barely finish one trip...

gotta start planning the next. It looks like we're booking a Mediterranean cruise for next year - woohoo!! 12 days on Holland America's Rotterdam. The Rotterdam is supposed to be HAL's flagship - supposedly that means better service and stuff - we'll see! ;-)

I'm a little leery of HAL, not because of the ship itself, or the food, or the service. I'm leery because of our experience on Princess, where the ship basically shut down at 10pm. Now granted, we're not exactly the party couple, but we do like to have activities going on, like maybe a deck party, or whatever. And demographically speaking, HAL will probably be pretty similar to Princess. But maybe it won't be such a big deal on this cruise, because with 8 long port days, and only 3 days at sea, we may not be up to lots of activities ourselves! I'm definitely guessing the sea day activities will be very different from those on Carnival - I can't imagine HAL cruisers having the hair chest contest!! LOL

The itinerary is SO awesome - Venice (Italy), Dubrovnik (Croatia), Corfu (Greece), Cairo/Giza/Alexandria (Egypt), Ephesus/Kusadasi (Turkey), Istanbul (Turkey), Constanta (Romania), Odessa (Ukraine), Varna (Bulgaria) and Athens (Greece). It'll be way expensive, but I think it'll be so very worth it! We've been pricing the cruise, airfare, hotels prior/post, etc. YIKES!! But Greg is ever the trooper, trusting my judgment on travel matters - apparently I haven't steered us wrong yet!