A little far out cruise question

[saturn3]

This is a little far out but I like to plan. Our 25th wedding Anniversary is coming in 2026. We would like to do something special, land style tour/ or cruise. We have interest in Royal Caribbean cruise line, we have done over a dozen cruises, Princess, Norwegian, Carnival but never Royal Caribbean. We are interested in destinations such as Norway, Holland, Denmark. But Also Greece and Italy, not certain which would be better and hoping for advice from experience on both. Some people say just take a tour and not a cruise because you don’t want to spend time on a boat and when you take a tour type land vacation your there for multiple days. So kind of going back and forth on where and type of vacation. Hoping my friends on cruise critic will have some helpful advice on this for me.

thanks in advance

saturn 

[smokeybandit]

Go over a few days before the cruise, tour the area. Then go on your cruise.

 

 

[firefly333]

16 minutes ago, saturn3 said:

This is a little far out but I like to plan. Our 25th wedding Anniversary is coming in 2026. We would like to do something special, land style tour/ or cruise. We have interest in Royal Caribbean cruise line, we have done over a dozen cruises, Princess, Norwegian, Carnival but never Royal Caribbean. We are interested in destinations such as Norway, Holland, Denmark. But Also Greece and Italy, not certain which would be better and hoping for advice from experience on both. Some people say just take a tour and not a cruise because you don’t want to spend time on a boat and when you take a tour type land vacation your there for multiple days. So kind of going back and forth on where and type of vacation. Hoping my friends on cruise critic will have some helpful advice on this for me.

thanks in advance

saturn 

I'm doing a TA from Florida to spain and then a 10 days to rome, then 4 days in rome. Imo I probably wouldn't do this again as the 4 days in rome to me takes so much planning. My phone doesnt work there, getting a hotel, planning excursions different days and getting to them. Ordered a adaptor so I can plug in my phone and tablet to charge. Flight home etc. It just seems to me planning a land trip is so much work. I'm not into all this planning and feel like it's out of hand. Not what I enjoy. I wouldnt want to do more days, this is enough to worry about and juggle. Each day a different private excursion and place to meet, and tickets for each day. A cruise delivers them to my bed.

 

The 23 days cruising I know and understand. Excursions you meet near the port not have to take a taxi or walk 30 minutes. I booked some easy excursions and looking forward to the azores which sound beautiful. The cruise part for me is so much easier. Trying not to stress over the 4 days in rome. Not getting a different phone just for 4 days. TAs are typically less expensive. In a year after they come out I'd look at a TA out of your neck of the woods.

Edited August 9 by firefly333

[MBP&O2/O]

When are you going? Italy and Greece can be heaving with tourists if you go in the high season. We went to Florence last March and the queues were horrendous ... and that was low season. 

The weather can be a tad warm as well,

[John Bull]

12 hours ago, saturn3 said:

This is a little far out but I like to plan. Our 25th wedding Anniversary is coming in 2026. We would like to do something special, land style tour/ or cruise. We have interest in Royal Caribbean cruise line, we have done over a dozen cruises, Princess, Norwegian, Carnival but never Royal Caribbean. We are interested in destinations such as Norway, Holland, Denmark. But Also Greece and Italy, not certain which would be better and hoping for advice from experience on both. Some people say just take a tour and not a cruise because you don’t want to spend time on a boat and when you take a tour type land vacation your there for multiple days. So kind of going back and forth on where and type of vacation. Hoping my friends on cruise critic will have some helpful advice on this for me.

thanks in advance

saturn 

 

 

Consider the time of year.

You'll likely find climate in the northern ports sometimes wet and  a little chilly or grey outside of the main season, which is June thro' August .

That's "climate", but the "weather" is very variable - there can be glorious weather on the shoulders of the season (April / May / September / early October), and spells of grey & wet weather during the season. Much like New England, all-in-all a little unreliable.

On the other hand, in mid-season (June tnro' August) the Mediterranean can be stifling hot as well as crowded  - much like FL though generally not as humid. The shoulder seasons are best.

