A cruise that crosses the Atlantic twice in one trip is a rare thing, and Princess Cruises' Island Princess is doing exactly that. The 2,000-passenger ship left Fort Lauderdale earlier this month on the 'Grand Mediterranean Odyssey', a 50-night roundtrip sailing that returns to Port Everglades in late November after calling at 24 ports across 10 countries and territories.
The route reads like a greatest-hits album. After early stops in Bermuda and Portugal's Azores, the 88,000-ton ship passed through the Strait of Gibraltar into the Western Mediterranean, with calls planned in Spain, France and Italy — Barcelona, Palma de Mallorca, Ajaccio, Portoferraio and Naples among them. From late October into early November, the focus shifts east: Santorini, Mykonos, Rhodes, Kusadasi (for Ephesus), Dubrovnik and Kotor are all on the list, covering Greece, Turkey, Croatia and Montenegro.
The homeward leg adds a third layer of variety, with stops in Gibraltar, Morocco and the Canary Islands, including Casablanca and Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, before the ship crosses the Atlantic back to Florida.
Not everyone has 50 days to spare, and Princess clearly knows it. The sailing was also sold as two separate 25-night segments between Fort Lauderdale and Piraeus, the port for Athens — a clever way to sample a grand-voyage format without committing to two months away. Once the ship is back home, she switches to short-haul mode with Caribbean and Bahamas itineraries, then in December starts a series of 16-night open-jaw Panama Canal cruises between Los Angeles and Fort Lauderdale, featuring a full transit of the canal plus stops in the Caribbean and on Central America's Pacific coast. That deployment runs through late April, after which Island Princess heads north for an Alaskan summer: seven-night sailings between Vancouver and Whittier, as one of eight Princess ships in the region.
Why does this matter for travellers? Because it's a good example of how repositioning seasons work. When lines move ships between regions — Florida to Europe in autumn, Alaska in summer, the canal in winter — the sailings either side are longer, quirkier and often better value per night than standard itineraries. If you've ever wanted to see the Mediterranean without a long-haul flight (sailing from Florida instead), or to tick off six or seven countries in one trip, itineraries like this one are worth watching for. And if a 50-night odyssey sounds like too much, the segment model — half the voyage, same ship, same range of ports — is an approachable entry point to the world-cruise style of travel.
For now, the Island Princess is somewhere in the Eastern Med, working through a port list most of us would struggle to plan in a single lifetime.
