Sometimes our destinations just drop in front of our eyes. Often that happens when we’ve been thinking places and things to do for quite some time and get a little frustrated. And then suddenly, a good flight deal or a new destination just appears.
This is exactly how we came up with the idea of Barcelona for July. One night we noticed that MSC has a brand new cruise ship sailing at the Mediterranean summer 2018 and that there will be cruises from Barcelona. Pekka has studied at the University of Barcelona years back and the city has a special place in his heart. It’s been quite some time we last visited and we started making plans for some city stay days & a Med cruise that would take us to France, Italy and Malta.
Now that the trip is near we realized this trip is in many ways a totally new experience. So many first times. Awesome! Here are some of the big first times:
- First time flying with Air Baltic, we fly from our home town Turku
- First time at Riga International Airport RIX
- First time in Lithuania
- First time in Riga, thinking of maybe taking a little excursion between flights
- First summer time trip to Barcelona (crazy hot, we know)
- First time cruising at the Mediterranean
- First time booking a cruise from an outside travel agent (Finnish Risteilykeskus had an awesome deal including the drink package & wifi)
- First time cruising on MSC Cruises, the ship Seaview had it’s maiden voyage in June
- First visit to the city of Marseille
- First visit to to the city of Genova
- First visit to the city of Napoli
- First visit to the city of Messina
- First visit to Malta
- First visit to the city of Valletta
At this point, a couple of weeks to takeoff, our kitchen table is filled with to do -lists, notes of destinations, guidebooks by different publishers.
Lonely Planet (Different Med areas, nice Barcelona map), Eyewitness Travel (Italy & Barcelona guides), Tripsteri Barcelona guide (an excellent new Finnish travel media). We love traditional books and appreciate the writers, apps are good additions, but never give us the same vibes (sorry guys). Our YouTube searches and documentary moments lead us to the cities we’ll visit.
What makes planning easy is the fact that we will be within EU and don’t have to think of visas, ESTAs, currency exchange. And for the games at the ship casino (that uses dollars) we’ll have some money from last last trip to the US.
So. We’ve got our flights. We’ve booked some excursions to cruise ports. We’ve checked for our cruise & printed all the documentary.
But people, you lovely people: please, give tips. Any tips to any of the stuff of we’ve listed above. Comment here or send email to contact(at)dinkgo.com. Or go to our social media channels and give your tips to our post there: Facebook https://www.facebook.com/dinkgotravel/ or to our IG account https://www.instagram.com/dinkgotravel/
