tool Cruise Plum, and searched for cruises in and out of Dubai. When I saw the Euribia option pop up initially I was hesitant due to the bad rap MSC gets. But to be honest, there weren’t many other options so we decided to give it a go - or at least insofar as tracking the prices on the inaugural Arabian Gulf sailing until the fare dropped enough to take the plunge.

While it’s never my first choice, we opted for an Interior Cabin for a few reasons. Number one because I knew we’d need ample on board spending for internet (since we needed to be online for work) plus after hearing how bad the ‘complimentary’ food and coffee was, I wanted to budget enough towards speciality dining and coffees during the week-long trip. Throw in a nightly glass of wine or cocktail and the overall budget escalates quickly! So we bit the bullet on booking an Interior Cabin and hoped for the best 🤞

*I needn’t have worried because the interior cabin was actually nice!

As AV geeks one of the most exciting parts of this whole trip was that we got to fly Emirates A380 Business Class from LAX non stop to Dubai. Surprisingly, it was our first time flying Emirates (in the past we’ve flown Etihad and Qatar to/from the region), and let me tell you it lived up the hype! I’ll let the pics speak for themselves but needless to say, it was a wonderful way to get to our cruise destination and start the trip off in complete style. In fact, I’ll go so far to say that if you’re cruising in or out of Dubai then you should seriously consider flying Emirates to get there and home because they have a seamless experience between the Port of Dubai and the Dubai airport allowing you to check your luggage at the port, enjoy a day in Dubai, and head to the airport without worrying about waiting in long airport lines.

*I appreciated the comfort of the Emirates stellar Business Class product

*And who doesn’t love an on-board bar 🍸🍹

We decided to fly in a full 5 days before our cruise departed to give ourselves time to get on the time zone. Dubai is a 12 hour time difference from LA so it’s quite an adjustment (at least for us lol) plus we needed to be sharp since our primary purpose for the trip was to shoot a series for our You Tube channel. It had also been a while since we’ve been to Dubai and we wanted to have 2-3 days to tour around before boarding the cruise. And boy am I glad we did as there’s so much to see and do in Dubai these days. Stay tuned for a whole separate installment on Dubai….

*riding these Abras in Old Dubai was a highlight pre-cruise

Finally it’s cruise day! Dubai’s Port Rashid is just a ten minute taxi ride from the Hyatt Regency Dubai where we stayed, so we hopped in an Uber and arrived at the Port around noon. I will say the Port of Dubai is just awesome. It’s big and new for starters but unlike some Ports in Europe that feel cramped and hot, Dubai raises the bar with excellent AC, shops and restaurants. Also, there were no big lines and it was smooth sailing right on through security to board the ship. We had done all our check-in formalities ahead of time on the MSC site and dowloaded boarding passes to our phone so from the time we were dropped off in our Uber, we were walking on the ship within about 20 min.

*Port Rashid was an actual pleasure

First impressions of the ship were extremely positive. Honestly I had heard so many horror stories about MSC that my expectations were low. However the Euribia is their newest ship at the time of writing and the ship is simply stunning and looks and feels brand new.

*yep, she’s a beauty!

To sum it up, I’d give the overall experience of our Arabian Gulf trip a 10/10.

Of course some aspects were better than others and I’ll go into that in more detail in further installments of this trip report.

For now I wanted to just say - if you’re curious about planning a trip to the UAE or middle east region, consider a sea voyage on the Arabian Gulf as it allows for seeing multiple countries in a short amount of time and in one very convenient package.

And if you’d like help planning your own Arabian Gulf or UAE adventure, please get in touch and I’d be happy to help! Email me at [email protected].

*wait till I get to the part on the Louvre Abu Dhabi - nothing short of epic!!

What do you think about taking a cruise around the Arabian Gulf? Let me know in the comments section below….

That’s it for now everyone - enjoy the rest of your Sunday and speak to you again soon!

Stacey

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