Let’s start at the very beginning….

Another cruise? I know anyone who has known me longer than a year or so was probably asking yourself, what do you mean you are going on another cruise? I asked myself that so many times over the months. This trip kind of started as a joke, at least on my end, in April. Or maybe a dream or a fantasy is a better way of describing it…

Looking back a year prior I agreed to go on an Alaskan cruise. Not because it was a cruise, but because I was in the middle of an 18 month contract for a major event and I just wanted to get a way when it was finished. To me, nothing sounded better then the idea of being in the middle of a large body of water where no one could find me. So when the Alaska cruise was offered, I said sign me up. A funny thing happened on that cruise – I fell completely, 100% in love with cruising, which was the last thing I had ever expected. I had been on a cruise in 2001 – a 3 day Caribbean cruise that I absolutely hated. To be far I was very sick, bronchitis, sinus infection and secondary infection in my lungs, I think I would have hated anywhere at that point. But at the end of the day my attitude was, I tried cruising; if I never go do it again that’s fine. So going into the Alaska trip I was very excited to see Alaska and hoped I just did not hate the time on the ship. My experience on the ship could not have been a bigger surprise. I loved it, I had the best time, I wanted to live on the ship (still working on this one.) That is why when the great deal came up for Mexico in January, I jumped right on going and when I unexpectedly got twice the amount I planned on my tax return I started looking at cruises.

At this point I was not serious about taking a cruise, I was just dreaming and thinking it would be nice. I really needed new flooring in my house and have windows that need to be fixed and my air conditioner that does not work so well… Those would be responsible things to do or build up my savings some more, we are in a recession. I made my list of priorities and cruise was at the bottom. But still I day dreamed of going on a cruise and of course continually checked out Princess’ website for deals. There was actually one cruise that caught my eye, as it kept going down in price. It was a 16 day cruise starting in Los Angles and ended in Santiago, Chile with nine stops along the way. It was over Thanksgiving, which I thought would help with the amount of time off of work I would need to ask for. As I was pricing things out I began to think, maybe this is actually doable. I did not say anything to anyone because while doable is one thing, smart in another. So I continued pricing out carpet and wood flooring as well.

Then one day, April 22 Shannon posted on Facebook that she was planning her next cruise. I replied with “who are you going with this time?” Her answer “you.” Well that started the ball rolling. Again, I was not really serious when we first started talking about this. Shannon was all set to go and she began sending options my way. I shared with her the South American one I had been looking at, but the timing did not work for her – she would not be able to get the time off. Then she brought up a Mediterranean cruise. Now there is a story here too (of course there is, this is me, there is always a story!)

Shannon and I have talked about going to Europe together since we were in high school. The details of the trip have changed over the year with is first being us going as “the adults” on her high schools once-every-four-years band trip, until it morphed into a Mediterranean Cruise. Now even though I was not a fan of cruising prior to the Alaskan cruise, I had two dream cruises, the Mediterranean and a Panama Canal (don’t ask me why.) Over the years Shannon and I had looked into and priced out the Mediterranean cruise countless times and always talked about “next year.” In fact after Alaska we had tentatively set a date of summer of 2011 as the year for the Mediterranean Cruise. Although we both had admitted we did not think it was really going to happen then, that we could not swing it.

So here we were back to the place we always went – talking about going on a Mediterranean Cruise. Shannon started sending over possible cruises and we both noticed that the prices for the cruise were pretty good, in fact as good as we had seen them in the past. I then went back to Princess (you know me and product loyalty J ) and found a 12 day, round trip from Rome that included Egypt. It was a great itinerary, a good time and thanks to the fact that we were previous cruisers on Princess we could get the cruise for 1/3 of the book price. We were talking about a 12 day cruise for under $1000 in the Mediterranean. While this was a really good deal, the catch on this trip has always been the airfare. So we started pricing it out. We were looking at both round trip to Rome and into London and back from Rome. Our plan always was to add some time in Europe before the cruise – the whole you might as well get the most out of your trip over there. Normally these types of tickets run somewhere between $1200 - $1500 (at least from Grand Rapids), but I was able to find a flight for under $700, it was even cheaper for Shannon from Orlando. At this point, we kept thinking we are never going to get this trip any cheaper and if we do not go now, we never would.

Of course I had major pre buyer’s remorse. I was not sure about this at all – I was really just joking when this whole conversation started. Now a few days later we are seriously considering going on this trip.

After days of talking and planning we put together a plan and an itinerary –

Pre-Cruise travel
Thursday, Oct 8 – Leave GRR
Friday, Oct 9 – Arrive London 11:00
Saturday, Oct 10 – Leave London arrive Paris
Sunday, Oct 11 – Paris Disneyland, overnight train to Venice
Monday, Oct 12 – Arrive Venice
Tuesday – Oct 13 – Arrive Rome
Cruise portion of trip-
Tuesday, Oct 13 - Rome (Civitavecchia), Italy
Wednesday, Oct 14 - Capri/Naples, Italy
Thursday, Oct 15
Friday, Oct 16 - Athens (Piraeus), Greece
Saturday, Oct 17 - Ephesus (Kusadasi), Turkey
Sunday, Oct 18 - Istanbul, Turkey
Monday, Oct 19 - Mykonos, Greece
Tuesday, Oct 20 - at sea
Wednesday, Oct 21 - Port Said (Cairo), Egypt
Thursday, Oct 22 - Giza(Alexandria), Egypt
Friday, Oct 23 - at sea
Saturday, Oct 24 - at sea
Sunday, Oct 25 - Rome (Civitavecchia), Italy
Post Cruise
Monday, Oct 26 – Leave Rome arrive GRR While the plan was great – it was also 19 days. That was a lot of time to ask to take off of work. Shannon got it off relatively easily. I was still quite apprehensive about the whole thing. Not sure I could swing it, not sure I wanted to do it yet – for me, this was one of my two dream vacations and when I did this vacation I wanted to do it right and not worry about finances the whole time. But everything was falling into place and all signs were pointing to going. Finally I said if I can get the time off, we will go.

So here I left this whole plan, dream trip in the hands of my boss. His reaction – have a good time. So here we were on our way…. With only 5 months to plan……