4 nights, La Valletta to Piraeus (Athens)

Four nights, five ports, and no sea days. This one-way run starts in Valletta, the fortified honey-limestone capital the Knights of St John built above Grand Harbour, where the Barrakka Lift rises into the Upper Barrakka Gardens in under a minute and St John's Co-Cathedral holds Caravaggio's largest painting. Then it crosses to the Cyclades and the Dodecanese: Mykonos and its windmills and Little Venice lanes, Patmos with the Cave of the Apocalypse and the fortified Monastery of Saint John climbing above Skala, and Santorini, where you anchor inside a flooded volcanic caldera with Fira and Oia stacked along the cliff. It ends in Piraeus, with the day belonging to the Acropolis about 10 km inland.

This is a tight, port-heavy itinerary, and it rewards travelers who want the Aegean's marquee islands in one short stretch and don't mind moving every day. Three of the four Greek calls are tender ports, so weather and crowding shape the day: Santorini's cable car backs up when ships share the caldera, and Patmos enforces a strict dress code at the monastery. If you want slow mornings or a single anchorage to settle into, pick a longer, looser route instead.

EXPLORA II is all-suite and all-oceanfront.