To travel from North America to Europe we spent two weeks aboard Costa Fascinosa on a repositioning cruise. This is a one way transatlantic route when the cruise ship has to move from its winter season location (Caribbean) to its summer season location (Mediterranean). Because the ship has to get there anyway and most people don’t like long one way cruises, they sell these tickets super cheap, so it’s an excellent way to cross the pond at this time of year. We paid $500 each to get from the Dominican Republic to Italy on an all inclusive cruise!

Our first day on the ship was at sea, so we had plenty of time to explore the pools, hot tubs, restaurants, bars, gym, casino, library and theatre. We went to a quiz in the main bar and ended up winning a voucher for 2 scoops of ice cream to use at the gelateria on board – this is normally an additional cost, but since all your meals and desserts are included already it wasn’t a huge win, but a nice perk all the same.

We also discovered that water was not freely available, only on deck 9 in the buffet restaurant, where you weren’t supposed to take more than a cup at a time. Even at the a la carte restaurant, which was the preferred place to have dinner each night, you had to buy a €4 bottle of water to be able to have any drink with your meal. So we spent 5 minutes every evening refilling all of our water bottles from the dispenser that had a big ‘do not refill bottles’ sign in order to have some at dinner and overnight, and so did a lot of other people. Despite the stingy water policy it’s hard to complain about a two week cruise from the Caribbean to Europe.

Our first stop was Saint Maarten. We knew very little about this Caribbean Island and honestly don’t know much more now. Many of the highlights were just small towns or specific beaches, and since there was a small town with a lovely beach right by the cruise port, we didn’t feel the need to go anywhere else. We wandered the boardwalk a little, and then found a bar offering 2 beach beds, an umbrella, 2 rum punches and WiFi for €10, so we set up there for the rest of the day. The sea was so blue and so warm, and made up for the fact that the WiFi was bad and the rum punches were small. Creed found a bottle of his favourite French liquor for $8 in the duty free shop when it’s ordinarily €25-30, and we managed to sneak it back on board the ship.

Next we set sail across the Atlantic, so we had 6 full days at sea, though each day except the last was only 23 hours so that by the time we arrived in Europe we were caught up with the 5 hour time difference. We did yet more quizzes, including a big 5 day event where our team came second and won 3 more free ice cream vouchers. We made use of the gym in an attempt to offset the large amounts of food we were consuming each day. We got a free 5 minute massage demo at the spa, but unsurprisingly opted against paying $150 for the full hour treatment. We attended the nightly shows of singers, dancers and acrobats. We went to the pool on the first day, but after that it was too cold and windy in the middle of the ocean for me to want to get in. The ship had a water slide that was supposedly open to all ages but it was usually closed due to the wind so we never actually got to go on it. It was surprisingly busy on the cruise, and because there were only 3 hot tubs they were often too full to get in. So we ended up spending a lot of time in bed watching movies, which seems like a waste of time when you have so many included facilities and activities, but was a very enjoyable way to pass the time. We did drag ourselves out of bed for the silent disco on deck on the last night of the crossing, accompanied by a midnight cake buffet.

Once across the ocean we arrived into Tenerife. We visited this stop on a previous cruise, so didn’t have much planned. We retraced our steps from the last time we’d explored the city, sat in the park for a while, bought a bottle of sparkling wine to celebrate being back where cava is incredibly cheap, and had a picnic on the seafront with ham and hash browns stolen from the cruise breakfast. After another day at sea we were in Cadiz, which was new for me. We took a free walking tour to see the sights, then sat on the beach for another breakfast picnic and cava, our cruise port tradition.

There was one final day at sea and then we were in Barcelona. I decided last minute that I wanted to go inside the Sagrada Familia but of course the tickets were sold out, so we just looked at it from the outside. The park surrounding the cathedral was hosting a food festival, a board game rental, some salsa classes and live music, so was full of activity. Here we met up with my school friend Ciara who I hadn’t seen in about 4 years. We did lots of wandering and catching up, stopping in at some Roman ruins and the marina full of super yachts. We visited a bar that Creed had discovered on his first visit 7 years ago, which was now much more upmarket but still very local, very cheap, and very fun. We did a cava tasting and ended up with a bottle to take home, home being our cruise cabin. We thought they might not like us trying to bring it on board, but they just waved us straight through past the usual security so it ended up being no problem at all.

Our final stop was Marseille, another city we’ve visited fairly recently. We happened to be there on the first Sunday of the month, when all of the city museums are free, so we were able to explore the fort which we skipped last time. We saw the cathedral, wandered the old port, and then headed to a park to sit in the shade for a while, because it was surprisingly a very hot day. We were back on the boat early, so managed to secure a spot in the hot tub as we sailed out of port for the final time. We celebrated the end of our cruise with our cava from Barcelona and the last free ice cream left from our vouchers.

We disembarked in Savona, Italy, and spent some time wandering the small streets and picnicking in the square, before heading towards Milan and the airport. Overall I don’t think I’d recommend Costa cruise line, but if you’re wanting to get from America to Europe in the spring (or vice verse in autumn) then a repositioning cruise is still the best way to do it.

Thanks for following along on my crazy adventures!

 Ros ♥

If you’re interested in how I got here, or where I went next, check out the rest of the story!