Transatlantic Cruise Cost Summary

Here is a summary breakdown of our total trip expenses from our transatlantic journey. Including travel days, we spent 21 days on our journey:

Major Travel Components	USD Expense
Hotels	$ 74.43
Cruise (including tips)	$ 1,103.66
Flights	$ 952.92
Food	$ 322.07
Gifts/Souveniours	$ 210.53
Other Transportation	$ 340.74
Misc/Museums	$ 55.33
Total	$ 3,060

Some notes about our trip expenses:

We used our hotel points/airline miles to cover 4/5 hotel nights. The 5th night we purchased a room on orbitz for $75.
We took advantage of a recent British Airways credit card promotion to earn 200k airline miles which we used for nearly all of our flights on this trip (with the exception of our last minute name change on airplane ticket).
No question about it we got a great deal on our cruise tickets. It was a tremendous value and I made the most of it eating steak 13 out of the 14 nights on the cruise :-). Wow it was good - I won't be eating like that again for a while.
$3,000+ is a lot of money to spend on a vacation. That would go a long way towards paying down our rental mortgage, but I still think it was worth it - we had a great time. I'm interested in doing this type of extended trip again if we can get a similar amount of value out of it.
We were very fortunate to have good friends available to care for our dog and family take care of our daughter while we went on this trip. Had they not been available we would likely not been able to take this trip. Certainly the expenses associated with the trip would have been much more than they were.

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Comments (3)

Now that you've finished the trip, can you post a bit more info on the cruise? I assume it was a repositioning cruise, so you had one choice of dates. For that price, it must have been an inside room: how did you like that?

Posted by Scott | December 16, 2011 11:02 AM

Scott,

Sure - yes it was a 14 day re-positioning cruise from Palma, Spain to Colon, Panama. The dates weren't perfect for us, it was over Halloween but otherwise worked out well. We had an inside cabin with a queen size bed (if I recall correctly). Cabin was fine - we spent very little time in the cabin other than sleeping and I don't think I would ever upgrade to a outside cabin unless money was no object or it was just a very small upgrade fee. While its nicer, I don't see nearly as good a value in it. Our full trip itinerary included
2 days in Madrid, Spain
1 day in Palma, Spain
3 days at sea
1 day in Tenerife, Spain
5 days at sea
1 day in Philipsburg, St Martin
1 day in St John, Antigua
1 day in Bridgetown, Barbados
3 days at sea
2 days in Panama City, Panama

Let me know if there are any other specifics your interested in.

Posted by 2million | December 19, 2011 2:27 PM

Thanks so much! Very helpful.

Posted by Scott | December 19, 2011 5:20 PM