Would appreciate any other feedback from others who have experienced these ports.
He won't be there this time though, he's had a baby so he's moving back on land in Orlando Both my fiancé and I are fluent in English but it just feels special hearing your native language spoken in the midst of thousands speaking English and/or Spanish 
Hi and Happy Valentine's Day!
Me and my fiancé will be sailing with y'all!
This trip is supposed to be my big 25th birthday present. We started planning it last year as our first cruise ever BUT then a great VGT rate happened on a 4 night out of Barcelona. We loved it and booked this 12 night onboard
We're Swedish. We actually live as far north as Newfoundland in Canada and right now have no snow at all on the ground (thank you Gulf stream) but we're quite used to snow storms and months of winter. So my heart goes out to all of you who are struggling with the weather
On the 4 night cruise the only other Swede was the Food and Beverage Manager, who were delighter to stop by during dinner to chat in his native language
We'll be flying into Venice three nights before and staying at a hotel called the Canaletto. Saw the suggestion about having dinner before the cruise and thought it was a good idea, but now we've decided to try out a kosher restaurant called Gam Gam that day. We don't require a kosher diet but read that it's a friendly, good and reasonably priced restaurant that we'd like to try. But we'll hopefully see you among the canals or on the ship!
And BTW, saw Frozen the other day and loved it. Was a little skeptical and worried it would be stereotypical and shallow but found it quite the opposite. So if you were wondering it got the seal-of-approval from two Nordics, at least
How exciting to sail with both of you! I am part Swedish!!! When you see me you will say, oh yes you are for sure....I don't speak Swedish though...tried taking Norwegian in college (they didn't offer Swedish) but missed one class and that was it. Practiced with my Dad as far as we could go..My Dad is from Minnesota and half his family is Swedish and some of them married Norwegians...
but I do speak Greek!! lol...
We will be in Venice for three nights before the cruise...
can't wait to meet you!! So much planning left to do....
No so anymore, we are among the most diversified areas anywhere. And hey, if the Kensington ruin stone is truly a land claim, the Swedish farmer who found it on his land may own half of Manitoba and most of Minnesota
I have been looking at travel insurance and my head is spinning...
Then I remembered what "LoveToRun" said about USAA...even though I don't belong (have insurance through them) I have a log on!!! Since we qualify to join I was able to check out their insurance for travel and can actually purchase them!!!
The plan through them is about $30 less than the exact same plan with insuremytrip.com or squaremouth.com and $30.00 saving is good I think....
USAA offers 3 plans...
My question is how much do you list for your trip cost? Do you include hotels that we could cancel, car rental fees? I put just the cost of the cruise at first. But don't want to short change us. It's the medical part that I am concerned about.
We have never purchased insurance but now that our medical has changed we really will not have the coverage we had before.
Any suggestions and help is appreciated....
How exciting to sail with both of you! I am part Swedish!!! When you see me you will say, oh yes you are for sure....I don't speak Swedish though...tried taking Norwegian in college (they didn't offer Swedish) but missed one class and that was it. Practiced with my Dad as far as we could go..My Dad is from Minnesota and half his family is Swedish and some of them married Norwegians...
but I do speak Greek!! lol...
We will be in Venice for three nights before the cruise...
can't wait to meet you!! So much planning left to do....
)
Let's stick to English Even though Sweden nowadays is pretty diversified my fiancé and I are both stereotypically blonde and blue-eyed but we're not that tall (5'10 and the imperial system, I think...). Who are you traveling with?
Hey there,
That is great you figured out you can purchase through USAA since you have log-in access, even though you don't use any of their services.
For us, we of course include the full prices of the cruise, plus plane ticket fees (even if you use miles, there are still taxes you have to pay for your tickets, so we use airline miles to fly to Europe, but I include the taxes I've paid in the total cost I use for the insurance quote). But, if you pay full fare for tickets, then I add in the total airline cost.
I also add in all my private excursion costs I have booked just in case the day we arrive to the port we are sick or who knows what, and we last minute can't do the excursion and also can't get a refund from the private company.
Also, if you are doing any Disney excursions, I'd add the total cost of those, too, because Disney won't refund you if you are sick and can't go on the excursion (unless you get a note from the ship doctor and the ship doctor agrees you are unable to do the excursion... but you have to be in pretty bad shape for this to happen. I know, because this happened to me when I very badly sprained my ankle (grade 3 sprain) on the Disney Magic a few years ago and ended up in the ship ER ... yah, no fun at all!! But, the doctor had Disney refund my excursion because he agreed there was no way I could walk to go on the excursion we had planned. But, on the other hand, my father-in-law once developed a bad sinus infection and he had a snorkeling Disney excursion planned, and he saw the ship doctor the morning he was to go on the excision, and the shop doctor agreed he had a bad sinus infection, but would not write a note to refund him for that excursion because the doctor claimed he could just stay out of the water, but still go on the boat for the excursion). So, that is a LONG way of saying, it's very rare Disney will refund your excursion of you are not well enough to go on the excursion, so that is why I add the Disney excursion cost to my trip insurance quote.
