Pre-Planning Italy cruise 2023

[hilltopper98]

Just started to look at cruise to Italy for next year for our family. I'm starting at base zero and would love cruise line(have sailed Princess, RCCL and X in the past) suggestions as well as Itinerary direction.  Thanks in advance for your thoughts!

[euro cruiser]

Med cruises are all about the ports, not so much about the ship since you won't spend as much time on it as you would with a Caribbean cruise, for example.

 

Pay particular attention to the number of hours at each port.  There are a few cruise lines that are notorious for short port days, avoid that like the plague.

 

Note that some ports are quite a distance from the city they are "sold" as being.  In Italy, Livorno is the port for Florence but it's more than 50 miles away.  Civitavecchia is the port for Rome but it's also about 50 miles away.  Messina is the port for Taormina, about 30 miles away.  Venice is a mess, the ports being used are all over the Adriatic.

 

Genova, Naples and Palermo are ports that you can walk from the ship right into the historic center of town.

[-Lew-]

When comparing available itineraries I recommend you begin at a site like Cruise Timetables.  You can input your search parameters and you'll be provided with a listing of itineraries that meet your needs.  You can then go to the cruise lines' website to investigate further.

 

I setup this search for September 2023 in the Western Med.  

[cruisemom42]

One piece of advice I can offer is to look for a cruise with different start and end points -- and plan to spend 2-3 days in each one. The main cities where most cruise ships start and end are in general some of the larger and more interesting places (Rome, Barcelona, Athens) and unless you plan a few days in each, you won't see much of either. 

 

Once upon a time airlines offered deals on R/T tickets but these days there is little difference between R/T and open-jaw tickets unless there is some special.

 

[-Lew-]

9 minutes ago, cruisemom42 said:

One piece of advice I can offer is to look for a cruise with different start and end points -- and plan to spend 2-3 days in each one.

 

Excellent advice as usual.  We can't fly to Rome before a cruise without spending close to a week there.

[hilltopper98]

Thank you! Good advice that I hadn't thought of-will def. keep in mind while planning a few nights before and after cruise!

[WhiteOptima]

Just booked May 2023 Barcelona to Rome but staying in Italy for a few days.  Did not want sea days-ship is my transportation and hotel.  Can’t wait to start seeing what everyone is doing with the start up next month.

Will look at Cruise Timetables.  Thanks for that info.

[John Bull]

If you can manage a little longer away from home, one-way cruises give you the opportunity to spend a few days in both your embarkation & disembarkation ports as per cruisemom's post.

Barcelona, Rome, Athens and Venice are the prime ports for one-way cruises, for instance Princess & Celebrity usually offer Rome to Venice or vice-versa.

Booking a one-way flight to, say, Barcelona and a one-way back from Rome can be excruciatingly expensive but the cost of "open-jaw" or "multi-city" return tickets is about the midway cost of simple return tickets  - click on the "multi-city" or "open-jaw" options on sites such as   https://www.skyscanner.net/flights

 

Eurocruiser makes a valid comment about checking the hours in port - Costa & MSC in particular tend to offer a lot of half-days.

Good point too about distance from port, cruise lines are as bad as low-cost airlines at naming cities where the ship doesn't (can't) call though they usually have the decency to name the port in brackets, like FLORENCE (Livorno) or LONDON (Southampton) or HANOI (HaLong Bay).

 

I've added little to this thread, but I've hopefully reinforced the posts of others.

 

JB 🙂