MinnieDiva
Obsessive Trip Planner
- Joined
- Oct 22, 2008
I am in! We are scheduled for June 8th. I will wave to you as I disembark. We plan to tour before and after this trip. It is going to be so expensive, but sooo worth it! We have never been to Europe. I am a sponge and want to learn a lot. Little scared about the language barriers when we are out and about away from DCL. I have OCD, too...especially when it comes to planning. I will take any tips you can give!
Too funny! I'll be looking for the wave! We have friends doing the June 27th cruise we'll be waving at when we get off. They were on the last 2 cruises with us. In fact, it was their fault that Mindelmouse's family and ours went to Alaska last summer.
So, funny you should mention the language issue. You hear that Barcelona is English-friendly. I didn't agree. I have a theory about this, though. Don't Europeans go "on holiday" in August? So the ones that were working in Barcelona while we were there might have been a bit disgruntled that they were working and not on vacation? I don't know, but it was a challenge for me. To the point that I'm thinking about getting that language program at Costco (not Rosetta but similar) to brush up on my Spanish. I took it in college, but clearly was floundering. One of the realizations I had traveling over there was that we do our society a disservice by not introducing and maintaining language education from an early age. Kinda sad...
So today, I went to the library, and got 3 travel books, one on Greece, one on Turkey, and Rick Steves' Mediterranean Cruise Ports. So, I'm lucky in that Rick Steves is from this area. His store (which I've been to) and his classes (that I have yet to attend), are all about an hour and a half drive from my house. He has a Facebook page on which he posts deals occasionally. I just got a dvd set of 8 shows..."Mediterranean Mosaic" for $5 with free shipping!!! LOVE his info! Used his mini-books for Barcelona and Cinque Terre last time; I tore apart the books, removed all the lodging info, and then had them bound up by Office Max so as to have minimal weight for packing. Which reminds me that I need to go figure out where I put it....