Trains, BOATS, and Planes
- B&B
- Apr 15
- 6 min read
Our inaugural travel year strategy includes trying out a wide variety of travel and accommodation modes to see what works best for us. So, when we saw a good deal for a repositioning cruise from Florida to Rome, we jumped on it.
On March 24, we boarded the Emerald Princess in Fort Lauderdale for a 15-day trip across the Atlantic, arriving in Rome on April 8.
We had never been on a cruise ship before. In fact, I had sworn never to set foot on “a floating old folks’ home.” But I also swore I'd never play pickleball. And I really, really liked the idea of not having to grocery shop or cook for a couple of weeks, so I decided to subscribe to the adage: “Everything old is new the first time” and give it a shot. In 2023, approximately 31.7 million passengers sailed on ocean cruises worldwide. They can’t all be wrong, right?
Our cruise guru/travel agent Diego convinced us to upgrade from a windowless interior cabin to an oceanview stateroom, and we booked the cruise for $740 per person. This was about twice as expensive as the KLM flights we had originally planned to take to Europe and didn’t account for some associated expenses — the most notable being the $500 mandatory crew “gratuity” that nearly all cruise lines assess (which really smells like a deceptive trade practice to me, but there’s no one left at the Federal Trade Commission to complain to anymore, is there?). So, rough the cost up to $2,000, which still averages our per-day travel expenses — including transportation, room, and meals — to $133/day, comfortably within our retirement travel budget.
Embarkation
(A fancy way to say “getting on the boat”)
I love thinking about logistics and actually enjoyed observing the systems Princess used to move nearly 3,000 people with 7,500 pieces of luggage from the port of Ft. Lauderdale onto the floating hotel. I expected pandemonium from an angry mob of silver-haired Shuffling Dead swinging their walkers like medieval weapons and ramming each other with their motorized wheelchairs in a slow rush for the gangplank. But Princess moved the line quickly, and we went from port drop-off to our cabin in less than an hour.
Cruise Life
I had anticipated a much smaller cabin, one where we’d have to roll over the bed to get to the window, but this wasn’t bad at all. A common complaint in a couple of internet forums (frequent cruisers have formed a very active online community) was the small showers in standard staterooms like ours. But having lived 13 years in a small house with a stall shower, this felt just like home. The bed was firm, the pillows were plump, and we got plenty of natural light from the window (thank you, Diego!).
There are a ton of cruise reviews on YouTube that go into great detail about every ship at sea. Here’s a link to one about the Emerald Princess if you want to get a sense of the place:
It probably took us two days to really get oriented to the horizontal and vertical axes of our floating resort/hotel. Our cabin was just steps away from the elevator bank that dropped us right at the entrance to the buffet and station for coffee, drinks, and snacks. One flight down was the Promenade deck, where we could step outside and walk the entire length of the ship, accessing other elevator banks, dining rooms, pools, and such.
Another elevator in the same bank took us directly to the pickleball court, which was a (excuse the expression) trip. The courts had no service area, making deep serves impossible to return. Pretty quickly, players adopted an honor system: if the ball went too deep into the receiving court, we’d just redo the serve. For some reason, this didn’t apply to second shots, so deep returns were basically guaranteed winners.
Overall, the conditions were less than ideal — dead spots on the court where the ball just died, wooden paddles with no friction surface, and random wind gusts that made play ridiculous at times. Still, we had a core group of 8–10 people playing a couple of hours nearly every day. As time went on, everyone adjusted, though now we’re wondering how messed up our game will be when we next play on real courts with proper gear.
Socializing
A conscious goal we’ve set for our traveling life is greater socialization. Left to our own devices, we could go weeks without exchanging much more than polite elevator patter with fellow travelers, so we’re being mindful about engaging with others when the opportunity arises.
To that end, we planned to eat in the main dining rooms several times, making reservations at six-person tables that would randomly seat us with two other couples. We only managed this a couple of times because I came down with a cold about a week into the cruise, so I kept my distance from others. But the shared dining experiences we did have were lively and enjoyable.
We were also fortunate to meet a lovely couple from Kentucky, Cody and David, during our first dinner. They became our best cruise buddies for the whole trip, and we’re looking forward to keeping in touch with them for a long time.
Illness(es)
As cruise virgins, we had no idea whether we’d experience motion sickness or how we’d handle it. We stocked up on Dramamine and ginger chews, just in case — and didn’t need them. Hurrah! I did catch a cold about halfway through (my first illness in more than five years), and Barbara had a sore throat (strep?) and very dry sinuses during the last few days. That’s the unavoidable risk of boarding an enclosed container with 3,000 other people for two weeks. We tried to be responsible and keep our distance. Overall, it was no worse being sick on the ship than at home.
Shore Trips
Eight days into the cruise, we docked in Funchal, Madeira. By then, I had stopped freaking myself out with claustrophobic/agoraphobic thoughts about being trapped in the middle of the ocean. Like boarding, I imagined people stampeding for the exits when disembarkation began, with tourists swarming the port like rats. Not so. The cruise ship operations made everything feel surprisingly calm and leisurely.
We didn’t purchase any shore excursions from Princess — they were kind of pricey. Instead, we took a hop-on/hop-off bus to explore Madeira. At other ports — Gibraltar, Malaga, Corsica — we happily wandered the towns.
Disembarkation
With a little effort, we found the info we needed to get from the ship to the train station in our final port, Civitavecchia, and from there to the Rome airport. Once again, Princess’s people-handling system was top-notch — we were off the ship and through Italian customs in 20 minutes, max.
Final Thoughts
We did a good job keeping costs down by avoiding cruise add-ons (e.g., drink and internet packages), so our upfront budgeted cost remained our final cost. I always begin budget thinking with the “basic cost to be alive” — meaning daily expenses for shelter, food, and overhead like insurance and taxes. As semi-full-time travelers, we also need to factor in the cost of moving from place to place.
For the cruise, I deducted our estimated airfare from North America to Europe. While we’re good at finding cheap fares, we’re not willing to suffer in a hard plastic jump seat, so I generally pay a little extra for legroom. I estimated those one-way fares would’ve cost $300 each. From our $2,000 cruise total, that leaves $1,400. Accommodations like Airbnbs or budget hotels average at least $50/night, taking us to $750 for 15 nights on the ship. That leaves $650, or $43/day, for meals and entertainment — and we ate a lot. So overall, our food and lodging costs at sea were quite reasonable.
Because the onboard internet offered by Princess was ridiculously expensive we initially planned to go dark at sea and catch up in port. But Barbara found a service called GigSky, which gave us at-sea data for about $4/day each. It worked well enough to keep up with email, WhatsApp, some social scrolling, and daily news — cheap, effective, and saved us from internet withdrawal.
OK, I’ll admit it — my initial misgivings were wrong. This was an interesting and enjoyable way to get from point A to point B. And even though we might have been among the “younger” people onboard, it didn’t feel like a floating assisted living facility.
And yeah . . . I’m already on the lookout for another repositioning cruise.
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