Want to See Europe for Cheap This Summer? Try a Cruise

It's just a few days until summer, the high season for travel, and yet too many of us are still uncertain as to where we plan to travel during that customary vacation period. I thought I'd contribute a few thoughts.
 
Currently, the single best value in travel are cruises of the Mediterranean. If you will go to the websites of any cruise discounter, you'll be amazed at the low rates for one-week and two-week sailings of that storied sea.
 
The reasons are several -- an unsettled political climate in several of the countries lining the Med, the recent tragedy of the Costa Concordia -- but primarily the general notion that the cost of trans-Atlantic airfares to reach the embarkation ports is simply unaffordable.
 
Let's start with the cost of the cruises themselves. If you'll go to a typical cruise discounter, like Vacations To Go ( www.vacationstogo.com ), and opt for the Mediterranean and a cruiseline like Royal Caribbean, and seven nights as the duration of the cruise, you'll have difficulty finding a single departure costing as much as a thousand dollars per person. In fact, you'll find numerous departures in June for $499 and in July for $599 per person.
 
And if you'll search instead for a two week cruise, and type in the words Celebrity Cruises, you'll find numerous departures of such upscale ships, on 12-night cruises in June, for as little as $849 and $999 -- that's as little as $80 a day. You'll find two-week cruises in July for under $100 a day. (And those July prices will undoubtedly come down even more as we approach that month.)
 
In addition to cruises on the large cruiseships, you'll also find spectacular bargains on the smaller ships carrying only 200 to 400-or-so passengers (a website for those smaller cruiseships is SmallShips.travel. This summer sees a buyer's market for all ships in the Med, large and small.
 
Now it's true that to reach the Mediterranean this summer, you'll need to buy a round-trip airfare for about $1,300 per person. So your total cost for a one-week cruise will be about $1,900, even $1,800, and your total cost for a two-week cruise will be about $2,400.
 
And you'll want to keep in mind that for a just a bit more, you can add on a several night stay in the colorful Mediterranean city in which you start or end your trip -- a city like Barcelona, or Venice, or Rome or Malaga -- and thus you'll have a longer-stay vacation for a totally affordable cost.