Lessons Learned From Our Mediterranean Vacation

1. Don’t overplan with too much walking for seniors and kids. Use more taxis, or car and bus tours to get around.

2. Make sure to carry lots of snacks for mid-morning and mid-afternoon blood sugar boosts.

3. Using a reputable tour company that has good communications takes a lot of stress out of the pre-trip planning. Jany from Romeinlimo, for example, was always helpful, courteous and responsive despite my frequent, and probably sometimes annoying, emails. She was that rare coordinator who understands that she needs to answer questions and do it promptly in order that her customers can have confidence that a specific tour will take place when, where, how and for how much, the customer expects.

4. As tours and transfers consume a huge part of a vacation budget, sharing them with others makes a lot of practical and financial sense. And it's more fun!

5. Due to the cruise length and breadth of ports (the two B2B itineraries were clearly designed to compliment each other), the distances between ports are smaller than on other cruise itineraries. Thus we could spend more time in most ports and this greatly increased touring flexibility and reduced stress.

6. Despite HAL’s reputation for skewing older demographically, the guests on our sailing were the youngest we’ve ever sailed with. The Mediterranean itinerary is definitely more demanding physically and perhaps this skewed the guest list to younger and more physically fit guests.

7. HAL’s approach to turnaround days on B2Bs was a very pleasant surprise: no annoying morning announcements; special lunch, spa and tour options; and no muster drill.

8. Loved HAL’s silent disembarkation process (as compared to our RCI and Carnival experiences). Very effective, quiet and orderly.

9. The port shuttles that charge a fee are almost always a rip-off.

10. Bring and wear sandals for the beaches in Croatia—very rocky and painful to walk on barefooted!

11. Relatively few places accepted (or wanted to accept) credit cards. While perhaps half of restaurants took plastic, virtually none of the museum, church or site admissions accepted them. This resulted in me withdrawing and using much more cash than originally planned.

12. Even when a restaurant accepted credit cards, nearly every one of them wanted tips in cash only.

13. As long as you are not a timid or conservative driver, renting a car makes a lot of sense in many ports. The rental process is very quick and easy. Renting a car is much more convenient, gives you a lot of flexibility to go where and when you please, and is more cost effective than hiring a private driver or taxi.

14. In Italy (and perhaps other places in Europe too), you need to buy your train or bus tickets BEFORE you get onboard one.

15. To drink directly from the ancient public water fountains in Roma, stick your finger into the end or bottom of the pipe, and the water will shoot up the small hole in the top surface of the pipe.

16. To board and ride a bus in Santorini, you need to be really aggressive, push your way onboard and squeeze into any available orifice. Then the onboard worker will push and squeeze his way to you somehow to collect the 1.20 Euro fare.

17. When taking pictures of large buildings, objects or scenery that won’t fit in a single camera frame, take multiple shots (making sure to overlap the images) and use photo stiching or merging software to create the final aggregated image when you return home. A great way to get those too-big-to-fit shots and for panoramas!