Confusing title, right? No worries…read on.

Before I start posting more photos from our recent adventure, I thought a little background might be helpful. Maybe, maybe not.

For years I’ve entertained this idea that I would love to take a transatlantic cruise to Europe in the spring, spend the summer bumming around the continent, then take another transatlantic cruise back to the states in the fall. That’s what cruise ships (in the northern hemisphere) usually do – winter in the Caribbean and summer in the Mediterranean, Baltic or Alaska.

There is generally only one way to sail over to Europe and back in less than a summer on a major cruise line. Cunard operates regular transatlantic cruises year round on the Queen Mary II. We know people that do it, but it is a little pricey and just never seemed like the way we wanted to do things.

About a year and a half ago, friends told us about an upcoming cruise opportunity on Royal Caribbean’s Adventure of the Seas that was going to Spain for dry dock. It was scheduled to leave Port Canaveral in Florida, sail to Lisbon, Portugal then go into dry dock for about three weeks. After dry dock it was scheduled to sail from Barcelona, Spain back to Port Canaveral. The price was great – less than it would cost us to fly round trip for both cruises – round trip! Plus it would make stops on the way both ways. Portugal and Spain had been on our radar for a while but had not quite made it to the top of the list. But sometimes opportunity is the best motivation! So we booked it. It seemed so far away at the time.

Once we had our transportation over and back, we had to figure out how to get from Lisbon to Barcelona in 3-ish weeks. A couple of emails to friends and a few calls with our lovely travel agents came up with a plan. We had lots of options, but finally settled on spending time in Porto & Lisbon in Portugal, then Cordoba, Valencia and Barcelona in Spain. We usually prefer to spend more time in fewer places, and considered these cities to be good places to explore in and to explore from. We were also counting on visiting in the off season, so hopefully there would be fewer crowds in the popular places.

Rather than make this a 300 page post that no one reads (are you still reading? ) I’ll try and add some details to the individual city posts as I do them. That will make each post a little shorter and more concise, and give me more material to share. Porto will be up first in a few days.