 

Norway and the Baltic are best visited by cruise ship.

Norway is much easier to visit by water, and you avoid board & lodging ashore - Norway is expensive. many folk tour by small RVs.

Choose your ship / itinerary with care - ships which don't comply with quite stiff eco-regulations will be excluded from three major Norwegian fjords in 2026.  

You'll know that the Caribbean is best-visited by cruise ship - lots of different islands but few worth more than a day or two. Same applies to the Baltic, but for the opposite reason - it's a big pond with interesting cities and countries on all shores. but if you want to visit northern shores or a combination of northern & southern shores it's difficult, expensive, inconvenient and time-consuming to tour by road or by ferry or by air - cruising is the way to do it.

 

It's easy to get a taste of Mediterranean cities by cruise ship, but you also get the disadvantages of cruising......

- the ship's itinerary & not your own, a single day in cities that are worth longer like Barcelona or Rome, the Naples area, Venice, Athens, Istanbul, and sights in Israel or Egypt. And mebbe a day or two wasted in places that don't interest you..

- There's far more to central / southern Europe away from the coast, like the  French, Swiss or Austrian Alps, or the Black Forest or the northern Italian lakes, or the Balkans, or rivers like the Rhine or the Rhone or the Danube, or cities like Vienna or Prague or Budapest or Salzburg 

You're only gonna be able to combine a few of the above into a road or rail tour, but you open up so many options.

- You'll experience more, including evenings, and get to meet a wide cross-section of locals, not just those involved in tourism.

 

Currencies aren't the problem that they were decades ago. Europe is very credit-card orientated, even for small purchases (Norway in particular is heading toward a cashless country with many outlets not accepting cash), so you'll need only a little hard cash, and the Euro is the currency of most of mainland Europe.

Language isn't a big problem either - English (a language quite similar to your own 😏) is the world's second language.

 

A cruise needs very little research, even in Europe.

A road (or rail) trip needs a lot - itinerary, routes, accommodation, sights, etc ad infinitum. But you've got  about two years to do that and altho you might find it frustrating from time to time and you'll make one or two mistakes, research is interesting and rewarding.

 

All just MHO as always

 

JB 🙂

Edited August 10 by John Bull

[edinburgher]

15 hours ago, saturn3 said:

We are interested in destinations such as Norway, Holland, Denmark. But Also Greece and Italy, not certain which would be better and hoping for advice from experience on both

Many members will have visited all of the countries you listed and probably enjoyed all of them in different ways without there being a stand out favourite.and they would have chosen them on the basis of their personal interests.

 

The first thing you need to do for your planning is decide WHERE you want to visit as it is YOUR special time and you want to be certain you are going to the locations which interest YOU most.

 

Once a decision is made, from that point you can look at itineraries which include the countries/port calls you want to prioritise and the cruiselines which offer them.  I would not fixate on one cruiseline only,( in your case RC,) but keep an open mind because you will be firstly looking at the itinerary,  ease of flights, also dates which fit your timescale, and cost too. Lots of factors to consider. And Meditteranean itineraries are usually more port intenseive with few sea days so the ship  becomes  of less importance. And would you want to spend some pre or post cruise days on a land trip at  or near to the embarcation or disembarcation ports?

 

And as already noted, an itinerary including northern ports such as the Norwegian fjords  will be very different from one heading further south, especially when it comes to weather, crowds and scenery.

 

Can only suggest you read read and read more to help you decide, but you do have plenty of time to plan this exciting trip.

 

And should you decide north over south or south over north, you could always plan to cruise the other the following year.

 

 

Edited August 10 by edinburgher

[Gwendy]

Most cruises in the Mediterranean are quite port intensive high can be very tiring, maybe not what you want for a silver anniversary.  Comes down to research, research, research.  What are your interests, what do you want to see.  Good luck with planning.

[Hlitner]

One of our favorite trips is taking a TA and post/cruise spending significant land time in Europe or Asia.  The problem for working folks is that they need to find the time (and the money).  There are many TAs in the spring and fall, so one can simply pick their embarkation/disembarkation port and use that as a starting point to work-out a land itinerary.  In Europe, you can either plan around a train trip or rent/lease a car.

