Cruising Mediterranean
7/18/20 Some of my friends bought drones lately. One of the usages is to explore hiking trails, I think that is brilliant!! I miss hiking so much, not the Iowa kind, but the “pee in the woods long days” kind 😀
Cruising!! Tip no. 1: find a group of awesome friends or family members, and tip no. 2, select a good line. There are many interesting cruise lines and themed cruises. For example, some world-travel cruise will take you travel around world and visit exotic islands!! There are also Broadway show cruises, board game cruises, Disney cruises that I am looking forward to go. Besides good food in buffets and fine dining, Every cruise has many activities like pools, rock climbing, zip line, casino, bars, libraries, shows, hair salons, kids club, bowling, dance floors, gym, movies, running trails, VR games, Jacuzzi, tennis, soccer, table tennis … The free activities can have long lines, so don’t get too excited when you see free water parks or zip lines on the cruise. I love the hair salons on the cruise. They are not too expensive but the stylists are good for the time I tried.
Mediterranean cruises run throughout the year. Winter is their off-season. Even for Christmas/new year cruises, I think you can get a spot if you book one month before (sometimes, there are awesome last-minute deals too). Mediterranean during the Christmas time is 10 C-20C in most of the places. So snorkeling/diving and even swimming in the outside pools and oceans are not practical. There are eastern and western Mediterranean cruising lines. The east Mediterranean cruises go far to Turkey, Israel and Greece. Southern Italian islands are popular destinations. The western lines go to Spain, sometimes as far as Portuguese, England. You will need to fly to those big port cities like Barcelona, Marseille, Genoa and Rome/Civitavecchia to get embark. I was very excited to go through the Strait of Gibraltar, so we selected a western line. MSC is an economic line with about 120$ a person a day. The food is good but no fancy activities.
A beautiful historical port
The cruising companies will send you emails long before you embark. The packages offered in the emails sometimes are good. For example, I found the Internet is cheaper if you order it before you go. I have selected some off-shore activities that way too. It is cheaper and avoids the lines on the boat. Nowadays, many registrations can be done online, that saves your troubles at check-in time. For the cruises I have been too, you don’t need to use cash on the boat. There are automatic machines where you can register your cruise cards with your credit cards. When you disembark, you can just pay your credit cards at the front desk. The emails also provide information for you to select outfits on the cruise. Cruising can be very dressy places, you can have fun to try out your wardrobe there. Note that laundries are awful expensive on the boat though.
How many days of cruising are good? I see the cruises as short as 3 days, but there are 5 days, 7 days, 10 days, 2 weeks and even months. This time we selected about 12 days cruise. I thought I would be bored to death. But I survived 🙂
How high is this bridge, xixi 
Cool tugboat helps cruise turn around
At the end of our cruise, there embarked many new guests for a close-120 days world trip. I was about to go with them 🙂 Who knows that those poor people got stucked on this boat for most of the days because of the pandemic …
