MSC Preziosa: 7-Night Northern Europe from Rotterdam

Rotterdam is Europe's largest port city and a major cruise embarkation point in the Netherlands, located in the Rhine-Meuse-Scheldt river delta about 80 km south of Amsterdam. The cruise terminal (Rotterdam Cruise Terminal) is at the Wilhelminakade on the south bank of the Nieuwe Maas river, in the shadow of the Erasmus Bridge.

Hamburg is Germany's second-largest city and its biggest port, sitting about 100 kilometers inland from the North Sea on the Elbe River. The city serves as a major embarkation point for Northern European, Norwegian fjord, and Baltic Sea cruises, with a growing role as a port of call on repositioning and British Isles itineraries.

London (Southampton) cruise port is the busiest cruise departure point in the United Kingdom and one of the largest in Northern Europe. The port sits in Southampton, a city on England's southern coast about 80 miles southwest of London.

Paris (Le Havre) cruise port is the gateway from Northern European cruise itineraries to Paris and Normandy. Le Havre itself is a port city on the Normandy coast where the Seine River meets the English Channel, about 200 kilometers northwest of Paris.

Zeebrugge is a North Sea port about 15 km from Bruges, one of Europe's best-preserved medieval cities. Ships dock at Zeebrugge, but the destination is Bruges: a city of 120,000 people whose medieval center survived the centuries virtually intact because the city's commercial importance faded after the Zwin river silted up in the 15th century, and nobody had a reason to tear anything down.