Since we spent 3 weeks traveling around Europe on our own and then 2 weeks on the Celebrity Summit, perhaps our ideas will be helpful to someone who is trying to decide what kind of a vacation suits them best.

First, to summarize: We flew into Prague, then traveled to Berlin, Munich, Melk Vienna and Hallstadt in Austria, Muerren and Zermatt in Switzerland, and Lake Como the Cinque Terre and Venice in Italy. Part of our travels were by train and the rest in a rented car. Train travel in Europe is easy and cheap and we had no problem with driving. Thanks to Rick Steve's travel books we stayed in lovely pensions run by wonderful people, and ate at inexpensive, smaller restaurants that had wonderful native food. We also knew exactly where we were going and how to get there, but it does require a considerable amount of pre-planning (part of the fun for me).

Cruising is like staying in an American hotel, going ashore for a few hours, then returning to your hotel for dinner and a show - little opportunity to really get to know the country, its cuisine or its people. However, very convenient and requires very little planning. The food was much better than I had expected. You don't really need the specialty restaurant to find good food. We ate at the Normandie twice, but the food really isn't that much better and we enjoyed the people at our table so much that I'd only do one night if we did it again. My big beef is that there is so little time to see the country at each port of call. On the other hand, we had wonderful dining companions that were well matched to us. Again, the big thing is EASY. The only planning necessary was for our shore excursions and everything else is done for you. Read more