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OK, so I’m a bottom line kind of girl. Here’s Tootsie’s bottom, bottom line!

• Cruise ports are not always near your desired destination. Know upfront that significant time can be spent travelling
• We didn’t book any tours through our ship because research told us that the smaller tours gave more bang for the buck BUT, you have to do your research.  We used Trip Advisor and Cruise Critic.com as our primary sources for information as well as tour providers’ sites and good old fashioned research.
• Figure out which places are most important and spend your tour dollars there.

• If you do group tours, be flexible and accept that you may not see everything you want.
• Remember, you’re only sampling the destinations.
• Weather: we traveled in late May/early June and found it warm to hot
• Dress code: like the U.S., most places don’t have strict dress codes; however, many churches require covered shoulders and knees.  Bring a backpack to add/remove what you need
• To maximize your dollar, eat a big breakfast before leaving the ship, eat lightly during the day and return for dinner and entertainment.
  The cruise allowed us to let someone else worry about logistics-travel, meals, etc.  Sounds crazy, but sometimes having fewer choices makes life easier!
• Eat local specialties when it fits your diet.  In our case, lots of gelato!
  Finally, this was an incredible opportunity for my daughter and I to have some time together sharing this adventure before she sets off on the next big step in life.

We have a tendency to go until we literally cannot go anymore.  If you read the Paris and Barcelona blogs, we started our days super early and often didn’t get back to our hotel until 11:00 PM or later having walked much or all of the day.  An unexpected but HUGE perk of the cruise was the departure times of the ship.  We had to end our day by late afternoon most days so we put in full days, but not so full that we were exhausted.  That allowed us to relax on the ship rather than try to squeeze one more thing into the day.  Instead, we had relaxing dinners, talking about the day and either went to an evening show, watched a movie on the pool deck or just talked.