Celebrating 20 MAGICal years in the Med! A September 9-16 2017 trip report!

eeyoresbestfriend

Mouseketeer
Joined
Nov 2, 2001
Hey everyone! I hope there are some people out there who would like to read about the mediterranean cruises this summer. My husband and I will be married 20 years in the middle of August, and we are celebrating on the last Mediterranean cruise out of Barcelona this year!

As of today, weare 84 days out, and SO excited! I hope this report will help the time go by a little bit faster! I will start with the who what and why, since you already know the when and the where!

first things first- you'd love to know who is taking this little adventrure wouldn't you? That would be t
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WHO: I'll start with your narrator- that would be ME! Marybeth.

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This is me with my daughter- I'm on the left obviously! Soryy- I don't have a lot of pictures of me, I'm camera shy!

I am an early 40's Army wife of almost 20 years, mother of 2, restaurant manager by trade, but I currently am not working, because a lot of my time is spent travelling to Europe to visit my husband who is currenly stationed over in Germany!

I'm also letting my husband tag along on this trip- aren't I nice?! This is Darren

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Cute right?! How did I land that? I ask myself that all of the time!! Darren just turned 40 a few moinths ago, and works hard as a criminal Investigator in the Army. He is a Forensic Science Officer, so he sees a lot of things frequently that most of wish never to see! As a result, he is hapy to be on vacation and doesn't usually care where we go or what we do, so I am generally in charge of vacations!


In the next few posts I'll outline how this trip came to be, the planning, the changes in planning, and all the other interesting stuff people want to hear about! I may include a couple of little side reports as next week I am headed back to Germnay and we are taking a trip to Berchtesgaden- "The Eagle's Nest"- Hitlers mansion near Austria in the Bavarian Alps. A few weeks later we are going to Paris and DLP, and shortly after that making a trip to London, or Ireland, haven't decided.

We may have some last minute "tag alongs" on our cruise, I'll fill you in on all of that in upcoming posts. I hope that some of you will come along on this wonderful journey with us!
 
Sorry to anyone following along for the delay! Sadly, this post will probably be pictureless- (a word? No, but it fits!) Mainly because the intros have been done, and the beginning planning stages have no pictures needed! I’ll try to throw a couple in here if I can find some that will fit into the storyline!


SO- we know the WHO, let’s move on to the HOW this trip came about!


HOW: Ever since my husband got his orders to Germany beginning in June 2015 I have been thinking of the Med cruises, and how nice it would be to be able to do one. We had our previously booked 2015 cruise already in January that year, and on that cruise we had booked for October B2B because we knew that my husband would be in the States for a class during that time. So while we were on the first of our B2B in October I was perusing the choices for our next cruise. Picture from our cruise last October- it fits right?!

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First, we had to pick a destination- do we do Northern European, Norwegian Fjords, Dover to Barcelona, or the Med from Rome or Barcelona?! So may choices, so I went one by one to determine our best choice, knowing that we have been lucky enough to travel extensively through Europe when we had previously lived there for 6 years, and especially this last 2 years that my husband has been stationed over there because the kids have grown up, and are now doing their own things. So- my process of elimination went something like this- June wasn’t going to work, because my husband had to travel for work throughout the month. SO we were left with


Mediterranean cruise from Barcelona- 5 or 7 nights. And 7 night Western European from Dover- how to decide?! I first eliminated the 5 night because why wouldn’t we go for 7?! So- Med or Western European?

We have actually done Portugal and Cadiz, so that would leave Le Havre France as a new port for the Western cruise. We have also done Rome, so that would be a repeat on the Med cruise, but Pompeii has been on my to do list since the first time we were stationed in Europe back in 2002. My husband also wants to see the leaning tower of Pisa, so I decided that the 7 night Med cruise from Barcelona was the best choice for us!

We wanted Deck 2, we like deck 2 and stay there often, although all of our most recent cruises have been on the Fantasy. I believe that years ago we were on deck 2 of the Magic when we first started cruising. We also wanted an inside room, mainly because I'm frugal- and would rather spend moey on excursions, spa treatments, Palo, extra tips etc. We never spend too much time in our room, and the darkness for sleeping is great! I might miss the virtual portholes from the Fantasy, but I'm sure it'll be great, and with such a port intensive cruise we'll spend even less time in our cabin than usual I would think!

Anyway, the only thing available was a GTY, so we ended up with an 11C GTY, and I have been checking just about everyday to see if we have a cabin assignment yet! I know it is most likely to be awhile still, but it's one more thing to be excited about!



Choosing the right cruise was done! We decided on the September 9th date because August is sometimes busy for my husband with travelling, and the weather will be a TINY bit cooler in September!

Next- How to get to Barcelona? Where to stay? The next update will be later today- again, sorry for the delay in this posting if anyone is reading!
 
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I forgot to tell you all the why of this cruise, although the title pretty much gives it away!


WHY: Darren and I will celebrate our 20th anniversary on August 17th. I can’t believe it has been that long! We take a Disney cruise every year, and because we can’t take a long vacation in August ( we will take a long weekend to go to DLP over our anniversary) and this cruise is only 3 weeks after our anniversary, why not make that our celebration?! I am planning on getting the romance package for us on the cruise just as an extra added surprise!


Early planning- like many of you, I booked this cruise almost a year out, so that left me a long time to dwell on the fact that I wasn’t on the ship, and that there wasn’t a whole lot I could do for planning. I did start looking at how I wanted to get to Barcelona- do we want to take the train, or fly? Travelling in Europe is usually pretty easy and relatively cheap, so I decided to look into the options.

