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Can't decide: 12 days in Italy vs. Mediterranean cruise
My Fiance and I are planning a honeymoon in late July/Early August of this year. We really wanted to stay under $10K, but flights are going to be close to $3K total (coming from Texas) which is eating up a lot of our budget.
We were planning on doing a Mediterranean cruise out of Rome, and spend 3 days in Rome prior..but the cruises are turning out to be much more than we thought (except on Carnival, but I won't cruise with Carnival ever again). So now we are going back to the idea of spending the 12 days in Italy (we have a full 15 days for our trip, so this is not including travel time).
If you were to spend 12 days in Italy, what itinerary would you recommend, and what would you estimate the budget to be? We'd like nice(r) hotels, but they don't need to be 5-star...and some of the cities have hotels that we could get a discount at through our jobs.
Our total budget was around $10K, which we know now will be tight with a cruise. Thanks so much for any advice!
Re: Can't decide: 12 days in Italy vs. Mediterranean cruise
i did a 12 night cruise on carnival in 2008 on the splendor and they're nothing like the caribbean ones-just food for thought. have you checked reviews on cruisecritic?
well-italy has a lot to see. have you done any research at all and do you have any specifics in mind or what?
personally i'd do all 12 exploring sicily (as i love it) or would split the time between rome, florence and tuscany. but that's me.
the budget is what you make it to be. it's hard to say what it would be as there are literally thousands of options. tripadvisor.com can help you wtih hotel reviews.
Well, I should preface by saying that I am not a big cruise lover, so I would definitely choose the land-based Italy trip. My itinerary would be fly into Venice for 2 nights, 4 nights in Florence (with a day trip somewhere in the Tuscan countryside), 3 nights somewhere on the Amalfi Coast and 3 nights in Rome.
I like to city hop.
You could also cut out one of those cities and add the time on wherever you wanted.
Airfare has been insane lately. Not sure how it differs out of DFW, but we paid $1700pp for this summer for flights from Chicago into Venice and out of Rome. I've seen them a bit lower now, but never below $14-1500. Same with last summer.
Personally, I would recommend touring Italy versus doing a cruise. We recently went to Italy for 2 weeks in September and our trip cost $5K (not including flights, which I used frequent flier miles for). We had a very nice trip and even did some splurging (i.e. private tours, cooking class, expensive dinners, etc) Our itinerary was as follows:
-4 nights Rome
-3 nights Florence with a day-trip to Tuscany
-2 nights Cinque Terre
-1 night Milan
-4 nights Venice
With a budget of $10k, you could have quite the amazing trip!
I haven't been to Italy yet, but am also hoping to go in June/July next summer. When I priced out fares it was about $2700 from Boston to fly into Venice and out of Rome when I priced one-way flights from both. I just wanted to make sure your doing the multi-fare selection when your doing your price comparing if your flying in and out of different cities. When I did the multi-city seach, it brought it down to about $2,400, which definitely helps!
You can defnitely see more if your doing land-base traveling, however, a cruise will be more stress-free and relaxing. So, it's really what is important to you. Have you thought about going to travel agent, they might be able to help map out a great itinerary for you and get some great prices too!