Hope you had a chance to check out PortReviews.com.
Now the next thing I did was look up all the cities and sites that were anywhere near the ports. In many cases they had to be close enough to travel to, enjoy, and get back to the ship on time. With a cruise, many times you only have one day but you'd be surprised what you can see in one day. We even had time left over every day. We never had to run for the ship as they were pulling up the gang plank.
I have to attribute all this to good planning and flexibility when something might have gone wrong with the plan. The name of my blog is "Jane's Perspective" and my perspective on this trip as most everything I plan in life is to have a plan A, B, C and however many letters of the alphabet it takes to rest assured that I'm prepared for almost anything. If not, Jane's Perspective is to figure, "well, what's the worst that could happen?" and then figure out what I would do from there. Having my alternate plans helps me adjust to almost anything and keeps me de-stressed.
So having the knowledge of the ports and the transportation available from the ports, I began to research every city and site that I really wanted to see on this trip. I figured if it was the one and only trip I would ever take to Europe, what did I just absolutely have to see, what would I like to see and what would be nice to see if there was time. Then I took on my "Jane's Perspective" attitude that a bad day just walking down the streets of an ancient Italian city was going to be better than a good day at work anyway so if all of the A, B, C, etc plans fell through, I was of a mindset to sit at an outdoor cafe (or even at the window of a MacDonalds) in some fabulous European city and just watch the people go by.
Up until now I've not told you the name of the cruise ship, dates, cities or any specifics cause I didn't want you to think that the cruise ship I was on or the cities I saw would be the only way to take a trip as economically as we did. When I teach my painting classes I never want my students to copy exactly what I do but I teach them to take what I can show them and make it their own. I want you to see if you can do this too, through any cruise line, for any destination, and for any dates.
So, my cruise story starts tomorrow with specifics of my trip but I'll be giving you pointers as to what you can do for your trip too.
