Cruise Expense Report

We made no excuses. We knew a cruise was way outside our typical budget. But we justified it by the facts that it included what would have otherwise been a long-haul flight across the pond and, for a cruise, it was a pretty good deal. In the past we had paid similar prices for one-week cruises, but this was for two weeks and it took us through some new locations in Spain and Portugal on the way home.

It was really nice to feel so pampered for a couple weeks. We usually didn’t have things like housekeeping in the places we were staying. We also never had three-course meals like this. Not even for one night, and certainly not so many nights in a row. But the food was great, as was the weather. I loved seeing the water every day and waking up to a view of the waves. It was always great to be outside, read a book, and enjoy far too much time eating. At the same time, I felt a little out of place. I felt a bit grubby compared to our fellow passengers. But that wasn’t to be helped. We only had so many clothes with us and whatever state they were in was what we had to work with.

There were some very interesting stops along the way. Málaga was beautiful, felt very tropical, and would be worth returning to for a week-long beach vacation. Cádiz was perhaps my favorite, only because I enjoyed the narrow streets, views of the ocean, and all the exotic plants and birds we found around the city. Ponta Delgada was a great stop too, because I don’t think we would have gotten there any other way. It’s so isolated out in the Atlantic.

Our transatlantic cruise on board Holland America's Nieuw Statendam started in Civitavecchia, just outside Rome. We sailed the Mediterranean for two days until arriving in Cartagena. We had two more stops in Spain, one in Málaga and another in Cádiz. We then started our trip across the Atlantic, stopping in Ponta Delgada in the Azores, which is part of Portugal. From the Azores it took us a full week of sailing the Atlantic Ocean until arriving in Fort Lauderdale in Florida. 

We enjoyed the cruise, for sure, but I don’t think we’d do a transatlantic cruise again. The clientele was definitely older than we would have liked, which made it hard to find people to hang out with. We met plenty of people on board, but I don’t think we ever found a good set of “cruise friends” to hang out with at the bar like we had on past cruises. Two weeks is also a very long time to spend on a ship. We found plenty of things to keep us occupied, but we were ready to depart when we arrived in Port Everglades. There were actually people on board that were going to stay with the cruise for the next week or two as it bounced around the Caribbean. We were glad to not be doing that.

The price we paid for the 14-day transatlantic cruise was $1960 for the two of us, which included our ocean-view accommodation, all our meals, and miscellaneous port fees. After adding on our bar bill and other expenses, we spent an average of $181 a day on our cruise home. This also included our car rental in Port Everglades for our drive up to Orlando. I feel like we spent a fortune on alcohol, yet we really didn’t drink that much. Each drink or bottle of wine was just so expensive. But we know that’s how they get you. We actually made a mistake on this. Travis saw that they were advertising drink packages where you can order unlimited drinks for a fixed up-front cost. Unlimited drinks sounded ridiculous to me, and that I would never need to take advantage of that, but in the end, it turned out that it would have been the cheaper option for us. Well, now we now for next time...

The sunsets out on the water were always spectacular.