Cradle of Civilization: The Cruise

Now that we had pretty much made up our minds that a Balcony on Royal Caribbean was the way to go, we still had to narrow the field a bit more.  This is one of the biggest issues I see people face all the time in the travel business: there is a huge world out there and when you say something like, "I want to go someplace warm in January", there are literally so many choices at so many different price levels that most people's brains get overwhelmed and shut down.  Nonetheless, we knew late October was going to be our time and I wanted to do it with Royal Caribbean (I didn't really care which particular ship), so it ultimately came down to what we wanted to see and whether we could do that with a 10 night, 12 night or 13 night cruise.

When all was said and done, we did choose the 13 night option for two (2) big reasons: 1) we had no idea whether we were ever going to be back to this part of the world and 2) every successive day that you add to a cruise, the lower the cost per day.  Put another way: on a 4 night cruise, you might expect to pay about $125 per night for an Inside cabin.  Bump it up to a 7 night cruise and you are in the neighborhood of $115 per night.  By the time you get out to 13 nights you are talking around $100 per night--including all your meals and entertainment! [Cost per night is maybe a little bit cheaper on a Carnival or Norwegian Cruise Line ship, but more on Princess and Holland.  Cruise lines like Oceania, Regent and Silverseas are truly high-end, luxury cruise lines with much higher prices, but you often get a lot of extras thrown in like free shore excursions, free booze and the cost of your tips and gratuities are built into the final price, so its not really a fair comparison.]

What we ended up with then, is a sailing route that looked roughly like what you see below.  More precisely, we would be starting off (and ending up) in Rome, sailing 2 days to Alexandria where we would be able to get off the ship and go to Cairo and Giza to see the pyramids and then travelling to Ashdod, Israel to see Bethlehem and Jerusalem.  After that, we would make one more stop in Haifa, Israel before sailing to Kusadasi, near Ephesus, Turkey.  Finally, we would have a chance to stop in Athens, Greece and Chania, Crete before returning to Rome via the Strait of Messina between Sicily and mainland Italy.