Cruise Extension

I seriously investigated extending our cruise for an additional 12 days. This would have taken us back through the Baltics, ending in Dublin. We’d have picked up 4 additional new port visits, and repeated 4 ports; however, one of the repeats would have been St. Petersburg, where we would have had an overnight and thus some significant additional excursion options.

The beauty of this would have been that we’d have had more attractive flights back to the US. Instead of Stockholm to Amsterdam to Detroit to Ft. Lauderdale (our current plan), We’d have gone Dublin to Chicago together, then Kathleen Chicago to Cincinnati and me Chicago to Ft. Meyer. Kathleen would have missed some days in Naples, but would have gotten back to Cincinnati at about the same time.

The room cost would have been about 40% of the cost per day that we are paying for our 117 days. So an attractive price too.

It looks like this will not happen. Princess will not release the money tied up with our existing airline tickets. This is really a stupid decision on their part. Perhaps they will gain some sanity, but, as is, we’ll not do the extension.

If anyone was still wondering whether we have gotten bored and are anxious to end the cruise, this episode may settle that question. At least one of us (me) is not ready to have this end. 117 days is not too long. Going to 129 days would have been fine!