 Durant
& Cheryl Imboden'sEurope for Cruisers europeforcruisers.com |
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European CruisesTour Europe by Ship - 3
ABOVE: Windstar's Wind Surf anchors just beyond the Old Town in Dubrovnik, Croatia. Port-intensive cruisingTo tour Europe by ship, you'll want to book a "port-intensive" cruise that offers frequent opportunities for shore excursions. A good example would be our Silver Whisper Mediterranean cruise with Silversea Cruises. The 12-day itinerary had only two "sea days"; the other days were spent visiting ports in Greece, Italy, and Croatia. In all, we visited eight ports, not counting Athens (our embarkation city) and Civitavecchia, the seaport for Rome. Silversea provided optional shore excursions that ranged from Greek ruins to a "Gondola Serenade" in Venice. (One of our favorites was a trip to Mt. Etna in Sicily, where we took a bus to the volcano and ascended lava fields in a four-wheel-drive vehicle.) Typically, a port-intensive cruise is designed so that ports are visited during the day and the ship sails for its next destination in the late afternoon or evening. Sometimes, however, the ship may stay overnight in a port. On our Athens-to-Rome cruise, Silversea's Silver Whisper arrived in Venice at 9 a.m. on a Monday and remained there until 11 p.m. Tuesday. This gave passengers and crew ample time for sightseeing and shopping in a city where even the most fleeting orientation visit requires more than one day.
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