Icons of the Mediterranean

Southampton offers fast and efficient check-in areas, spacious departure lounges with seating areas, café-bars and smart washrooms. If you wish to travel by car and park for the duration of your cruise, you can pay for and reserve parking in advance directly with the relevant company. Alternatively, if being dropped off or collected by taxi or private car, they can drive right up alongside the terminal building.

Dominated by ‘the Rock', a towering 1, 396 ft sentinel that guards the Straits, the Arabs' Gebel el Tarik or Tarik's Rock is today simply ‘Gib'. Resolutely British for nearly 300 years, its unique setting unites the oddly familiar - from the helmeted policemen to Marks & Spencer - with an extrovert Mediterranean mood. Test the shops and pubs in Main Street and Irish Town, take a cable-car ride to enjoy the grandstand views to a nearby Africa, and of course make a call on those Barbary apes!

One of the Western Mediterranean's most colourful metropolises, Spain's cosmopolitan second city overflows with interest, it's mood infused with a vibrant Catalan spirit and heritage. You'll catch the pulse of Barcelona when you stroll the mosaic paved Ramblas, the city's social hub, with open-air cafes, street entertainers and flower displays - and meet its unique cultural heritage in the ancient Gothic Quarter, the surrealistic architecture of Antonio Gaudi, and some outstanding museums and parks.

Friendly capital of this captivating ‘Isle of Beauty', whose rugged coastline and flawless beaches enclose a fragrant maquis-carpeted interior dotted with mellow old hill-towns. Fought over by Greek, Roman, Vandal, Byzantine and Saracen, Corsica was sold by Genoa to France in 1768 - a fateful day for Europe, for a year later one Napoleon Bonaparte was born in Ajaccio (his birthplace is now a museum).

Gateway to Rome - Italy's Eternal City, living monument to a 3,000-year history that has shaped the civilisation of our western world. From the Colosseum and Forum of Ancient Rome to the city's great masterpieces of renaissance and Baroque art and architecture, the emblems of past grandeur provide a backdrop for the elegant designer boutiques, pavement cafes, inviting trattorie and countless sophisticated pleasures of today's vibrant capital.

Today Spain's major commercial port and naval base, Cartagena lies on the coast of Murcia, its great indented bay guarded by rocky promontories, each topped by a fort. Founded in 221 BC by Hasdrubal, leader of the Carthaginians (hence the name) from North Africa, it has a fascinating history - and as Nova Carthage was long the Romans' principal settlement in their Iberian stronghold. Attractive promenades extend along the harbour, while to the northeast is the famous beach and watersports resort area of the lagoon-like Mar Menor.

It was from historic Lisbon, built on seven low hills beside the wide Tagus estuary, that some of Europe's greatest explorers set sail in pursuit of the riches that built Portugal's former global empire in the New World, Africa and the Indies. Memories of that glorious past linger amid the grand avenues and elegant squares of the attractive capital's 18th century lower town - a vivid contrast with the colourful honeycomb of cobbled streets in the old Moorish Alfama quarter and the bohemian mood of the hilly Bairro Alto.

Southampton offers fast and efficient check-in areas, spacious departure lounges with seating areas, café-bars and smart washrooms. If you wish to travel by car and park for the duration of your cruise, you can pay for and reserve parking in advance directly with the relevant company. Alternatively, if being dropped off or collected by taxi or private car, they can drive right up alongside the terminal building.