Cruisin' the Med

We sprung for a major holiday this year. "Major" meaning we actually spent a sizeable amount of money from our travel savings. It was a 12-day eastern Meditteranean cruise departing from Barcelona, Spain and calling in the ports of Civitavecchia (Rome) Italy, Piraeus (Athens) Greece, Izmir (Ephesus) Turkey, Alexandria & Cairo, Egypt, and the island of Malta. We set off from our home in Peterborough, England and drove to London's Stansted airport (about 1 hour away) where we hopped a flight on Easy Jet (a European discount airline) which dropped us in Barcelona a mere 2 hours later.
From the airport in Barcelona, we managed to get ourselves onto the train and local subway system (thanks to Matt's Portuguese language skills) and to our hotel (saving us a 30-Euro taxi fare but requiring a 2-hour navigation of the underground with all our luggage and 2 tired children). We enjoyed browsing Barcelona that afternoon as well as the following morning.





The famous Sagrada Familia Cathedral which is famous not only for its unique Gaudi architecture, but also because it's been under construction for over 100 years. You can visibly distinguish between the old and new sections of this amazing cathedral.

Shortly after noon, we took a taxi to the port and met our home for the next 12 days: the beautiful Norwegian Jade - a 93,000 tonne cruise liner with all the amenities. It was our first time on a cruise and overall, we had a very pleasant experience with only a couple very minor battles with motion sickness during some rough seas. Amy threw up twice on the second day of the cruise, then woke up vomiting blood during the night. We rushed her to the ship's onboard medical centre where the doctor determined she had merely suffered from a bad nosebleed whilst sleeping, had swallowed all the blood, and it had all come back up. So nothing serious to be concerned about. (Amy does have nosebleeds from time to time due to seasonal allergies). From there on out, we kept her propped up with pillows at night and we had no more troubles with motion sickness or nosebleeds. Phew!

Emily especially enjoyed the "Princess Parade" on board.

We also made good use of the ship's pools during many of our sea days.

The kids really enjoyed the onboard Kid's Club. They were both in the ages 2-5 group with 4 adult leaders: 2 from the USA, 1 from Australia, and 1 from South Africa. Kid's Club provided non-stop activities such as building with legos, a climbing aparatus, princess parades, dance parties, pillow fights, Blue's Clues hunts around the ship and even an Easter egg hunt (we were on the ship for Easter). Every time we came to collect the girls from kid's club they complained about having to leave and always asked to go back first thing in the morning. We were very pleased that the girls enjoyed it and we made good use of it too - often we'd take the kids to eat early, drop them at the Kid's Club and then go have dinner at one of the dining venues just the two of us. It was like Date Night every day for 2 weeks with the babysitters for free... and the kids having a really great time. Can it get any better than that?

Actually, yes it can. Add a few days in some of the most amazing cities in the world, spanned over 3 continents - Europe, Asia Minor, and Africa - and you've got yourselves a priceless family vacation.