A few things about what my family referred to as the Europe Extravaganza before I get into the trip itself. This was to be a once in a lifetime trip that I planned from start to finish. The trip consisted of a 7 night Mediterranean cruise followed by 7 days touring the other parts of Italy we wanted to visit but didn't see on the cruise.
The original idea was to take a Mediterranean cruise to celebrate: our 30th (2025) wedding anniversary and my 50th birthday (2026) so I started looking at cruise itineraries. The cruise line that had my favourite itinerary was NCL, which was just fine with us because we had sailed with them many years before on an Alaskan cruise and we loved the cruise line.
The itinerary included the following:
Embarkation in Barcelona, Spain
Day 1: Marseille, France
Day 2: Villefranche sur Mer, France
Day 3: Livorno, Italy
Day 4: At sea
Day 5: Messina, Sicily
Day 6: Salerno, Italy
Disembarkation: Rome, Italy
There was one issue I was concerned about when it came to the Mediterranean cruise and all the sights we wanted to see. Many of the ports are quite a distance from the actual points of interest we were interested in. Do not misinterpret this as the port cities themselves not being beautiful and worthy of sightseeing, but for what we wanted, we were looking at an hour (sometimes) bus ride to point of interest and back. As you can imagine, this eats into a 7 hour day pretty nicely. Another consideration for me is that I am a ‘slow walker’ so any sightseeing via walking (which is pretty much everything), it would take me twice as long to do as other people might take. Lastly, the cruise itinerary would not allow us to fully experience Florence, if we also wanted to visit Pisa (which we did), Venice or Capri - which we all wanted to visit.
So, we discussed it as a family and we came up with the plan of doing a cruise and land tour all in the same trip. This made sense because we would only have to pay and fly once to see this part of Europe.
Then came the fun part for me - the planning. We booked the cruise in October of 2024 which gave me lots of time to plan everything to my exacting standards. This is how the final itinerary looked:
May 1: Fly overnight (Air Canada) to Barcelona where we managed to book bulkhead economy seats which gave the hubby lots of room for his 6'1" height.
May 2: Arrive in Barcelona. We took an inexpensive airport transfer bus to Plaça de Catalunya, which is where out hotel was. We stayed at H10 Catalunya Plaza Boutique Hotel for one night before embarking on our cruise. You can't tell because I blurred her face, but my daughter was not looking as perky in the May 2 photo when we arrived in Barcelona as she was on May 1 when we were about to leave for the airport.
May 3: Embarkation on the Norwegian Epic, a large, but not overly so, refurbished NCL cruise ship. We had booked a family balcony room midship.
May 4: Port of Marseille, France. We took a semi-independent NCL tour to Avignon and Aix-en-Provence. I wanted to see the Pope's Palace in Avignon. Just a small note here, that whenever I could, I would book transportation only or highly independent tours because of my ability to keep up with guided tours. I wanted the ability to rest when I needed to. My husband in fact carried a small stool for me most of the trip that we would whip out whenever I needed a sit-down. 
May 5: Port de la Santé, Villefranche-sur-Mer, France. We independently took a train to Nice.
May 6: Livorno, Italy. We booked a bus to Pisa and Lucca, via Project Expedition. The tour was mostly independent sightseeing.
May 7: At sea. A great day on the ship.
May 8: Port of Messina, Sicily. An NCL transportation-only bus to Taormina.
May 9: Port of Salerno, Italy. We took an NCL transport-only bus to Pompeii, where we strolled through the city destroyed by Vesuvius on our own.
May 10: Disembarkation in Rome. Self-guided touring in Rome via walking and bus.
May 11: Rome. Self-guided visit to Vatican City Museum and Pantheon
May 12: Colosseum guided tour in the morning, then off to Naples via train.
May 13: Tour of Capri including blue grotto/boat tour booked through Get Your Guide. We purchased many attraction entry tickets through Get Your Guide.
May 14: Train to Florence. We visited Uffizi, Pitti Palace & Boboli gardens on our own.
May 15. Visit the Galleria di Accademia to see ‘The David’, then off to Palazzo Vecchio. Afternoon train to Venice
May 16: Doge's Palace, St. Mark's Square and Basilica, Gondola ride
May 17: Home to Ontario via Air Canada. Now I;m the one not looking too perky. LOL
STAY TUNED TO HEAR ALL ABOUT OUR EXPERIENCE IN BARCELONA