 

Speaking of Greece, one of our "goto" trips involves cruises that begin/end in Pireaus (Athens) from where we can also take advantage of the ferry system to visit several Greek Isles (generally ones that are not on cruise ship itineraries).  As an example, the last time we did this (2 years ago) we got off a cruise in Pireaus, took a ferry to Naxos, spent a few days, took another ferry to Paros, spent a few more days, and then ferried back to Pireaus and flew home.

 

Another idea (we have done this a few times) is to take a cruise that has their last port, Le Havre.  Quite a few cruises go to Le Havre on their last day, and then move on to an English port to end the cruise.  But we arrange to disembark 1 day early (in Le Havre) and take the train to Paris from where we start a land vacation.

 

Hank

[capriccio]

To add to your options...have you considered a river cruise? 

 

We have over 30 ocean cruises throughout the world and 4 river cruises (#5 coming up next month).  I find them more restful, less chaotic, and absolutely fascinating with small towns and scenery that would never be seen on an ocean cruise.  If that interests you, check out the River Cruising board:  https://boards.cruisecritic.com/forum/115-river-cruising/

Edited August 10 by capriccio

[saturn3]

So appreciative of those who give me more information to consider on this journey! Some of my research is deciding on where to go first. Denmark, Holland, Norway all seem so colorful and exciting. We would look to go wherever we decide most likely end of September beginning of October. Greece and Italy so much culture to experience. Cruising we have done many times and are used to it easy for us being in our mid 60’s. And have been on many different cruise lines, sometimes even a new cruise line we haven’t tried like Royal Caribbean is also something of a new adventure for us. Cruises however only spend a certain amount of time in a country where you really can’t get the feel for its beauty of actually being there. There are however advantages of being able to visit multiple ports, some I have even seen up to 9 ports! Land vacations ex: Tripmasters provide accommodations “some meals” and don’t usually visit more than 2 countries but stay approx. for 3 days in each even offer to provide airfare at your cost. My initial feeling is more Greece and Italy if I could combine the two. Each type of vacation tours are probably required as I wouldn’t want to do it alone and look at “nice buildings “ without knowing some history about them. Maybe if there are land/sea types of vacations might be an option. Lastly to my ignorance many have mentioned TA types of vacations I am not familiar of what that might be. Again thanks to all for the suggestions I will keep researching and reading your posts.

Saturn 

[lenquixote66]

For our 50th.Anniversary we did a 14 night Caribbean cruise to ports that are not usually in the norm for port stops on a RCI ship.

Europe was never a place that we had a desire to travel to.

There is so much to see in North America,South America and Latin America.

[clo]

4 hours ago, saturn3 said:

So appreciative of those who give me more information to consider on this journey! Some of my research is deciding on where to go first. Denmark, Holland, Norway all seem so colorful and exciting. We would look to go wherever we decide most likely end of September beginning of October. Greece aDit easy for us being in our mid 60’s. And have been on many different cruise lines, sometimes even a new cruise line we haven’t tried like Royal Caribbean is also something of a new adventure for us. Cruises however only spend a certain amount of time in a country where you really can’t get the feel for its beauty of actually being there. There are however advantages of being able to visit multiple ports, some I have even seen up to 9 ports! Land vacations ex: Tripmasters provide accommodations “some meals” and don’t usually visit more than 2 countries but stay approx. for 3 days in each even offer to provide airfare at your cost. My initial feeling is more Greece and Italy if I could combine the two. Each type of vacation tours are probably required as I wouldn’t want to do it alone and look at “nice buildings “ without knowing some history about them. Maybe if there are land/sea types of vacations might be an option. Lastly to my ignorance many have mentioned TA types of vacations I am not familiar of what that might be. Again thanks to all for the suggestions I will keep researching and reading your posts.

Saturn 

Despite what people say, we were in Copenhagen in December a few years ago and it was warmer there than at home in Seattle. Same with Iceland. Cruised the Norwegian coast (on Hurtigruten) in March and weather was fine also.

