Embark in Venice~Debark in Barcelona

[CherylsCaribbeanTravel]

I really like HAL's 12 night Mediterranean Itinerary on the Neiuw. It embarks in Venice, and debarks from Barcelona. However, the flights are outrageous. Has anyone figured out a way to do reasonable flights if you aren't purchasing round trip from the same port? This itinerary includes: Venice, Dubrovnik, Curfo, ARgostoli, Santorini, straight of Messina, Catania, Naples, Rome, Florance, and Barcelona.

 

We are first time Europe cruisers. I'm open to all suggestions. Which 10-14 day European Itinerary would you choose?

 

Thank you in advance for your thoughts,

 

Cheryl :)

[kazu]

I really like HAL's 12 night Mediterranean Itinerary on the Neiuw. It embarks in Venice, and debarks from Barcelona. However, the flights are outrageous. Has anyone figured out a way to do reasonable flights if you aren't purchasing round trip from the same port? This itinerary includes: Venice, Dubrovnik, Curfo, ARgostoli, Santorini, straight of Messina, Catania, Naples, Rome, Florance, and Barcelona.

 

We are first time Europe cruisers. I'm open to all suggestions. Which 10-14 day European Itinerary would you choose?

 

Thank you in advance for your thoughts,

 

Cheryl :)

 

Hi Cheryl, we are in Canada BUT, we have found that as long as you are in certain areas in Europe, you can treat it as round trip with just different arrival & departure ports.

 

If you can't do it on line, try calling your airline companies and tell them you want ROUND trip arriving in Venice & leaving from Barcelona.

 

HAL also offers air fares. You may wish to check what their deal is.

 

we prefer to book our own just to know when we are leaving, etc and have as direct flights as possible.

 

we've done your itinerary and it is very nice. I highly recommend going early to Venice to enjoy it and if you have the time stay after in Barcelona.

 

both places have oodles of great hotels and so much to see.

 

hope this helps a bit. enjoy your cruise :):)

[SwissMyst]

I really like HAL's 12 night Mediterranean Itinerary on the Neiuw. It embarks in Venice, and debarks from Barcelona. However, the flights are outrageous. Has anyone figured out a way to do reasonable flights if you aren't purchasing round trip from the same port? This itinerary includes: Venice, Dubrovnik, Curfo, ARgostoli, Santorini, straight of Messina, Catania, Naples, Rome, Florance, and Barcelona.

 

We are first time Europe cruisers. I'm open to all suggestions. Which 10-14 day European Itinerary would you choose?

 

Thank you in advance for your thoughts,

 

Cheryl :)

 

You might want to look into flights to Milan instead of Venice, but then have to add train fare and transfers from Milan to Venice, but it is a wonderful train ride across Northern Italy and maybe not much longer than making transfers to Venice itself. Often there are far cheaper flights going directly into Milan which is why I suggest this more round-about way than Venice, which always requires an internal flight transfer from somewhere. More chances for lost luggage too with transfers.

 

Maybe even a domestic flight from Barcelona to Milan on the way out, but then you would have to deal with domestic baggage allowances which would be a lot less than for international flights. What price range for flights are you looking for? I keep searching and searching all the travel consolidators until I find something in the $1000 each RT range, or under from LAX for us.

 

This can take days of searching (supposedly the best fares come out on Tuesdays) and also includes visiting airline sites directly, but I usually can find something that is a lot better than when I first start out with this process because every once in a while there is an "outlyer" fare price among the groups.

 

The hardest part is finding the shortest flights w/o the long, long layovers or really inconvenient departure times which can drop the price, but make the trip unworkable in practical terms. I use Kayak and Vayama and then go down to the sites like Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz, Cheaptickets directly to get the over all feel for what might be out there.

 

We are also getting off the Ryndam in Barcelona and we finally found our least expensive and convenient flight through SwissAir to Zurich and then to LAX, but it was also a RT since we depart from Barcelona as well. My best advice is to keep searching online, until you find something that works and know when to grab it once you find it.

