We enjoyed this cruise in October 2022. It gave us a chance to sample many places and experience the Suez Canal for the first time. It was the first time post-retirement that we were able to travel!! This was also our first time to travel in October rather than a summer or Christmas holiday.
When a cruise line needs to move their ship to a new destination they often offer a repositioning cruise. These cruises begin and end in different ports. The benefits of these kinds of cruises are a few:

• unique itinerary
• less crowded- usually in spring or fall times, and longer trips
• cheaper price- we had a balcony room for a great rate!

• tend to be more sea days – Here’s our thoughts about sea days
• sometimes excursions are poorly organized – a once-a-year request from a cruise company can’t always secure quality tour guides in a port. (We were the first ship back to the Seychelles since 2020 so many tour operators were no longer in business)
• may have reduced dining or entertainment options- we did not find this
• may reduce or lengthen flight times home

The Mediterranean Shipping Company

We booked through Vacationstogo.com again and were happy with their service.
We flew to Rome, Italy to meet the ship for 24 nights! MSC (Mediterranean Shipping Company) is an Italian owned. They have excellent coffee and pizza! The nightly entertainment was also very good. All MSC  announcements were made in 6 languages. English, German, Italian, French, Spanish, and Portuguese which reflected the passengers on board. I enjoyed learning a few new words in each language. The crew easily switched between languages.

Here are some of the highlights from the ports and the cruise ship.

Civitavecchia, Crete & the Mediterranean

We embarked on the MSC Orchestra in Civitavecchia, Italy, and settled into our room. We enjoyed our balcony views, especially on our sea days. We enjoyed watching dolphins, flying fish, birds, and sunsets. The weather was very calm and sunny for the whole voyage. We sailed past Messina and viewed Sicily. We disembarked for a short walk around Heraklion, Crete (Greece) on Day 3

Suez Canal, Egypt & the Red Sea 

The trip through the Suez Canal was very interesting. It was 193km long and a smooth ride without locks because there were no elevation changes needed to reach the Red Sea. It was built in the 1860s! One side was green with cities and oases, and the east side was mostly desert. As we travelled through the canal, many people came out to wave and say, “Welcome to Egypt!”
Our port view in Sharm El Sheik was a wall of stone! We toured the Ras Mohammed -Egypt’s first national park. It’s located where the Suez and Aegean seas meet and flow into the Red Sea. Sharm is full of red granite mountains and jagged cliffs, like human teeth. We saw a few spots of nature and a few camels

We snorkelled in the warm water, but it was difficult to enjoy the experience with the crowds and waves. The Red Sea is much wider and deeper than we imagined. We docked in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, for a day. We stayed on the ship and watched the busy container ships load and unload with speed and precision.
Private security escorted us through the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden to ensure our safe passage along the Somalian coast.
Little did we know that only a year later, this itinerary would be cancelled for security reasons.

Seychelles, Mauritius and Reunion Islands

We made brief stops in three African island countries. 
We walked into Port Victoria from the ship and toured the botanical gardens in the Seychelles where we enjoyed the flying fruit bats and tortoises. This volcanic island is at the equator and it was our hottest days. 
In Mauritius, we went to the family-friendly Flic-en-Flac Beach. The water was warm and it was sunny but not too hot. Craig got a little more sun than planned. French and Creole were spoken on both islands.
French is spoken on Reunion too as it’s a French republic. Many residents attend post-secondary education in France and they use the Euro as their currency. We took a tour up the mountainous roads to check out the Caldera, a huge valley carved from volcanic craters. Driving on such narrow s-curve roads was scary! The island is beautiful and modern and we would like to go back and stay longer there.

Our last sea days included great views, a bottlenose dolphin pod sighting and an amazing nighttime thunderstorm before we arrived in our final port of Durban, South Africa. 
This is when the long journey home began. We disembarked and caught our first flight. We flew to Istanbul via Johannesburg which took 12h. After an 8 hour layover, we boarded our 2nd flight to YYZ. It took 9.5 h and crossed 9 time zones. We got very little sleep as both flights were fully booked. We chased the sunrise the whole way, which was pretty.