 

[George C]

I know my sister loved Norway cruise on Celebrity both this and last year .We loved Italy cruise from Barcelona that we did for our 25th anniversary from Barcelona, Barcelona is a great city to start the cruise airport is close to city and port and a fantastic place to spend a few days pre cruise. I wouldn’t want to do southern Mediterranean in summer but late September or October would be great . Also did an Athens to Rome cruise which was also great , definitely would want to visit Florence and Naples and possibly Venice . Also need to research cruise lines , our 25th we had a fantastic corner aft grand suite on rccl brilliance of the seas  . Good luck and have fun planning.

[Hlitner]

Regarding the TA Vacation question, TA simply means Trans Atlantic.  In the cruise world, many transatlantic cruises are also so-called "repositioning cruises" because the cruise line uses them to relocate their ships (such as from North America to Europe).

 

Consider that we love TA cruises, because we find it a more pleasant option than flying across the ocean.  We have actually done many TA cruises that cost us less than it would have cost to fly Business Class.  And many cruisers (including me) love all those lazy sea days.  

 

Hank

[saturn3]

I feel the first part of my research is deciding on a land tour where you spend 3 days in a country or two.Or a cruise where you could go to 4 to 5 different ports but only stay 7 to 8 hours at each port. I really think Greece Athens Santorini, Mykonos , Crete maybe. That would take up the 12-14 days without trying to squeeze another country in. So that being said land tour or cruise would be my research. And what I have found is land tours do provide accommodations some meals and ferry to islands.

[clo]

53 minutes ago, saturn3 said:

I feel the first part of my research is deciding on a land tour where you spend 3 days in a country or two.Or a cruise where you could go to 4 to 5 different ports but only stay 7 to 8 hours at each port. I really think Greece Athens Santorini, Mykonos , Crete maybe. That would take up the 12-14 days without trying to squeeze another country in. So that being said land tour or cruise would be my research. And what I have found is land tours do provide accommodations some meals and ferry to islands.

I would never return to Santorini. We were there in April and it was insanely crowded. Gratefully we were on a DIY trip so, after a few days, we left for Naxos and Paros. So wonderful. Oh, yeah, and it you go to Greece eat lots of octopus.

 

[Mary229]

I try to do a Transatlantic once a year with a tour preceding or prior to the cruise.  I usually consider which is the best time for the tour I am interested in then try to find a transatlantic that matches the time of year.  All things being equal I try to find a TA closest to my home with cost being the second consideration.  (My cruise philosophy is it is only transportation so I buy the cheapest I can be comfortable with and spend spend spend on the touring portion)

[9tee2Sea]

On 8/9/2024 at 3:01 PM, saturn3 said:

This is a little far out but I like to plan. Our 25th wedding Anniversary is coming in 2026. We would like to do something special, land style tour/ or cruise. We have interest in Royal Caribbean cruise line, we have done over a dozen cruises, Princess, Norwegian, Carnival but never Royal Caribbean. We are interested in destinations such as Norway, Holland, Denmark. But Also Greece and Italy, not certain which would be better and hoping for advice from experience on both. Some people say just take a tour and not a cruise because you don’t want to spend time on a boat and when you take a tour type land vacation your there for multiple days. So kind of going back and forth on where and type of vacation. Hoping my friends on cruise critic will have some helpful advice on this for me.

thanks in advance

saturn 

there some cruise lines that offer land/cruise trip.  The cruise line puts you in land based hotel, then a regular tour begins ( different cities, different hotels).  After the land portion is finished ( usually a week long land portion tour), you are then transferred to your cruise ship to begin the cruise.  Its sort of like have the best of both worlds.  

[edinburgher]

22 hours ago, lenquixote66 said:

There is so much to see in North America,South America and Latin America.

Hmmm Latin America only  if it is considered safe to leave the ship as some port calls came with strong personal safety recommendations, and despite having travelled many countries of the world and mostly been independent sightseeing, we really didn't enjoy these port calls and felt quite uncomfortable and on edge at all times when off the ship, as we also  did in both Mobay and Ocho Rios.

