Repositioning Cruise
After finishing the first half of our itinerary we will be heading to Europe. To travel between the Americas and Europe we are planning on using a repositioning cruise. If you are not familiar with transatlantic repositioning cruises, the cruise lines have to move ships from the Caribbean to Europe in the spring and from Europe to the Caribbean in the fall. Since the ships have to be moved anyway and most people don’t want a one way trip, the result can be a fantastic value. Deals such as $399 per person for two weeks including accommodations and food are not unusual. The eastbound cruises leave between the end of March and the end of April, taking 14 days to cross the ocean. The extra allure is the opportunity to visit hard to reach destinations such as the Azores or Canary Islands.
Most repositioning cruises end in Southampton, England, Barcelona, Spain, or Rome, Italy. Our first choice would be Barcelona, followed by Rome. We prefer to depart in April rather than March because that will allow us to spend time visiting family in the US before the cruise.
Europe
An important consideration when planning an extended trip to Europe is the restrictions of the Schengen Zone. The 26 countries of the Schengen Zone (most of Europe) limit time in the zone for non-EU residents to 90 days total within a six month period.
Assuming that we start in Barcelona, we will work our way down the southern coast of Spain, stopping in some of the following destinations: Valencia, Altea, Palafrugell, Alicante, and Almunecar, before moving over to the Algarve region of Portugal, then up the Atlantic coast to the towns of Cascais and Estoril, and ending in Lisbon. We plan to be finished with this part of the trip by late June since this part of Europe will be getting hot, becoming loaded with tourists, and we want to move on to less expensive locations.
From there we head east and will be traveling in some of the following Eastern European countries: Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Albania, Montenegro, Macedonia, Romania, and Bulgaria. Most of these countries, with the exception of Croatia, are lower cost, We plan to wrap up this segmet of our travels in southern Italy, primarily in the regions of Abruzzo and Puglia. Planning for this stage of the trip is still very tentative.
At the end of our exploratory year, we will either fly or take another repositioning westward to the US.
4 Comments
Incredible!
Wonder if I am really able to comment here – sometimes it’s hard – well see
Thanks Joan. It will be interesting once we start travelling to see how close to the proposed itinerary we keep.
Will you always try to follow an initerary or sometimes see where the road leads?
The itinerary is only a plan. If we decide that to stay longer (or shorter) we will, if we hear about a new place that catches our interest we will follow that new path. We want to maintain flexibility even if it means that we end up spending a bit more.