Mediterranean Cruising, Round 2!

We waited nearly 2 years to go again, but we ARE going on another cruise!  Staying with Celebrity Cruises as we loved the experience there, and it’s even the same ship, the Equinox.  We ended up choosing a room on a different floor as it was one of the rooms that had slightly more room in it, plus it’s on the pool deck.  I know we both can’t wait to head out there again!

The itinerary this time is a little bit more Western Mediterranean-focused, as we leave from Barcelona, Spain (YAY!).  As you can see in the map above, it then goes to the south of France at Nice, then on to Pisa/Florence, Rome (just for a day – not sure what we’ll try to do on this trip as we did a good job covering it in 2011), Naples (another repeat destination, but I think we’ll try to do a less ambitious excursion and perhaps just focus on one area this time), Dubrovnik (Croatia), an overnight in Venice (that will be pretty sweet as my last time there was at the tail end of my European adventure with Jason & Wendy;  needless to say, we were all zonked from the previous 2 weeks of traveling so I am excited about seeing it with fresh eyes), Kotor (Montenegro), then finally back to Barcelona.

We haven’t made the hotel plans yet, but I think it would be fun to do a few days in Barcelona after the cruise, just to mix it up.  We did Rome as a pre-cruise adventure in 2011 so doing the port city as a post-cruise adventure will hopefully be a good change of pace.  Really looking forward to having fun in Barcelona as it’s been a long time since I’ve last been there – in fact, it was on that same trip with Wendy & Jason back in 2002.  Yowza.

I think after this cruise though, it will be time to explore other areas of the world as I think we will have tapped out all the European port cities.  It’s pretty cool that there’s very little overlap with our last cruise, and only Rome and Naples will be repeats.  The deal for this cruise made it hard to ignore, as by booking this month, we’ll get $1000 in onboard credit (hello, excursions and drink packages!) and then there’s even a coupon that knocks off $150.  Admittedly, $150 isn’t really that much at all compared to the total cost, but still.

So if you’re looking for Larry or me in May 2013, I’ll leave it to you to figure out where we are!