* Note this is a work in progress, so I'll be updating and expanding these posts with more information. Check back regularly for updates!
My wife and I are celebrating our 5th year anniversary this year and we decided that we wanted to do something special. Back when we first got married we bantered around the idea of a Mediterranean cruise for our honeymoon but decided against it because of the cost and time. We ended up going to an all inclusive resort in the Dominican Republic instead (which was also very nice). Five years later, we finally booked a cruise to the Mediterranean through Princess Cruise Lines between May 23rd and June 6th 2008... and it was everything we thought it would be!
We had previous cruise experience before (a 10 day cruise to Hawaii with Royal Caribbean) and found that some of the excursions on the ship were rather pricey. Being newbies at the time, we booked all of our shore excursions from the ship and found that many of them were available ashore for a fraction of the price.
So this time around, we wanted to test the waters a little and try adventuring on our own in some of the ports. Unfortunately, there wasn't much coherent guides on the Internet that I could find that were specialized for cruisers, so we had to play a lot of it by ear. Time is the biggest restriction for cruisers at port. Most ports you get between 8-12 hours which includes travel time. And with the Mediterranean itinerary some of the ports are quite a distance away from the cities/locations of interest.
I'll post our experiences here from each port and maybe it could serve as an ad-hoc guide for anyone planning a similar cruise.
Cruise Itinerary (From Princess website)
Click on the links below for information on each location...
* Barcelona, Spain (Embarkation Port)
* Marseilles, France
* Livorno, Italy (Pisa and Florence)
* Civitavecchia, Italy (Rome)
* Naples, Italy (Capri and Pompeii)
* Mykonos, Greece
* Istanbul, Turkey
* Kusadasi, Turkey
* Athens, Greece
* Venice, Italy (Disembarkation Port)
This was a great itinerary. We really liked all the ports that we stopped at and it contained all the ports on our wish list. Before the cruise, we were really unsure of what Turkey would be like but it turned out to be a pleasant surprise.
Ship
* Emerald Princess
* Passengers: 3070
* Crew: 1300
* Weight: 113,000 gross tons
* Length: 952 feet
General Cruising Tips
* Coming soon!
Please feel free to leave comments and helpful suggestions for other travelers.
Resources:
* www.cruisecritic.com
* www.cruisemates.com
* www.cruisereviews.com
Random thoughts, observations and experiences... not all of them coherent. Unfortunately, not a Robert Gant fan site...
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3 comments:
Thank you so much, I have already put your blog in my favorites and look forward to watching it develop! We are not going on Princess but will be stopping at many of the same ports. I hope you are going to posting some pictures as well! Tammiko
Thanks for visiting Tammiko! I will definitely post pictures eventually.
We are going on the Emerald on July 23 and look forward to some more info and photos. We would also like to explore some of the ports on our own. We leave out of Venice so we do not do all the same ports but look forward to more info. I will check back soon for updates. Thanks for any info. Glad you had a great cruise. By the way how did Princess compare to Royal Caribbean, that is the line we usually cruise. Thanks. Pat
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