 

I still have too many long-gone memories of charter flights to Europe for $300-400 RT, so I still don't like to think $1000 RT fares (LAX) are the new reality and have been for sometime now. Most flights arranged by the cruise lines tend to be about $500 more, so feel my efforts to do the searches myself are worth when it means saving $1000 for the two of us.

 

Best wishes and welcome to the wonderful world of cruising and you picked two fabulous cities to come and go from for your cruise adventure. Hope you get some time in both before and after the cruise.

[schoolinmy3]

I really like HAL's 12 night Mediterranean Itinerary on the Neiuw. It embarks in Venice, and debarks from Barcelona. However, the flights are outrageous. Has anyone figured out a way to do reasonable flights if you aren't purchasing round trip from the same port? This itinerary includes: Venice, Dubrovnik, Curfo, ARgostoli, Santorini, straight of Messina, Catania, Naples, Rome, Florance, and Barcelona.

 

We are first time Europe cruisers. I'm open to all suggestions. Which 10-14 day European Itinerary would you choose?

 

Thank you in advance for your thoughts,

 

Cheryl :)

 

We did the 10 day Rome to Dover last year. Flights were not any more expensive to/from different cities than roundtrip. We usually book our flights through Expedia. We have been very happy with Expedia's customer service especially when Delta changed our flights on us! I think flights USED to cost more if they involved different cities but I have not found that to be the case any longer. This year my son and I are doing a second Mediterranean - 10 day roundtrip Rome on the Noordam Roman Empires.

Diane

[slomotion]

We did the reverse (Barcelona - Venice) two years ago and here's what we did. Note we had the time to do this.

 

We booked a RT Los Angeles to Venice (change of planes in Paris) and arrived in Venice at about 4 or 5 in the afternoon and stayed at a Holiday Inn just outside the airport. The next morning we flew Clickair from Venice to Barcelona. This whole thing including the night at the hotel was less than anything I could find flying into Barcelona and then out of Venice.

 

As you are leaving from Venice I assume you will fly in to Venice enjoy the city, cruise to Barcelona and then fly from Barcelona to Venice for the other part of your "round-trip". There are a few low-cosr airlines in Europe that we've never heard of sort of like our own Southwest Airlines.

[Taxguy77]

Wonderful cruise from two great cities.:D Hope you have the time to enjoy both cities, and if so consider taking a train back to Venice. European trains are VERY good and you get to see so much countryside. Not like flying over and trying to get comfortable.

Enjoy your trip. You will find a few places you want to return and spend a week or so.:)

[fishmom]

Also, don't do what I was mistakenly doing when the first time I was pricing a Venice/Athens cruise - trying to do two one-way tickets, instead of choosing multi-city. I would also recommend pricing r/t Barcelona and flying to Venice from there.

[baggal]

I just checked round trip Newark/Barcelona for a Celebrity cruise I am looking at for this summer. $1349 pp. Last summer we paid $1049. Ouch!

[growoldwithme]

We are very excited about our upcoming cruise. We went with HAL booking our air as we are fairly new at cruising. The fact that they handle transfers and guarantee any issues makes it worth it to us.

 

We live in Southern New Jersey so Philly (1 hour drive) or NYC (3 hour drive) are our options. NYC is cheaper, but Philly is more convenient. We paid an additional $75 pp for custom airfare so that we can get direct flights with no lay overs. Airfare is $1680 pp- :mad:Yikes!!!

 

Good luck-

Susie and Mike

[SwissMyst]

We got a RT LAX to Barcelona for $1050 each, taxes inc with Vayama for August/Sept 2011.

 

Air Canada LAX to Toronto and SwissAir Toronto to Barcelona.

[schoolinmy3]

I just checked round trip Newark/Barcelona for a Celebrity cruise I am looking at for this summer. $1349 pp. Last summer we paid $1049. Ouch!

