help expert European cruisers

[Jacky4]

I would like to take a 12 ay European cruise from London, with my husband, on a tight budget. I figured the cruise and airfare is about $5200.00. We will be getting off the ship in every port but we don't drink and are not shoppers. Our plans are to sightsee, eat lunch and maybe an occasional dinner out. What kind of budget do you think we would need each day? I was thinking about $200, is that even close to enough? Are there any other expenses I would need to consider? Also what is the best month to go?

[ukbecky]

Not sure which ports you're doing but we did a 12-day Baltic for less than $200 a day (for 4) but the dollar was much stronger then. I still think your budget is reasonable. The Baltic ports are easily 'doable' without ship tours - we ended up doing two ship tours the two days in St. Petersburg only. The rest of the ports were walkable from the pier.

We went end of May, beginning of June and weather was much warmer than expected - close to 80 in most ports but the North Sea days were very damp, grey, windy and cool (50s).

[SouthernGem09]

Jacky, we're doing the freedom cruise also. What we have planned is to only do excersions through carnival like twice, in Livorno and maybe get transportation in Naples to Pompeii. For the rest I went to a used book store and read until my head hurt on the other ports of call. Our reasoning is the more we can do on our own the less we spend :) Let me know if you spot any great deals :D

[Jacky4]

I am looking at the Carnival Liberty (Northern Europe) which would be Denmark, Germany, Finland, Russia...We haven't booked anything yet. I am thinking 2010 maybe. The cruise we booked on the Carnival Freedom is to the Carribbean, I guess before she heads over to Europe. Also we have no problem sightseeing on our own and doing a lot of walking in the ports that are easier to tour.

[skuttduck]

I can tell you this, for a grand total of $7784 dollars for my wife and I we did the last Europe cruise.

 

This included the flights, the cruise, the shore excursions, the tips, and even a couples massage. It was around $2000 for the entire Sign and Sail Bill.

 

Leaving out of Dover appears to be more expensive. Your expense of $200 a day fits right in line with what we spent, and looks to be a good budget.

 

You also have fuel supplement now too, which we didn't have then. That would be an additional $168 for a 12 day cruise for two people.

[Jolimont]

In St Petersburg you can't even get off the ship unless you've booked a tour either through the ship ($375 per person) or a private tour operator ($300 per person). Or you could get your own visas (must mail in your passport) but that costs $200 per person. That's an expensive stop right there.

 

But otherwise if you do the research, take public transportation, eat at the corner kebab place, take your own water, don't have too aggressive a schedule, you should be fine with $200 per day. Keep in mind that it's easy to burn more because $200 is 127€ today (keeps getting worse all the time), entrance fees to famous places can be 15-30€ per person. So it goes quick. But it's possible and in my mind it's well worth it! What day were you thinking?

[SouthernGem09]

I can tell you this, for a grand total of $7784 dollars for my wife and I we did the last Europe cruise.

 

This included the flights, the cruise, the shore excursions, the tips, and even a couples massage. It was around $2000 for the entire Sign and Sail Bill.

 

Leaving out of Dover appears to be more expensive. Your expense of $200 a day fits right in line with what we spent, and looks to be a good budget.

 

You also have fuel supplement now too, which we didn't have then. That would be an additional $168 for a 12 day cruise for two people.

 

Duck, you seem to have gotten a great deal and knew what you were doing! What ports of call did you have on your itinerary?

[doodlefan]

Hi

 

We are doing the Carnival Splendor Aug 30/2008 to the Baltics.

 

We, like you aren't drinkers and plan to be budget minded. That being said, there are some things you just can't scrimp on. On this itinerary, the biggest part of our budget is going on the 2 day St. Petersburg tour. We have a group of 14 on our roll call so it ends up about $600 US for the 2 days. But, we have other days where we plan to do our own walking tour and just stop at a cafe for a pastry and a drink and those days will be very cheap.

 

For example, our day in Tallin, Estonia, we have a great walking tour planned that we found on here, and we just plan to stop for a snack midway through the day. It is a small walkable port, so it should be quite easy to do on very little $$$. We don't usually have large lunches or meals off the ship, this saves ALOT. I even bring packaged things from home like granola bars to take off the ship. I always have a refillable water bottle too and just have some crystal light packages to make a drink. We take a small packsack with these items when we go ashore. We are usually so busy touring that we dont want to take the time for a meal anyway, we sometimes buy something from a street vendor like in Greece, we bought gyros for $1.60:D . Yummy too.

 

The other ports on our cruise like Amsterdam, we are doing a canal boat tour, for roughly $9.00 each. This is not done through the cruise line, and then when it returns we have an afternoon walking tour again that I found on this site. It hits all the main things we want to see and some I didn't even know about.

 

Copenhagen, we may get a Copenhagen Card which is good for all public transportation and entrance to alot of the sites. Copenhagen is bigger, so some public transportaion would be easier and we just budget for that. I think the 24 hr card is around $18 per person, so again well under your budget, if it includes entrances to some of the places you want to see.

 

We too are going out of Dover, so we are staying in London pre-cruise for 4 nights at a very reasonable B&B and we will take the bus from Victoria station (near our B&B) to Dover, it's much cheaper than the train, but takes about 40 minutes more. It's direct too, no changing busses. The train is 24.00 GBP per person and the bus can be as cheap as 5.00 GBP, so when converting back to US $$, a savings of $76 just by taking the bus instead of the train.

 

I think you can still do this cruise on your daily budget and have a good experience, you just have to research what you want to do, what sights are most important to you and then plan accordingly. Some places like Russia will take more than your daily budget, but some like Tallin will take less, so it will even out in the end.

 

Good luck, I can't wait for this cruise.

 

Tara