My wife and I returned last week from a 12 day cruise on Royal Caribbean’s Serenade of the Seas. The cruise began and ended in Barcelona, Spain with scheduled visits to Cannes, France; La Spezia (Florence/Pisa); Civitavecchia, Italy (Rome); Salerno, Italy; Ravenna, Italy; Venice, Italy; and Dubrovnik, Croatia. We did not visit Ravenna due to high winds and high seas. The Captain made a wise decision, which was rendered academic since the port did close. Nevertheless, there were passengers on our ship who complained about skipping Ravenna. Some people show little common sense, unfortunately.

PRE-CRUISE HOTEL

We chose to make our own hotel reservations since the hotel arranged by Royal Caribbean was quite expensive. We stayed at the Eurostars Gran Marina near the port. It was mildly pricey, but very nice and very close to Las Ramblas. We arrived the morning of the day before the cruise. The hop on-hop off bus stops at the hotel and we toured part of Barcelona on the day before. Read more