Let me take you on how we choose our cruise for next summer. A few years ago we took a spring break trip to Paris and took the train to London for a few days and really loved it. We have been talking about trying to take another trip but to some other places in Europe. Our family has been on a few cruises so we decided taking a European cruise we could explore lots of cities and while we may only have a short time in each port that will help us figure out where we might want to travel to for longer. I love cruising for the fact that you can explore lots of places but still come back to the same room each night.
So first we sat down and figured out the when. We have three busy kids. My day job makes it very hard to travel at the beginning of the month. Knowing that we didn’t want to travel while the kids were in school, this left only a few options for a slightly longer cruise. Our goal was to find something for 7 days or longer. We were ok with 7 if we could stay a few extra days before or after to explore more about the embarkation or debarkation city. If you are able to have more flexible dates you may be able to find a better price.
Next we talked about a budget, how much per person did we really want to spend? With planning a trip for 5 people things can add up quickly! I wasn’t really sure where to start so I did a bit of research first on averages for 7 to 11 night cruises. I found a pretty big range in prices from $650 to $1,800. I also took a long look at over all promotions cruise lines were offering as well. Was one offering free drink or wifi packages? This can help or at least save some money on the overall cost of the trip. Lots of lines will offer different promotions throughout the year so keep an eye out if you have some time to book! Another thing I considered was if I could purchase gift cards through a couple of gift card websites I use. This could help save an additional 5% or more on some cruise lines.
We had traveled with Carnival and Royal Caribbean, had good experiences with both lines on family cruises. Knowing this I check out what those sites had to offer first for summer European cruising. The couple that Carnival had did not work with the dates we needed which left them out. Royal Caribbean we did find one cruise that met all of our ideal criteria. So that became a contender, a 7 night that left out of Rome and returned to Rome that visited Naples, Barcelona, Plama De Mallorca and Florence that was about $1,200 per person.
So then I moved on to some cruise lines that we would like to try. MSC, Norwegian, Celebrity and Costal lines. We have talked about trying all of these lines at some point in the future. One thing I liked about the MSC line was that you could get on at several port stops along the loop it takes in the Mediterranean. This was a contender at a 7 night leaving from Civitavecchia (Rome), Genoa, Tarragona, Marseille, Tarragona, Valencia and Florence. This one did not stop at all of the places we really were hoping for but it was definitely worth looking at. The price was a bit cheaper than the Royal one at $870 per person. We didn’t really have a preference what port we went out of but we knew we were going to schedule a few days before or after our trip to explore that city.
The cruise we ended up picking was a 9 night cruise with Norwegian leaving from Barcelona. This was the winner for a couple reasons, it was only about $200 more per person for the extra two nights in comparison to the other 7 night cruises we were looking at. Leaving from Barcelona, with stops in Ibiza, Palma, Cagliari, Naples, Rome (Civitavecchia), Florence (Livorno) over night so we get two full day getting to port on a Thursday around 9:30 am and leaving port on Friday at 6:00 pm, Cannes and back to Barcelona. The several other plusses were that we have two day to explore in Florence and we have stops in Naples, Rome and Florence which were all cities we would like to explore. Getting flights to Barcelona should also be a bit cheaper than flying into some of the other cities we had looked at. We have not sailed on Norwegian but it is one of the lines I have been interested in sailing on.
Booking these kinds of trips as far in advance as possible will help you save money on the overall trip. Just a few months later and the cruise we booked is now $400 more than when we booked it. The Royal one is about $100 more and the MSC one is about the same price.
Follow us for more trip planning and trip reports! I will be researching each port in-depth as well as transportation and excursions.
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