 

It pays to start looking for flights early - as far out as possible. We booked flights RT Rome for our cruise at the end of May in October. Total for two of us out of Charlotte, NC $1797. Flights have gone up in price since then. The same flights now cost between $2000 and $3000 with more connections and less convenient departure and arrival times than what I booked.

Diane

[rochelle_s]

:eek:I too am Canadian but I think the 'idea' might also work for you.

 

What I have done in the past and am planning to do for a cruise this spring use London as my international flight hub. I can get a one way flight from London to Toronto ( and it's pricey flying in Canada) for under $400.00 CDN. Short European flights can be very cheap, is British Air Venice to London for 40 GBP and just slightly higher to Barcelona.

 

My problem is that I don't actually save the money...I always seem to use the 'savings' excuse to stay over in London for a few days. The money that should have stayed in my pocket covers my hotel and theater tickets.

 

If you want to check into doing the short European flights or for something similar to this make sure you research the airline you are considering and their baggage restrictions. Some of those cheapy European carriers have no free checked luggage at all.....and might even charge by the pound!! :eek:

 

 

Rochelle

[ariawoman]

We did that exact itinerary last october. Venice to Barcelona.

 

We took the following flights:

 

Newark to Barcelona -- Barcelona to Venice (a few hours connection in Barcelona)

 

Barcelona to Lisbon -- Lisbon to Newark (a few hours connection in Lisbon).

 

The flights then were about 800-850 PP, not entirely sure as we used miles. :-)

 

You could also look into flying into Rome then taking a line like Alitilia to Venice, we did that 2 years ago and it was very affordable for the extra leg (we bought a r/t newark to rome and just bought the extention to venice on our return from the cruise)

 

Either way, SOOOO jealous! It's a great cruise!

[doodlefan]

We're doing this in May on the Carnival Magic.

 

We use sidestep.com to check all the flights and airlines and then book directly with the airline.

 

We paid $925 Canadian each with Air France. It did go down to $902 for a week or two after we booked. We are actually connecting in Paris so are staying there for 2 days. It was the same price to fly directly to Venice with a connection in Paris for 2 hours as it was to have the 2 day stopover.

 

We are flying from Toronto. I'm not sure where you are in Michigan but we often fly out of Detroit too. Last time we flew to London out of Detroit and connected in Philly.

 

As I mentioned use sidestep and put in the "multi" itinerary and you will get a list of all the airlines and costs. It's super fast and easy. If I'm looking for a flight, I check it everyday. You can't get a daily price alert for a multi city itinerary so I manually check.

 

My sister is looking at doing this exact itinerary in Sept. and I know the flight prices have gone up in the last 3 weeks. I'd keep checking and when it drops to a price you are happy with, book it and don't look back. lol

 

Good luck

[zoomer-b]

Hi Cheryl,

As mentioned by others, you could fly to popular city (Paris/London/Frankfurt) then hop a flight to Venice. Ryan Air is cheap over there. Frankfurt to Venice is a very short flight (1hr 15 min).

Being that we love to travel, I enrolled into an Airmiles plan years ago. I use my credit card as a bank card and pay it off every month. We too are taking the NA cruise from Venice to Barcelona. We live in Vancouver, Canada and to get overseas can be pricey. For this trip, I only paid the taxes (which are excessive in this country).

We have flown to London, Mexico, across Canada and various points between for very little money. Our Airmiles plan allows us to fly to one point and fly back from another. It also allows us to layover in Amsterdam for as long as we like, as long as we continue our flight from there.

This option isn't for everyone, but once you get used to treating the card like a debit card (and paying it off EVERY month to avoid interest), the points add up in no time. The statement also itemizes everything so you can see where you are overspending.

Happy cruising! :D

[Cruzin Terri]

We are doing the same cruise in September. We are using AA miles and flying to Venice and back from Barcelona on British Airways. They treat it as a round trip.

I would look for sales and if you have miles on any airline think about using them.

Terri