Next October 30th, MrsMJonTravel will celebrate a major birthday milestone that shall remain unnumbered here on the blog. 🙂 To celebrate, we have booked a 14-night repositioning cruise aboard Celebrity Reflection. Reflection, the last of Celebrity’s beautiful Solstice Class ships, is currently under construction in the Meyer-Werft shipyard in Papenburg, Germany. Our cruise will be the ship’s 3rd revenue cruise (by my calculations), and will be the first leg of a trans-Atlantic voyage to Miami. We will board our cruise on November 4, 2012, in Venice, Italy, and disembark 14 days later in Barcelona, Spain. The ship then goes on to Miami. Many cruisers are doing the whole thing from Venice to Miami, but that’s just too much time away for us at this stage in our careers….as in, we aren’t retired yet. 🙂
What’s to think about, you ask? Well, getting to the cruise in Venice, and back home from Barcelona, in Business or First Class, of course! Since we will be heading to Italy a few days before our cruise, I’m thinking about just flying into Rome on the nonstop from Dulles and taking the train to Tuscany and then Venice. Right now, it looks like award inventory in a premium class of service on United will work out well. The more interesting part of this will be getting home from Barcelona. I don’t think there’s a nonstop from there to DC, so a connection will likely be involved. I have both United and US Airways miles to work with. Oh the possibilities! It’s getting close to the point that I can actually book our outbound flights, so I’ll be scoping the airline websites and ExpertFlyer hot and heavy very soon. This is going to be fun! How would you work a trip like this from a using miles perspective?
[…] spanking new Celebrity Reflection for a 14 night repositioning cruise from Venice to Barcelona. I mentioned this on the blog […]
You might also want to think about the Amex Plat Celebrity Cruise On Board Credit https://www295.americanexpress.com/cards/platinum/app/benefitservices.do?benefitTemplate=template_d&benefitId=3&operation=printtemplate_d&partner=10&resultCount=0 Also, I stayed in Aqua Class and would take AQ suite 2109 onboard Reflection in a heartbeat for the “hump” balcony if it is available. 2107 AQ stateroom also very nice, just without the suite amenities. Part of the 12th floor will have an overhang above it, though, if it follows sister builds. That means the balconies between the humps are usually in the shade. I also just completed the Halloween cruise on the Allure (even also had the A menu at 150) and… Read more »
Reeder,
We booked Reflection while on Allure too!
I believe United will be starting nonstop flights to Barcelona from IAD sometime in 2012, with Continental 757 aircraft. They’re quite comfortable in business class.
How nice that you are helping your wife plan her milestone birthday. I have to plan my 40th birthday myself! Thinking Australia in Feb. 2013, but this transatlantic cruise sounds pretty wonderful! Plus I know I’m never going to be able to use miles to get to Australia. 🙁
I’m good with the logistics of getting us where we need to be. She researches what we need to do when we get there. Team effort. 🙂
I’d try to find a way to visit the FRA FCT if you haven’t been
I haven’t, and that’s definitely been on my mind.