How much to budget for Mediterranean Cruise?

[Koalagirl]

We are going on our first cruise this year -20 night Mediterranean cruise on Noordam. Just wondered what people budget for daily expenses. I know this will vary greatly but anyone that has cruised this region may be able to give me some idea. I have already paid for all the tours we are doing.

[Sirdar]

We are going on our first cruise this year -20 night Mediterranean cruise on Noordam. Just wondered what people budget for daily expenses. I know this will vary greatly but anyone that has cruised this region may be able to give me some idea. I have already paid for all the tours we are doing.

It all depends on what you do aboard or ashore? You will have to provide more details of your expectations. DW and I did a 10 day Eastern Med aboard Noordam and budgeted for shopping. What are your souvenir puchase going to be ? A $10 T-shirt or a $200 Italian leather purse from the Via Condotti in Rome? Neither of us is much in the way of drinking so our wine and alcohol bill was minimal on board, perhaps $20 US a day. Do you plan on visiting the casino every night? Once your cruise ticket and shore excursions are paid up, the rest is up to you.

[Koalagirl]

I suppose I meant lunch, drinks, snacks, maybe entry into a museum while out for day in a Mediterranean city.I realise souvenirs would vary greatly and don't expect this to be included. We will probably have 1 or 2 glasses of wine in the evenings on board with dinner.

[agabbymama]

All I can tell you is I budgeted $2000 for a 21 day trip, and it doubled. Now we had only 12 days on the ship, the rest was on land, and incurred hotel, food, and transportation in Paris, Rome and Venice. Our total trip expense was $6500 pp. Don't know if that helps you alot, because circumstances will of course differ. With all of your tours already being paid, you should only have food and possibly transportation costs.

We had a lot of unexpected things happen, that cost us more. Just one incident, when we arrived in Naples, I had planned to take the hydrofoil to Sorrento and the train back to Pompeii and Naples at a reasonable price. Unfortunately, it didn't work out that way. We arrived and the Captain announced we were docked at one end of the pier and the hydrofoil pier was at the other end. Princess would provide a shuttle service. We debarked at 8:15 am planning to take a 9:00 am hydrofoil. Only to be told rudely by the shuttle driver "to go away, shuttle started at 9:00". We knew we couldn't walk it. The taxis didn't want such a short fare, they wanted to take us all the way to Sorrento. So we ended up hiring a taxi to take us for 100 EUR pp (approx $150). It ended up being the best day of our 21 day trip, but it wasn't cheap.

So have a Plan "A", then also have a Plan "B" for when Plan A falls apart. I had budgeted 100 EUR per day, and ended up spending 200 EUR per day.

Others have posted on this board that they found meals for 10 EUR, but that wasn't our experience. We are two older ladies and we didn't travel off the beaten path. We were paying about 15 EUR for lunch and 25 EUR for dinner most places. In Athens, the taxi driver did take us to a nice off the beaten path restaurant for a wonderful sit down lunch that only cost us 11 EUR pp but that was only once out of the whole trip. And be prepared if you "sit" at a restaurant in Italy, there will be about a 5 EUR cover charge. At one restaurant in Venice, we checked the prices for pizza and it was 6 EUR for a plate sized pizza (not bad, we thought). We were sure surprised when we got the bill. They charged us 6 EUR for a bottled coke and 5 EUR to sit and eat it. The pizza was good, but a coke is a coke and for $9.00 I almost gagged on it.

I've been to Europe a number of times, but most were before the EUR came into being. I was totally surprised by the costs in Italy.

So just be prepared, and when things go wrong (as they often do) just roll with the punches. Don't let it ruin your whole trip. We still had a wonderful time, and now look back and laugh at how much these two foolish old ladies paid to enjoy Italy and Greece. And it will probably be our last big hurrah, as it did totally deplete our savings.

That all said, just be ready for it to cost you a lot, and have a great trip!

[Koalagirl]

Thanks so much for that information gives me a bit of an idea how much we will need.

[Pat.bz]

It all depends on the individual and $50 a day (excluding tours) for us as a couple more than covered it. That included simple local lunched or snack and 2 bottle of wine when we were ashore to bring back to the ship.

[VaBeachCruisers897]

I think the tours are the greatest expense. Its a lot easier to do something on your own in a beachy island environment. The tours if you decide to take any are very informative; educational and well run in Europe. And they are $$$. No $49.00 beach break etc.... We only went once and loved it....

[tbrein]

With some advance planning you really do not need to spend the big $$$ on ship excursions. We took trains and buses and had a great time. That being said, we did our homework. We planned our day in each port so as not to waste time. The only places where we took a ship tour was in Florence because the train station was not easily accessible and in Santorini where we wanted to get off the ship early. So we took the least expensive tour to Oia and then did the rest on our own. In Delos my DH took the ship tour because we arrived in the afternoon and Delos was on his bucket list and the only way to see it was on a ship excursion. We had fun doing it on our own and enjoyed the adventure.
There will be those that will tell you that the only way to go is the ship excursion so that you won't miss the ship. That has some validity to it and I will not put down doing the ship excursions. However, we do not like being part of a large crowd and prefer exploring on our own. If you are nervous about doing it on your own, plan to budget big $$$ for shore excursions.
We also found that sharing a taxi with another couple cut our costs in half. If you go to your roll call there will be others planning tours and you may be able to join those for a fraction of the ship tours. The taxis will get you back in time, especially those who you book in advance. They don't want to get a bad rep on CC. Go to the ports section of the board for lots of information.
Email me and I will give you the names of those private tours we used and how we got around.
Terri

[Jade13]

We are going on our first cruise this year -20 night Mediterranean cruise on Noordam. Just wondered what people budget for daily expenses. I know this will vary greatly but anyone that has cruised this region may be able to give me some idea. I have already paid for all the tours we are doing.

You will love it! We did 10 nights (West) in 2007 and than 10 nights (East) in 2008. Are you looking for an amount in addition to pre-paid gratuities? You should put everything in to an Excel spreadsheet. We did mostly private tours abd so brought a lot of cash eros as that is how everyone wanted to be paid. Tunesia takes US cash. As far as HAL excursions if they all Albania & Butrinct from Corfu it was the best ships shore excursion that I have ever been on. It was pricy at about $200.00 each but included everything such as a tour around Corfu Town after the return from Albania.

I see you have paid for all the tours so I guess you are doing all ships tours. Which ones? If that is the case it is up to you on how much you want to spend in the Casino, Bingo, Shopping, Spa etc.

[Taxguy77]

Using ship tours you will probably have shopping opportunities in several places. These are usually fairly expensive+ and be aware they pay a commission to the cruise line. (No free lunch, remember?) Sometimes they sell items you would really like to have at prices you feel comfortable paying, and they make great souveniers of your cruise so go ahead.

One time my DW saw some Lapis jewelry in a shop on a tour in Chile, but it was too expensive. She checked out prices around our home and learned some fine points about what was quality and what was junk, so when we were in Chile another time she was budgeted and ready to buy when ther. She bought some beautiful pieces. :D PS: it was the same shop, the bus from port to Santiago stopped there.

[Koalagirl]

Yes we have paid for ship tours.Next time we might be more adventurous and do it ourselves. Have booked Ancient Olympia & Zorba, Ancient Ephesus & Virgin Marys House, The best of Athens, Discover Cinque Terre, Best of Tunisia, Amalfi coast & Sorrento. In Dubrovnik, plan to do the walk along the wall and in Barcelona do the hop on hop off Bus, some of the oher places we might just take it easy and not rush around