Celebrity Silhouette Ship

We took the first big step in our travel adventures by booking a cruise from Fort Lauderdale, Florida to Rome.  This is a repositioning cruise.  In the winter a cruise from Florida to the Bahamas or Aruba is very popular, not so in the summer.  Therefore the boat is repositioned to a better location, in this case the Mediterranean Sea.  We will need to book another cruise back to the States in the fall, likely from London to Boston or New York.  An advantage of a cruise vs. flying is no jet lag, since the boat adjusts the time one hour every day.  Also, since we are homeless, or home free, we have no place to hurry back to, plus we get fine room and board for 15 nights.  There are also rules regarding how long you can be in the mainland of Europe, called the Schengen Agreement (90 days), so the additional time at sea is not taking away from our time in Europe.  We booked a room with a balcony and are hopeful it will be warm enough to use for more than tossing our cookies.

Booked room with Balcony

You can zoom out on the map to see the ports of call for this cruise.[codepeople-post-map]

The next task is to start booking places to stay in Europe through VRBO.com, which stands for Vacation Rentals by Owner.  One can type VRBO Rome in the Google search bar and find many places available for rent from the owner.  We are doing this since we plan on staying our maximum allowed 90 days in the countries of Italy, Spain, France and Portugal.  We then head to the UK and Ireland for 40 days, as they are not Schengen countries, eventually cruising back to Boston.

This is just a plan so far.  I remember our last cruise 15 years ago, we said never again.  Part of the deal was the rocking boat made one feel a bit queasy for two weeks straight, which is no way to spend a vacation.  We have high hopes of exercising every day and relaxing on the ship.  We will see.  No European accommodations are yet booked.

Here is the itinerary:

Celebrity – Celebrity Silhouette, departs 4/20/14, 15 nights