On the train, there were a couple of different choices- one train would be an almost 11 hour ride, so we would have to leave at least 2 days early in order to get a full day in Barcelona before we get one the ship- not a problem, although we weren’t sure yet how much leave my husband would have, because he was going to take some for our son’s graduation from Air Force Basic Training. Another train choice, was to take the 2 high speed train ride to Paris, and follow that with the 4 hour high speed train to Barcelona. The problem with this option is that I would want to take a day or 2 in Paris with a visit to Disneyland there of course! (We have annual passes there) A Picture from Disneyland Paris and Paris because I mentioned it right?!

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Flying also offered a few different options- There is an economy airline in Europe- Kind of like Southwest, only they offer some REALLY cheap Fares- last trip we took to Ireland, cost us 30 euro (about 38$) round trip for 2 people! Of course, this is with no checked bags or seat assignment, and the planes are very no frills, no refreshments unless you pay, etc. Also, they fly into lesser known or further out airports.


Ryanair did have cheap flights to Barcelona, but they were to Girona, which is a little further out, and although I have been getting better at not over packing for our cruises, we still definitely needed a checked bag for this trip! So, by the time we added in checked bags, ad transportation into Barcelona itself, we were only saving about 50$ over flying with a mainstream airline. Lufthansa was the cheapest when I first started looking, and were the cheapest every time I checked and it was a lot!


Ultimately, the train wasn’t much cheaper than flying, and Darren decided to save a couple days of leave so we decided to fly. We are flying into Barcelona early on September 8, we will arrive at around 9 AM giving us all day to sight see, and luckily we will not have any jet lag to worry about! We will leave on Saturday the 16th in the evening, looking into booking a debarkation excursion through the cruise line- I hope they are offered! Tickets for the flight, round trip, with seat assignments and checked bags, after the exchange rate was billed to our credit card as $326 for both. I didn’t think that was bad.


Hotels- This is always a hard one for me, because I like a good deal, but I also enjoy a nice hotel! I started by looking at what hotels Disney uses, because I thought if we stayed at one of those we could then pay and use Disney Transport to the port. The hotels Disney uses were sold out for our dates, even 10 months out, I thought that maybe they just weren’t available for booking so far out, and kept them in mind to keep checking as the dates got closer.


So I came here to see what hotels others had used before or after their cruises from Barcelona, it was kind of hard to find Med trip reports, and some were pretty old, but there were a lot of good suggestions out there- Hotel Colon, Hotel Jazz, Acta Atrium Palace, more dilemmas! I finally decided on Acta Atrium Palace, found a decent deal- 150euro for the night with free cancellation up until September 7 ( this will be important!) and booked it. Then I started figuring out transportation to the hotel from the airport.


Last month my husband and I were talking about the trip and the hotel stay, I had forgotten that he had over 250,000 points with Hilton, and there are a few Hilton Brand hotels in Barcelona. Luckily for us, there was one not too far from the Acta Atrium Palace that we already had booked, so the transportation from the airport will not have to change drastically! Points were surprisingly low, at only about 50,000 for the night we needed so we are now staying at the Alexandra Barcelona, a DoubleTree hotel it looks pretty small, but nice and quiet, and still not too far from the walking areas of the city.


When we arrive at the airport, we will take the Airport bus for 5,60 each to the last stop, and walk the 300 meters to the hotel. Should be easy enough, and the bags that we have are not large at all.


Thanks for hanging in there with me, in the next update I will talk about the ports of call, the excursions we considered and why- will we go with Disney excursions or branch out on our own? Will those “tag alongs” decide if they are joining us? Stay tuned!
 


Following along as we are on the same cruise!! The planning for us was extreme as we are coming from Denver and leaving the 6th to arrive on the 7th. Airlines already pushed our connecting flight out by 4 hours so now our layover is 6 hours in Ohare (yuck) and we dont arrive till late afternoon instead of morning :-( There's a cruise group already going if you are into that. We are also taking the aerobus from the airport to Placa de Catalunya since there is 6 of us and taxi's were quite a bit (luggage for us and the 6 of us to fit in one van was not doable). Already bought our aerobus tickets too whoot!
 
Cheermom2four- glad you're following along- I wasn't sure if anyone was! I'll have another update probably tommorrow, were you able to get all of the excursions and reservations you wanted for the cruise? We are So excited to go, can't believe it's only about 75 more days, seems like it's been forever! I'll check into the cruise group for sure!

Sorry about your flights being delayed- but I guess at least you got a lot of notice! Too bad you'll miss a whole morning tho! Hope to see you aboard, and for my next update! Thanks for reading!
 
Cheermom2four- glad you're following along- I wasn't sure if anyone was! I'll have another update probably tommorrow, were you able to get all of the excursions and reservations you wanted for the cruise? We are So excited to go, can't believe it's only about 75 more days, seems like it's been forever! I'll check into the cruise group for sure!
Yes we got the one excursion we are doing with DCL (Rome) and were able to get 2 Palo dinners since we are still deciding if we want to do it the first night or pirate night. Unfortunately even being silver CC we didnt get Palo and I forgot to check last night for the newbie check in to see if DCL released more which by the sounds of messages on our fb group they did ugh. Oh well, I will be standing in line with everyone else trying to get palo brunch. I've had it before and really love it. I'll be following along for sure!!!
 


Cheermom2four- glad you're following along- I wasn't sure if anyone was! I'll have another update probably tommorrow, were you able to get all of the excursions and reservations you wanted for the cruise? We are So excited to go, can't believe it's only about 75 more days, seems like it's been forever! I'll check into the cruise group for sure!

Sorry about your flights being delayed- but I guess at least you got a lot of notice! Too bad you'll miss a whole morning tho! Hope to see you aboard, and for my next update! Thanks for reading!

Where is the rest of this trip report?
 

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