Well the final details of our Disney Cruise are finally coming together.

The cruise departs and returns to Barcelona, and given that there are no direct flights to Barcelona from Seattle, we had a few choices of which airports for our arriving and departing flights.

A technique I like to use when travelling is to take advantage of open-jaw itineraries. The idea is that you can fly into one airport, and fly out of a different one, avoiding any kind of backtracking to places you've already been, and giving you the logistical ability to cover twice the geography in the same amount of time.

The flights don't cost much more than round trip, particularly if you know how to use sites like Expedia or Orbitz and their "multiple cities" features. You simply say you want to fly, say, from SEA to ORY, and then from MAD to SEA. Then it's up to you to figure out how you're going to get from Paris to Madrid along the way. The cost basically works out to (Round Trip tickets to City A + Round Trip tickets to City B) / 2.

A quick summary of our trip:

Day 1
9:00am - Notre-Dame and Sainte-Chapelle.
11:30am - Metro to the Arc de Triomphe.
12:00pm - Walk down the Champs-Élysées and through the Jardins du Tuileries.
1:30pm - Tour the Louvre.
7:00pm - Dinner along the Seine.
8:00pm - Metro to the Trocadéro, and a stroll to La Tour Eiffel
9:00pm - Metro to the hotel overnight.

Day 2
The following day we're off to Disneyland Paris (what, you didn't think I'd make it to within 20 miles of Monsieur Mickey without saying "Bonjour"?!). We'll spend the entire day here and at Walt Disney Studios Park and the Disney Village. Later that evening, we board a night train for Barcelona.

Day 3
This is the day our cruise departs, but the night train drops us off nice and early for the opportunity to walk around the city. We have about eight hours by ourselves before we need to board the boat, so we'll stroll along the Placa de Catalunya near Les Rambles, before exploring the Gothic Quarter and its cathedral, the Museu Picasso, and Gaudi's Sagrada Familia. Next, we'll stroll to the Montjuïc, overlooking the port where I'm hoping we'll be able to get a glimpse of The Disney Magic, which we were last aboard in October 2005 on our Western-turned-Eastern Carribean cruise (thanks to Hurricane Wilma). For lunch we'll hit a Tapas bar, and retreat to the boat later that evening. (But not before picking up my own authentic embroidered Barça jersey)

Day 4 - Day 12
The rest of the itinerary is the cruise itinerary. Thursday is a day at sea, Friday we're in Sicily (Palermo), Saturday in Napoli, Pompeii, Sorento and Capri, Sunday in Sardinia, Monday in and around Rome, Tuesday in Florence and Pisa, Wednesday in Marseille, Thursday in Cannes and Nice, Friday at Sea, and Saturday back in Barcelona where we board a train for Madrid.

Day 13
We spend most of the day in Madrid, taking in la Plaza Mayor and the Museo del Prado before boarding our afternoon flight to return home.

I'll blog more about the train ride from Paris and the cruise itself a bit later.