To give background about ourselves, I am in the medical field and my husband is an accounting supervisor with a fortune 500 company. We enjoy traveling, and have been on 6 cruises previously. Our favorite has been Alaska! To prepare for this cruise, we bought Rick Steve's Italy and France 2007 books and found them to be helpful. We were traveling with our best friends. Overall, we had a wonderful time and would highly recommend this trip!

To begin our trip, we flew from the U.S. to Paris for a 2-day "layover." I had never been to Paris, and really enjoyed it! We spent one day going to Versailles--trying to recover from jet lag! Then, our other day, we just strolled along the Seine River, enjoying the atmosphere and the cafes. We of course stopped off at the "majors" including Eiffel tower and Notre Dam. We stayed at the Holiday Inn Express at the CDG airport, which was CHEAP, had a free hotel shuttle from the airport and the train station...and we found it to be clean and acceptable...not the most luxurious place we have stayed, but recovering from jet lag--we didn't care! A tip on Paris---get to the CDG airport EARLY---we almost missed our flight---and got to the airport 2 1/2 hours before the flight.

From Paris, we flew to Barcelona using EasyJet out of the Orly airport. It was ok....although, their flight times were not very convenient (especially coming home) We had a blast in Barcelona. Loved strolling along La Rambla with the street performers. We also visited the la sagrada de familia--which was beautiful---and a must-see for Barcelona--but we had more fun at La Rambla. We attended a flamenco show (TablaoCordobes.com)....it was good, but expensive, and honestly---one of the shows on the cruise ended up being a flamenco show---so not sure it was worth the money. We stayed at the Vinci arena, which was ok....not incredibly convenient though. But, taxis are pretty cheap in Barcelona! Read more