Costa Serena: 12-Night Western Mediterranean

Savona cruise port is the main homeport for Costa Crociere (Costa Cruises), Italy's largest cruise line. Savona sits on the Italian Riviera (Liguria region) about 45 kilometers southwest of Genoa and 170 kilometers north of Nice.

Barcelona cruise port is the busiest in the Mediterranean, handling millions of passengers a year across multiple terminals. The city behind it earns that traffic.

Alicante is a mid-sized Spanish city of about 330,000 people on the Costa Blanca in southeastern Spain. It's a working Mediterranean city that happens to have a beautiful waterfront, a hilltop castle, and some of the best weather in Europe.

Lisbon cruise port is one of the most atmospheric arrivals in Europe. Ships sail up the Tagus River past the 25 de Abril Bridge (a near-twin of San Francisco's Golden Gate) and the Christ the King statue, with the city rising up on seven hills to the north.

Cadiz is the actual cruise port marketed as "Seville (Cadiz)" by cruise lines because Seville, Spain's fourth-largest city, is the primary day-trip draw from this port. Cadiz itself is one of Europe's oldest continuously inhabited cities, perched on a narrow peninsula jutting into the Atlantic on Spain's southwestern coast.

Tangier sits at the northwestern tip of Africa, where the Mediterranean meets the Atlantic and Morocco looks across the Strait of Gibraltar at Spain, just 14 km away. The city has about 1.

Cartagena is a historic port city of about 215,000 people on Spain's southeastern Mediterranean coast, in the Murcia region. Founded by the Carthaginians in 227 BC (as Carthago Nova), the city has been contested by Carthaginians, Romans, Moors, and Spanish kingdoms, and its layered history shows in the archaeological sites scattered through the compact center.

Marseille cruise port is France's busiest and one of the major stops on western Mediterranean itineraries. The city is France's second largest and its oldest, founded by Greek sailors over 2,600 years ago, and it has a rougher, more authentic edge than the polished Riviera towns further east.