General Hints: If you can, take a non-stop flight to Barcelona. We know of two groups, one from California and one from Canada who had stopovers in Frankfurt and Heathrow, whose luggage did not make the ship before it sailed. Also, try to get to Barcelona, a day or two before the ship sails. It is a beautiful city and well worth the time. Also,if you can, stay 2-3 days in Venice after the cruise is over. Venice is a great city and also well worth the time. Look into the post-cruise packages offered by Celebrity. Celebrity then is responsible for getting your luggage to the hotel and then to the airport, when your stay is over. If you book on your own, know that water taxis are quite expensive and they are the only way to get to a hotel. Also, book a 4 star hotel. Three star hotels do not have porter service. We had to get our baggage from the water taxi to the hotel and take it up yo our rooms ourselves.In Venice, book tours to the island of Murano and to the Jewish Ghetto, they are excellent tours. The Millennium is a beautiful ship. The staff was excellent. They were very attentive to our needs. We booked concierge class. The only reason I would recommend concierge is that the room is bigger and on a two week cruise, that is important. Otherwise,we did not see any real advantage to that class. The food in the restaurant was good; nothing really special. We ate twice in the Olympic Restaurant. There is an extra charge ($30.00per person, but, it is well worth it. The food and the service were excellent. The shows were good. The Celebrity singers and dancers were very good. EXCURSIONS: Since we were a group of four people, our travel agent recommended that we look into private tours. We used the private tours in Nice, Italy and Athens. It was well worth the money and in some cases were cheaper than the ship's tours. In Athens, we used Athens Taxi.com. If you use them, ask for the van. The taxi was tight for four people. for Nice, we used Ming Tours. For Italy, we used Jeremy Tours. Jeremy Tours was really very good. The drivers and guides were good. They had an in-depth knowledge and were able to get us into places before the large groups. In addition, they showed us places not normally seen by tourists, This was especially true in Rome and Florence.

Be sure to take the tour of Positano, Sorrento and the Amalfi Coast. Use a private tour, if you can. This was the most breathtaking tour on the trip. The city we liked the least was Istanbul. Take the historical tours. They are better than the two day Classical Tour.DO NOT take the nighttime excursion to the Turkish nightclub. This was a big rip-off. For the Greek Island of Mykonos, you do not need to take the tour. Just take the tender to the island and walk around. It is a pretty island. The excursion to Santorini, we thought, was a waste. Again, take the tender to the island and take the cable car and just walk around. Keep checking on the excursions. Not all of the excursions were listed on-line or in the booklet that they send you. Some of the excursions that they said would not be available were actually available. One example was the tour of Jewish Istanbul.