COSTA CRUISES
Elevate your holiday experience by cruising to many of Europe’s finest golf courses – and the Ryder Cup!
There’s something special about the golf holiday that keeps us going back for more, year after year. Whatever country you happen to be standing in, you are still – when you boil it down – hitting a ball around a field until you get it into 18 holes. But the game feels tangibly different on fairer soils, in ways that are hard to quantify. Something about teeing off abroad tastes somehow sweeter.
But it is more than the golf; it is an escape to a completely different world. From post-round drinks on an unfamiliarly warm evening, to some magnificent views that your local parkland can’t quite match, you’re strapped in for a true experience, so much so that the score on your card often becomes of secondary importance.
UK golfers have long adopted the annual overseas excursion as a pilgrimage of sorts, even the pinnacle of a golfer’s experience. Our mistake has always been in limiting ourselves to one destination per trip.
What sets cruising apart from your standard luxury holiday – other than the obvious abundance of water – is the sheer adventure of it all. You never wake up in the same place twice, which means a different golf course can be in reach every morning of your break. The enormous Costa Smeralda, with a capacity of well over 6,000 passengers at a time, is your vessel for a star-studded tour of layouts across three countries. And it’s hard to think of a better arena for this innovative new concept than the Mediterranean, the gateway to some of golf’s great regions.
Everything you’d expect from a luxury holiday and more is on board the 20-deck ship: a gym, state-of-the-art spa, 30 diverse bars and restaurants, nightly live entertainment and even a waterpark on the top deck. The waterpark is also a good indicator of what the ship offers for kids – there’s plenty to keep them entertained while you work your way around some of Europe’s most appealing courses, so they needn’t tag along down the fairways and witness you double-bogey a par 5. Modern cruise ships may be synonymous with allinclusive, but few take the philosophy as far as the Smeralda.
If you love that feeling of playing a new course for the first time, how does five in a week sound? As you can imagine, the possibilities this creates for golf fans are endless. Instead of spending hours agonising over whether to spend your precious week off in Italy, Spain or France, you can simply pick all three. It’s the golf equivalent of ordering a sharing platter at a restaurant to get a bit of everything.
Despite being just a short drive from each port, the venues on offer include some seriously prestigious names: Marco Simone, host-to-be of this year’s Ryder Cup; El Prat, with 10 Spanish Opens under its belt; and Genova Sant’anna, twice the stage of the Italian
Professional Doubles Championship.
Of course, you don’t have to leave the country to play great golf courses, but what can’t be replicated are the destinations themselves. This fusion of golfing and cruising gives you the best of both worlds, and that includes iconic cities such as Rome and Barcelona. Cruises set sail from many of the different ports, so how you kick off the experience is up to you. To give you an idea of how golfer-tailored these packages are, you can even enjoy priority embarkation and disembarkation to ensure you get as much time as possible on the courses.
It has hardly gone unnoticed that 2023 is a Ryder Cup year, least of all by Costa Cruises. They’ve partnered with the iconic competition to enhance the cruise further with tickets included. On board either the Smeralda or sister ship Costa Toscana, passengers can add the small matter of one of sport’s greatest events to their itinerary, with three Ryder Cup-specific packages to choose from.
Any golfer would rather spend their holiday on a great course than in the middle of the ocean. It’s only natural. But we no longer have to choose between the two. If you’ve previously written off cruises, it may be time to think again – this could be that something different you have been looking for.