First time to Europe - Mediterranean Cruise

We are taking a cruise in April that stops at all of your Greek ports. Looking forward to it.

The problem with your three Italy stops is that the major attractions are a long way from the port, giving you limited time in Rome and Florence. If the port is LaSpezia, you may want to consider spending the day on the Cinque Terre. You can get a trail and train pass at the LaSpezia Train Station. I love Florence, but you will be spending too much of the day on a bus.

Same with Naples. My favorite attractions around there are not in the city. You would probably rather see places like Capri, Pompeii or the Amalfi Coast.

Great idea to spend a few days in Barcelona. Hotel Bornetta is a nice hotel in a prime location.
Book in advance tickets to Gaudi's Basilica and park and see at least one of his downtown mansions.

Personally, I wouldn't fly back to Rome. You can see the Vatican during the cruise day. Rome is cool but not worth an additional flight and more days in my opinion.

If I had a few more days after Athens, I'd choose to fly to Vienna over Rome. Or Porto.

We considered that but since it is our first trip there and have just reached retirement age, we decided to go the easy route to get over the intimidation factor. I’d like to revisit some of the places in Italy since we will be rushing through them on the cruise. Between the cruise and the extra days, we will already be hauling around three weeks of luggage, which even assuming we can do laundry, is going to be quite a bit of a haul. My wife claims she will pack light but that of course is all relative. LOL

Naples? LOL. What a joke. That cruise stop is not for your amusement. Barca in one day?

OP is setting himself up for a shite trip where he's going to miss out on a lot, and pay $$$ for the privilege.

If it were me, and time and budget allowed, I would pick a different European city further north to fly back home from. You're getting a pretty big taste of southern Europe, so why not add something a little different? September is a good month because weather is still nice everywhere and tourist crowds have died down. You have a ton of options to pick from - Paris, Amsterdam, Munich, Prague, London, etc...

So: 3 days Barcelona - Cruise - 3 days Athens - fly from Athens to other city - 3 days other city - fly home from other city.

I mention this mainly because there is such a huge difference between dirty places like Naples and Athens versus other parts of Europe. But I realize that's three weeks and more expense so not everyone could swing that.

As far as the cruise goes, I don't have any experience on those so take any advice here with a grain of salt. For Nice I would hop on a bus or coastal train and find a nice beach town within an hour and just have a beach day. The beaches in Nice aren't that great but there are some better options further away. For La Spezia, I would just do a day trip to Pisa or maybe Cinque Terra. I love Florence but doing it as a day trip is too much - it's the kind of place you need to slowly soak in and visit the surrounding Tuscan countryside. Plus, I like Pisa more than most travel snobs do. For Rome I would look into booking a guided excursion through the cruise ship. One day is nowhere near enough time to see the highlights of Rome but at least something organized by professionals will remove the stress of trying to navigate that chaos on your own. For Naples, I would go to Pompeii and Herculaneum. There's also a museum in Naples that contains many artifacts.

Monte Carlo is a good idea. We did the opposite. We docked in Monte Carlo and did Nice as part of a day trip. One of my favorite places around there is Eze. It is a quaint medieval village with one main street leading to the top of the hill where there is a park with beautiful views of the Mediterranean. Try to go there if you can.