Need help finding an Italian cruise for July 2018

Looking for help! We want to travel to Italy with my parents and I'm thinking the best option to visit multiple cities is a cruise. I'm having an issue with either most ports of call aren't in Italy or the Italy only cruises seem to not be kid friendly. Our boys will be 10 and 8. Any advice is welcome. TIA

Very few cruises are just Italy. You may need to contact a travel agent to find some of the small, less common cruise lines to find an Italy only cruise.

Very few cruises are just Italy. You may need to contact a travel agent to find some of the small, less common cruise lines to find an Italy only cruise.

Agreed ............ but I suspect those smaller cruise lines which stick to Italy are the ones that aren't great for kids. Or for wallets.

If you want to stick to seeing Italy, mebbe a road or rail trip would be a better bet than a cruise. :confused:

The Naples area (Pompeii, Herculaneum, Vesuvius, Capri, the Amalfi coast etc) is worth several days, as is just the city of Rome. Florence is accessible from the ports of Livorno or La Spezia, but Tuscany is also worthwhile for its countryside, villages & vineyards. Then there are the Italian lakes (Lago di Garda, Lake Como & others) and, just beyond them the Italian Alps.

That's mebbe 14 full days & evenings in Italy instead of perhaps 4 or 5 foreshortened Italian port-of-call days on a 14 day Mediterranean cruise.

JB :)

John raises some good ideas. We have traveled Italy both by car and rail. Car is fine, but parking hassles in the big cities definitely make train more attractive. If your parents are fairly mobile, I would would suggest a train trip over a cruise.

John raises some good ideas. We have traveled Italy both by car and rail. Car is fine, but parking hassles in the big cities definitely make train more attractive. If your parents are fairly mobile, I would would suggest a train trip over a cruise.

We much prefer road-trips - no schlepping of luggage, no timetables to keep to, no wasted time waiting for trains or connections, a mix of fast roads & scenic by-ways, and lots of little places en-route. So much more flexible.

But Bruce is right about the parking in big cities - and other places too. Navigation in cities too, and traffic snarl-ups. Same in most countries, including many in the USA.

So we book accommodation outside or on the fringes of those cities, close to public transport options such as trains or the metro & use them to go in and out of the cities. And we always check on the availability of parking at hotels.

JB :)

I am traveling on Viking Ocean to Italy and the med in 2018. Check out their website.

In my research I had seen a cruise or two from Venice to Rome (and also stopping in Greece) [i do not think I can post the URL, but google "Norwegian 7-Day Adriatic & Greece from Venice"] - but there are other similar cruises by other lines.

Just note that some of the smaller upper-scale lines may have Italy-only cruises, but they will most likely also have less kids on board (and less youth-focused activities and facilities) compared to a bigger mid-stream cruise line. My kids like cruises because of the social interaction.

A few years a go we did a Western Med cruise (out of Rome, but also stopping in France & Spain) - there were not a ton of kids, but there were more than enough to keep our kids occupied (they were 8 and 13 at the time).

We venture to Italy almost yearly....We always add land on to each end of a cruise....see if you can find a cruise that does maybe Rome to Venice or the opposite...you will most likely have Greece in there, and then add some train and or car time to get to some of the other desired Italian cities or areas in.

Yes, with Kids you want one of the bigger companys like MSC, Costa or Royal Caribbean. But the route your looking for might only be available in Spring or Fall, as it is the "once-a-year-only" transfer from Savona/Genova (the main cruise ports on one side) and Venice (the port on the other side), like the Transatlantic-Transfers.

The cruises in July will start in the above mentioned ports and will either make landfall in the Balkans and Greece and just one Italian Port (Bari). Or they start in Savona/Genova (or sometimes in Civitavecchia) and go maybe to Marseille, Barcelona and might have more Italian Ports at hand by making it either to Naples or Rome(Civitavecchia) and maybe either to Sardegna or Sicily. So I would say including the starting point you almost never have more than three ports in Italy.

If you're set for Italy, the train Option is quite easy and fast (and you travel from center to center; instead from port to port, which might sometimes be quite outside the city like for example the above mentioned port Civitavecchia for Rome.