OK so here's the details of our cruise. But like I said, what we were able to do with $50 or less on this European cruise, you can do likewise for almost any cruise. I'll point out some of my "Jane's Perspective" ideas as we go along. Hold on to your hats, here we go.
Our cruise ship was the M/S Regatta with Oceania Cruises and the duration of the cruise was Nov. 1 through Nov. 11 with departure from Praeus, Greece (Athens), stops in Malta, four Italian ports of call, plus Monte Carlo, Marseille, and Barcelona.
That said, let's go back in time to the day prior to departure.
Here you have two international flight virgins about to embark on the adventure of their lives. Never having packed for anything like this before but having taken motocycle trips when we were younger and nimbler, we pretty much had everything in two medium size bags. Anticipating fall weather (the cruise was in Nov.) I had mostly jogging suits of velour so there was no wrinkle problem, one pair of dress pants (black) and about three dressy (wrinkly free type) blouses. Shoes were a good pair of walking /tennis shoes, a pair of nice flats and one pair of heels. I kept the colors of everything interchangeable. My husband's clothes were jeans and tennis shoes with shirts that he could layer from t-shirts to long sleeve pull overs to sweaters for daily wear and then khakis and a couple of nice dress shirts with a sweater instead of a suit jacket to wear over the shirts to "dress them up" some and cover wrinkles if necessary. He had one pair of hiking type boots and one dress pair of shoes.
I was determined not to have a ton of baggage to take on the plane with me (having heard horror stories about lack of space) and in order to have my hands free for anything else I wanted to do, I took one large purse for carry on and my husband took a small size back pack. Inside these we had any medicines we might need, (including lots of sea sick pills), a book to read, and little else in order to keep them light and to be able to fill them up with other necessary items that might have to be purchased. (We had bigger plans for our backpack and purse for our self-made shore excursions later in the trip.)
Our passports and credit/debit cards were in a neat little wallet that hung around our necks that we pulled out when necessary and hid under our shirts when we didn't need it. I wanted to keep this stuff close cause if all the luggage got lost, purses and backpacks got stolen, we still had everything we needed to make the trip even if we had to spend our $50 a day replacing clothes and personal items. These little around-the-neck wallets were a last thought at Walmart the night before we packed and turned out to be one of the best items we brought along with us.
Whew, I'm almost as tired from typing all this stuff as I was packing it all. So let's pack up our thoughts til tomorrow when the real excitement begins.
