MrBiz

Thank you for all the suggestions, they have been a big help. Part of the reason for the itinerary is to try to accommodate my son (Baltic), my daughter (Venice/Greece), and other members during this time frame.

With the war between Russian and Ukraine and possible sanctions and the potential for eventual travel ban to Russia, I may need to rethink my whole baltic cruise or change it to avoid Russia if possible which is adding complications.

Stretching it to three weeks isn't doable given the vast array of activities my kids are involved with during the summer and taking time off work for that length of time would be a stretch as well. I've already got a tentative trip to Iceland in March of 2015 as well that will eat up time and resources.

Try thinking outside the box. Go to http://www.cruisetimetables.com and research who is sailing from where in your time frame next year. I'm sure you will come up with something. EM

Thanks Essiesmom, the website was very helpful. I've spent some time looking and I still only found one set of itineraries that matches but I'll keep looking!

So, how would you get a ship who's itinerary is an Eastern Med for one week, over to the Baltic for another 7 day cruise? It's not a no brainer. It would take a ship at least three days to get from it's ending port in the Eastern Med to a Baltic port. The cost for this kind of thing would be huge. The reason why cruise lines put different ships in different locations in the Europe is because they can't do one 7 day in Northern Europe and then the next 7 days in the Med.

I was not suggesting that a cruise line use the same ship for both trips, rather I was suggesting the cruise lines schedule their departures for the possibility of someone getting off of one ship onto another. As it is right now most if not all leave on Sunday and return on Sunday. An alternative would be to let the passengers get off at the last port and travel from there.

I would expect the customer (me) to fly or take a train from the mediterranean up to the north either Denmark or Stockholm or thereabouts.

Has anyone gotten off of a boat early?

Thanks for the responses. The problematic thing seems to be every cruise line wants to set sail off the same day, usually Sunday. There are so many cruises (300+) according to my source during the summer that this should be an easy thing but if all cruises leave on Sunday and return on Sunday then it becomes impossible because you can't instantly go from Venice to say Stockholm. There is travel time involved going from one area to another and in the event of airlines delays or other disruptions I'd like to have at least a day or two of breathing room to go from one city to the next.

I'm trying to do two 7 day cruises. Ideally the first would go Sunday thru Sunday then the next would go Monday thru Monday or Tuesday to Tuesday but those don't seem to exist.

My options for the most part are to wait a full week then hop on the next Sunday. As I said I did find an Eastern Med cruise out of Venice then one out of Stockholm right after with only a day breathing room in between but that was it out of 300+ cruises listed. I haven't checked the river cruises so that may work but I'm just astonished cruise lines haven't thought to help build schedules that allow their cruisers to do two cruises back to back in different regions in Europe.

This seems like a no-brainer to me to package Eastern or Western Med with Baltic or NW Europe cruises B2B for those that want to spend two weeks in different parts of Europe. A river cruise with these packages would go well too but right now I'm having to jump through hoops to make it happen.

Perhaps some of you long time cruisers can help but I'm having a hell of a time trying to find two back to back cruises in Europe.

It seems impossible to go on a Baltic cruise and Eastern Mediterranean cruise with a one or two day gap in between next summer 2015 (June thru July). Flying into/out of Europe is getting more and more expensive and the need to double dip on these holidays is an absolute must moving forward not to mention the horrid conditions of airlines and my unwillingness to fly twice on them!

I did finally manage to find one itinerary on two different cruise lines for Eastern Med in late June then flying to Stockholm for a Baltic cruise on a different line.

Am I missing something as to why cruise lines don't make it easy to book two cruises back to back? It seems that would offer the best bang for the buck so what gives? Any ideas?

Mr. Biz