 

And I personally think that that Asia (which we love and have visited a good number of times) and Europe would be worth visiting even if only one time each. Are you not even the tiniest bit curious?

 

 

Edited August 11 by edinburgher

[clo]

7 hours ago, edinburgher said:

Hmmm Latin America only  if it is considered safe to leave the ship as some port calls came with strong personal safety recommendations, and despite having travelled many countries of the world and mostly been independent sightseeing, we really didn't enjoy these port calls and felt quite uncomfortable and on edge at all times when off the ship, as we also  did in both Mobay and Ocho Rios.

 

Sincerely curious about what "Latin America" countries came with warnings about personal safety. We've visited a whole bunch of them and never had qualms. I do understand now that Caracas isn't the safest however.

[clo]

8 hours ago, edinburgher said:

Europe would be worth visiting even if only one time each. Are you not even the tiniest bit curious?

OP mentioned:

such as Norway, Holland, Denmark. But Also Greece and Italy,

[saturn3]

9 hours ago, 9tee2Sea said:

there some cruise lines that offer land/cruise trip.  The cruise line puts you in land based hotel, then a regular tour begins ( different cities, different hotels).  After the land portion is finished ( usually a week long land portion tour), you are then transferred to your cruise ship to begin the cruise.  Its sort of like have the best of both worlds.  

A land/sea would be a great option not sure how easy they are to find. I liked and mentioned so many countries I feel like if I cram to many in that it does not give each country is just do. Italy/Greece would be special seeing a little of Italy then onto Athens, Santorini, Mykonos, maybe Crete and Paros would be a wonderful trip. Land tour or cruise is the main choice or land/sea given the about 2 week time frame I would plan for.

saturn 

[saturn3]

Has anyone had any experiences with Celestyal Cruises they seem to be smaller. Not sure on how they compare to the big cruise lines as far as entertainment dining etc. 

Saturn

still would personally prefer land/cruise type to Greece.

[capriccio]

34 minutes ago, saturn3 said:

Has anyone had any experiences with Celestyal Cruises they seem to be smaller. Not sure on how they compare to the big cruise lines as far as entertainment dining etc. 

Saturn

still would personally prefer land/cruise type to Greece.

I haven't sailed on them but have you taken a look at the Celestyal reviews here on cruise critic (https://www.cruisecritic.com/cruise/celestyal/celestyal-journey/reviews) and the Celestyal forum (https://boards.cruisecritic.com/forum/784-celestyal-cruises/)?

 

We lived in Athens for 3 years (1997 - 2000) and I was curious as to who offered land/sea vacations using Celestyal and what cities/islands were visited.  I recognized Globus, a widely known company which should make it easy to look up reviews. 

 

Out of curiosity, I checked one of their itineraries and I would take it in a heartbeat: Classical Greece with Idyllic Aegean 7-Night Cruise.  It is Athens to Athens, 16 days including a 7 night cruise.https://www.globusjourneys.com/tour/classical-greece-with-idyllic-aegean-7-night-cruise/rgl/?season=2024

 

Here is the itinerary:

 

Athens

Athens - Corinth - Mycenae - Epidaurus - Nauplia

Nauplia - Olympia

Olympia - Patras - Delphi

Delphi - Meteora area

Meteora area - Thermopylae - Athens

Athens (embarkation)

Thessaloniki

Kusadasi (Ephesus), Turkey

Heraklion, Crete

Santorini

Mykonos

Milos

Athens (disembarkation)

Athens

 

As I said, I highly recommend this itinerary whichever cruise line you decide to sail. 

 

Congratulations on your anniversary and have fun researching!

 

 

 

[DarrenM]

On 8/10/2024 at 7:14 AM, MBP&O2/O said:

When are you going? Italy and Greece can be heaving with tourists if you go in the high season. We went to Florence last March and the queues were horrendous ... and that was low season. 

The weather can be a tad warm as well,

To be fair, 15 degrees will be a tad warm for you. 

 

And me too.🤣