Honeymoon Series – Mediterranean Cruise

Possibly the best part of planning a wedding for travel addicts is deciding where to go on the honeymoon!! Jay and I have been tossing around ideas for potential honeymoon trips for probably two years, but in the next few months we’re going to actually have to pick just one. We’re both dreaming big and seeing this celebration as an opportunity to splurge and take a trip we might otherwise write off as too expensive or  not easily achievable using just points and miles. We’ve come up with a Mediterranean cruise, South Africa, or a Viking River Cruise.

With that said, I’ll be writing a mini honeymoon series of posts about each destination. These posts will feature positives, negatives, estimated costs, and our general thoughts about each location.

To kick off the series, I’m starting with a Mediterranean Cruise!

Overview:

There are multitudes of companies that offer cruises throughout the Mediterranean Sea with stops in Spain, France, Italy, Greece, and more. For this post, I’m focusing on the type of experience offered by mainstream cruise lines on one of their regular size cruise ships (Royal Caribbean, Celebrity, Norwegian Cruise Lines, etc).

A cruise ship essentially offers two types of vacations: a full service resort experience complete with daily activities, pools, and bars as well as a center city experience with ease of access to the main tourist and local areas.

Positives:

• All meals and snacks included
• Access to a large variety of restaurants, lounges, outdoor spaces, fitness center, pools, etc on the ship
• On board entertainment such as themed nights and shows
• Plenty of company due to the large number of people on one ship
• Visit multiple countries without changing hotels / unpacking

Negatives:

• Shore excursions, WiFi, alcohol, gratuity, dining in specialty restaurants, taxes, and port fees not included
• Flights are not included
• Time in each city is limited to length of time ship is docked

Estimated Costs:

With the amount of vacation time available to us, our max number of days for a cruise is 8. Therefore, I’m basing my pricing estimates on a 7-8 day cruise. We’re also planning to leave within a month or two of our wedding date, so I’m only including pricing for June and July 2017 cruises. You can expect cheaper prices during off-peak months such as April and October.

Cruise Line	Destinations	# of Days	Standard Stateroom	Oceanview Stateroom
Celebrity	Spain, France, Italy, Greece	7	$1,349	$1,649
Royal Caribbean	Italy, Croatia, Turkey, Greece	7	$861	$1,064
Norwegian	Spain, Italy, France	7	$999	$1,399

Take note that a few cruise lines offer specials which give you a choice of one or two “add-ons” for free, such as free wi-fi, free alcohol package, or free gratuities. These deals help defray the all in cost for your Mediterranean cruise.

Overall Thoughts:

A Mediterranean cruise started out as my number one option for a honeymoon since I knew it’d be more relaxing than our usual vacations, comparatively inexpensive, and include countries I’ve never visited before. However, we’ve seen some terrific last minute sales pop up where you can get an Oceanview room for less than $800 per person. Our thoughts are to pass on this for a honeymoon and instead take advantage of one of these crazy discounts and go on a last minute trip within the next few years.