As for hotels, I add in just the first night's cost of all of our hotels, because MOST hotels will charge just one night's fee if you cancel past their cancellation deadline period. Also, I figure if our trip was delayed due to circumstances out of our control (weather, etc), and we are a day late getting to our destination, I will know we will be late, so that will give me time to call the hotel and adjust our dates we are staying without getting charged, but I just assume the hotel will still charge us one-night's fee if we cancel or change last minute. So, that is why I just add only 1-night's hotel cost into our total cost of insurance quote.
Also, any other things you have pre-paid (car rental, train tickets, pre-arranged private taxi's, etc), I add in all of those costs because it's likely they are non-refundable.
So, to sum it up, I would add to your quote any money you potentially could lose if you had to cancel very last minute or your flights were delayed and you made it to your destination a day late. Just read up on all the cancellation rules for your hotels and private excursions (if you have any booked) and that will help you know if you should include those in the quote price.
And, yes, for the medical part, if your medical insurance won't cover you out of the USA (or in Europe), then you would want to get a good medical plan with your trip insurance, including medivac, or medical transport.
Good luck!
Ah, Minnesota, our great settlement.. I haven't been there myself, yet, but every Swede knows about the great emigration in the 19th century and that most chose Minnesota. The guys of ABBA actually wrote a musical about it (based on books by another Swede, Vilhelm Moberg). And do you know the story of Paul Bunyan? The giant who created lakes in his footprints? Those kinds of stories explaining nature with trolls and giants are everywhere here (well, we don't really believe them any longer...
I don't know of any relatives in Minnesota, so probably we aren't related. My great-great-grandfather, however, was sent to Alaska because he wasn't allowed to marry my great-great-grandmother. Glad those things don't happen anymore..
The written language between Swedish, Norwegian, Danish and Icelandish is really similar but we speak it totally different. We all have different melodies and some crucial words differ. So chances are, even if you did know Norwegian we would probably not understand each other
Greek on the other hand is great! I've studied French, Spanish and Latin so I understand most Latin languages but that does not help at all with Greek. I do know the alphabet and have a colleague who is from Athens so I will have to pick her brain about what not to miss there. Do you have any excursions planned? My fiancé loves the ship and will want to stay there a lot but we're definitely doing something in Athens and will at least get off in every country to be able to say we've been there
I'm a total overplanner so Venice is already planned out. I think a 3 night pre-stay is just enough to see what needs to be seen. Where will you be staying? Our hotel is "2 min from Rialto bridge and 5 min from St Mark's" so hopefully we'll be able to walk most places or catch a vapretto.
Looking forward to seeing you and seeing if we'd recognize your Nordic looks
Thanks for the info on the insurance...I will have to add some things into my total. My first total included everything. My second was just the cruise and the rates were: $685.00, $451.00 and $331.00 for 3 adults.
Does this sound right? It's expensive for sure...
but this time I think I want it. When we had Kaiser Insurance I just didn't worry.
My daughter went to Japan in high school on an exchange. They made me get travel insurance, which I did. After I read it I found out it didn't include sports. They reason she went was for martial arts..waste of money!!! No refund because I didn't notice it until it was too late. That is when I called Kaiser and they said she was covered if she was hurt there doing martial arts....
No more Kaiser though...now we have medical through the government because my husband is retired AF....Saving almost $700.00 a month in premiums.
I truly appreciate all your help in finding travel insurance....
), so at the end, it was money lost, if you do look at it that way, but honestly, just having that sense of security knowing we'd get our money back for the cruise or parts of our trip if the trip is delayed due to cancelled flights, weather, etc, or worst case, we had to cancel last minute due to unexpected circumstances, or just knowing if something goes wrong (lost luggage, tc. etc. etc.), we were just put at ease and didn't have any underlying stress before or during our trip thinking if anything goes wrong, we're out a LOT of money. So, for these reasons, the insurance was totally worth the money, even knowing it might be money just thrown away.
Our daughter is 23 so it is nice to see there are others in same age range.
We are actually thinking of doing a quick 4 day out of Miami next month just to get a feel, not to mention get out of the cold 
