Holidays 2013

There's no cheap way to do it but if you're not going to fly you will have to go by ship.

There are, occasionally, some cargo/freighter ships that will take passengers and they may appear to be the cheapest and are usually about £100 per night including full board. The problem with these is that they can take twice as long as a cruise ship.

You can get cheaper cruise ship rates across the Atlantic by getting a 'repositioning cruise'. This is where the cruise company is moving their ship from Europe to America (or vice versa) to pick up the seasonal trade in that area. e.g. changing from doing Mediterranean cruises in the summer to getting to the Caribbean for the Nov to May season. These can also work out about £100 per night and can do it in about 5 days.

You may be interested in looking at a cruise company called MSC. They are a privately owned Italian shipping line and are one of the biggest in the world. They have 13 cruise ships and about 140 cargo ships. They sometimes advertise repositioning cruises at leass than £50 per night.

The only problem with 'repositioning cruises' is that they will rarely take you in both directions at dates close to each other - but you may be lucky.

Whatever happens it will cost considerably more than flying. You can, at the right time, get return flights to the USA for as little as £300. If you can get yourself to fly for 7 hours you'll find this the best way. I think that both BA and Virgin have courses for people that have a fear of flying.

The days of very cheap 'courier' flights are over so that isn't an option any more. 'Courier' flights were when companies needed to transport time sensitive documents across the pond. They would pay a large proportion of your flight cost for you to take the documents for them. You had to give up the right to have hold luggage as you had to be able to walk straight off the plane and go immediately through customs to deliver the package to the destination. Courier companies now have their own intercontinental planes so can do it themselves. In the 80's I did London/New York return for £40 using this system.

Good luck with trying to get there

 

Just to add to this - I can highly recommend a travel advisor who can help with planning holidays, and am happy to provide website and contact details for her upon request. I won't put them on the public forum as I don't wish to fall foul of the advertising rules - please feel free to PM me if you would like her details.

 

Puerto Pollensa has always been a good quiet beach resort. In the 1920's and 30's they built some of the (then) best hotels on the island because the people with yachts used to go there. Some of those hotels are still standing and are still quite good.

The resort has been considerably updated since then but is still excellent. If you're self-catering then the Wednesday market is excellent for food shopping and if you go early (before 8 a.m.) you may get the produce much cheaper. They have lower prices for the locals shopping early and they quite often let you have the lower price as well.

The Sunday market in Pollensa is interesting and really good for atmosphere and sitting and having a coffee at one of the outside tables is great for people watching.