ten nights afloat, four countries, honest about port hours
Western Mediterranean Cruise Vacation Package: Four Countries In Ten Nights
This is the lowest priced item in our catalog and the crowd is the reason. A western mediterranean cruise vacation package puts several hundred people on one hull, which is what holds the figure down.
Ten nights, from $1,690 per person.
Nothing here counts you and nothing here follows you off the page. One word can be written down, and only the word yes, so this strip stops coming back. What that means in full.
Four countries in ten nights, and each of them is seen between roughly nine in the morning and five in the afternoon. That is the whole shape of it. Seven of the ten nights are spent at sea moving between ports, three are spent alongside, and the days that read as country names in the itinerary are in practice seven or eight hours between a gangway and a departure time.
A western mediterranean cruise vacation package is the least costly way this office knows to touch four countries, and we would rather say out loud what that cheapness costs. Eight hours in a port city is not a visit to that city. It is one neighborhood, one meal, one museum if the museum is near the water, and a walk back. People who book this expecting to know Barcelona or Naples afterward are disappointed. People who book it to see whether they want to come back for a week are usually delighted, and about a third of them do come back, which is how this office ends up selling them the slower trips later.
The other thing worth saying at the start: this ship is not ours. We book cabins on it. The company that owns the hull sets the route, the sailing times, the dining arrangements and the cancellation terms, and we pass those to you in writing before you pay anything.
- What size this is
- Several hundred people share this ship, which means the price per head falls, the buffet runs sixteen hours a day, and nothing about the itinerary bends for any one party.
- What is actually included
- Ten nights in an outside cabin with two lower berths; all meals in the main dining room and the buffet; port fees and the fuel surcharge quoted at booking; one seated dinner per country in a smaller room aft; port-to-ship shuttle where the berth sits outside town.
- Who else is on it
- Between eight hundred and eleven hundred passengers, roughly half of them repeat cruisers and a quarter over seventy, plus a crew of about four hundred. Expect a fifteen minute queue at the gangway on port mornings, thirty minutes if you go down at nine sharp, and the lifts full at both ends of the day.
- What it does not include
- Flights to and from the embarkation port; drinks other than table water, coffee at breakfast and tea; every shore excursion, whether ours or the ship's; gratuities, which are billed to your cabin account nightly; laundry, spa, specialty restaurants and shipboard internet; anything you spend ashore.
- Who should not book this
- Anyone who needs to decide in the morning what they are doing that day. The ship sails at its posted hour whether you are aboard or not, and a missed sailing is your problem and your expense to fix.
What eleven hundred people do to a port day
The berth is the first constraint. A vessel carrying this many passengers rarely ties up in the middle of a historic port, because the historic port was built for boats a fraction of the size. You come alongside in the commercial harbor, which is typically two to six kilometers from anything you came to see, and the transfer into town takes fifteen to forty minutes each way depending on the road. Subtract that from your eight hours twice.
Then subtract the gangway. Everybody wants to be ashore at nine and everybody wants to be back by four thirty, so the queue exists at both ends. Going down at half past ten instead of nine costs you ninety minutes of daylight and saves you twenty minutes of standing. Coming back at three thirty instead of four thirty is the single most useful habit on a ship this size.
What you get in exchange is real. A crew of four hundred means a kitchen that can serve a proper dinner to a thousand people at once, a medical officer aboard, laundries, and a ship stable enough in a Force 6 that most people notice nothing. Forty passengers cannot pay for any of that. Several hundred can, and the figure at the top of this page is what happens when the fixed costs of a hull are divided by a large number.
from $1,690per person
- Where it comes from
- The lowest figure this office has actually booked this trip at inside the last twelve months.
- Read as
- Two people sharing one room, unless the rows above this say otherwise for your case.
- What lifts it
- A smaller party than the size this trip is filed under, a better grade of room, a peak week, and a late decision.
- When it stops moving
- When an operator puts its own name under it in writing. Until then treat it as the floor of a range this office has seen.
Whatever you settle is settled with that operator, on whatever system it runs. No part of it passes through this office and no card is ever seen here.
The months this works, and the two it does not
The western basin is at its most reliable in late spring and early autumn. July and August are sold heavily and we sell very little of them, because port cities in southern Europe at ninety seven degrees are miserable to walk and every other ship in the basin is doing the same route on the same days. Two ships in one port on one morning turns a museum queue into an hour.
The winter question comes up often. A few hulls stay in the basin through January at very low figures, and the reason is the mistral and the tramontana, which can shut a tender port entirely. When a port is missed for weather there is no refund of the port fee, only a sea day you did not plan for.
- Late April to mid June
- Sixty five to seventy five ashore, longest daylight of the good season, ports not yet doubled up
- July and August
- Ninety and above by noon, heaviest passenger loads, two or three large vessels sharing a berth
- Mid September to late October
- Sea still warm, ashore around seventy two, the best value month of the year is October
- November to March
- Lowest figures anywhere in the catalog, and the tradeoff is wind: missed ports happen and are not refunded
- Any week containing a local public holiday
- Shops and municipal museums shut, and this office flags the date before you book
What is settled the day you confirm
Nothing about this itinerary is negotiable after the deposit, and most of it is not negotiable before it either. The route, the sailing hours and the dining seating are fixed by the operating company. What we settle for you is the cabin, the deck, the seating time and the ground arrangements at each end, and once those are logged they are hard to change without a fee.
- QuestionYou tell us the month, the party size and the deck you want. We come back within two to four working days with what is actually available at the figure quoted.
- DepositA deposit per person holds the cabin. The operating company's cancellation schedule applies from this date, and we send you that schedule in full before you pay.
- Cabin assignmentDeck, side and cabin number are logged. Requests for adjoining cabins or a particular side of the ship are made now or not at all.
- Final balanceDue at the operating company's deadline, typically well before sailing. After this point the itinerary is fixed and the terms are theirs, not ours.
Ask us the awkward question first
The useful questions are the specific ones: how far is the berth from town in each of these four ports, which day has the shortest hours ashore, whether October or May suits your party better. Send those and we will answer them plainly, including where the answer is that this trip is the wrong one for you. A message is read the same working day, and a full figure with the cabin options takes two to four working days.