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Mediterranean 2028, Leg 2

The villages of the Cinque Terre, two days for Florence, the Amalfi Coast, Portofino, and thirty practice-changing papers aboard the Celebrity Eclipse

August 1 to 10, 2028

Super earlybird tuition $1,495 CAD (tax-free)

Functional Disorders & PsychUpdate Aji Collection

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Overview

CBT Canada is pleased to present Mediterranean Leg 2: nine nights, Rome to Barcelona, August 1 to 10, 2028, aboard the Celebrity Eclipse. This is the Riviera leg: the Amalfi Coast at the height of summer, an overnight in La Spezia that buys you two full days for Florence, Pisa, and the Cinque Terre, a day at Portofino, Nice and Monaco from Villefranche, then Palma de Mallorca on the run in to Barcelona. Three countries, the summer's most celebrated coastline, and this leg's own rare feature: a night aboard in port, with dinner ashore and the Cinque Terre an easy train ride away.

Staterooms are priced per couple (two guests), with a Classic drinks package, basic WiFi, and refundable deposit included:

• Concierge from $7,012 CAD
• Standard Veranda from $6,158 CAD
• Deluxe Inside from $5,192 CAD

The ship offers exclusive amenities for our group, including private meeting rooms, invitation-only cocktail parties, and special dining arrangements. For our group to enjoy these benefits, all bookings must be made with Arlene at vacation@cbt.ca (877.466.8228 x 333). Book now for the best cabin selection—and your companion cruises free!

See below for CME, itinerary, and ship details...

The CME

The mind is much of medicine

Mental health issues consume nearly a third of primary care. Furthermore, psychological expertise is crucial in nearly all patient encounters to optimize adherence and outcomes. On this leg the CME pairs the PsychUpdate Aji Collection with the Functional Disorders module.

The Aji Collection delivers thirty brand-new papers, never taught before, with practice-changing tools from the latest research across the key areas in mental health.

Unlike CBT Canada's core modules, which provide tools customized for over a dozen distinct clinical areas, PsychUpdates offer you a broad and brisk experience. Each review draws at least one paper with practical implications from each of the following clinical domains:

Five criteria guide the selection of the thirty papers underpinning each PsychUpdate: 1) recent; 2) high-quality; 3) clinically useful; 4) personally useful; and 5) spicy (i.e., interesting). PsychUpdates move at a brisk pace to keep things very engaging. Each collection explores novel areas to broaden your professional and personal expertise.

Functional Disorders completes the pairing. Functional disorders are among the most prevalent and perplexing conditions in medicine: chronic widespread pain, exhaustion, normal tests, and a terminology so muddled (hysteria, somatization, MUS, somatic symptom disorder) that DSM-5's contribution gave everyone a massive, psychogenic headache. Fortunately, CBT doesn't require perfect diagnostic labels to be effective, only a shared recognition that symptoms are real, patterns are identifiable, and change is possible.

We cover nine conditions ranging from textbook functional to biologically entangled, all with strong evidence for CBT-based relief. If you're tired of saying "I don't know what else to tell you," this module arms you with structured tools for the toughest "nothing found" presentations in primary care: genuine relief, not another bewildered shrug.

Your instructor for both is Greg Dubord, MD, CBT Canada's CME Director and a University of Toronto CME Teacher of the Year.

Sailing more than one leg? Each leg carries its own distinct collection and module, with no overlap: Leg 1 (Jul 22) features the Guajillo Collection with Personality Disorders, and Leg 3 (Aug 10) the Padrón Collection with PTSD. Compare all three legs.

Your itinerary

The CME will be held during our two sea days, Thursday, August 3 and Tuesday, August 8, from 9:00AM to 12:30PM each day: the PsychUpdate Aji Collection on the first, Functional Disorders on the second. The format is fast-paced and interactive, with the kind of lively discussion that only happens when physicians are relaxed and away from the office. The teaching assumes ten-minute appointments in the real world.

 

Social gatherings include our Welcome Party on Day 1 (Tuesday, August 1) and our Farewell Party on Day 8 (Tuesday, August 8), both from 5:00PM to 6:00PM. All registrants and their guests of all ages are welcome. We also host informal gatherings most evenings at Cellar Masters, the ship's wine bar.

Port details

Day 1. Civitavecchia (Rome), Italy Your voyage begins at Rome's seaport, and the obvious move is to arrive early: give Rome two or three nights before you board, because the Forum, the Vatican, and a proper carbonara are not pre-boarding errands. Civitavecchia is about an hour from the city by frequent train, and transfers are simple. If you are continuing from Leg 1, you are already at the pier, and turnaround day is yours: the fortress Michelangelo finished stands beside the harbour, or simply settle in early and claim your spot on the Lawn. Board in the afternoon, and be on deck at 5:00PM as the ship swings south for the Amalfi Coast.

Day 2. Salerno (Amalfi Coast), Italy Eleven hours at the gateway to the most photographed coastline in Europe. Salerno is the smart way in: while the tour buses fight the corniche from the north, you step off the ship and onto a ferry from the adjacent pier, approaching Amalfi and Positano the way they were built to be seen, from the water. Amalfi town gives you the striped Duomo and lemon groves; Positano gives you the vertical postcard, best admired with a long lunch; Ravello, perched above it all, gives you the gardens of Villa Rufolo and the coast's finest view. Prefer antiquity to glamour? The Greek temples at Paestum, among the best preserved anywhere, are a short train ride south and nearly empty by Amalfi standards. Salerno itself deserves an hour: a palm-lined seafront, a medieval quarter, and espresso at half the Positano price.

Day 3. At sea (CME Day) CME runs 9:00AM to 12:30PM, with the afternoon free for ship activities and relaxation.

Days 4 & 5. La Spezia (Florence/Pisa), Italy (overnight in port) Here is this leg's crown jewel: the ship docks Friday morning and does not leave until Saturday at 7:00PM, which means an evening ashore, an unhurried dinner, and a second full day. Every other itinerary forces the cruelest choice on the Ligurian coast: Florence or the Cinque Terre. You get both. Day one: the train to Florence for the Duomo, the Uffizi, and David (book the big two ahead), or the shorter hop to Pisa if you prefer your monuments leaning. Day two: the coastal railway threads all five Cinque Terre villages in minutes per hop; walk a stretch of the cliff path between them, swim from the rocks at Manarola, and be back for sail-away. In the evening, La Spezia's own waterfront and the old town behind it come to life once the day-trippers have gone, or take the short boat across the gulf to Portovenere, the sixth village the crowds forget. Wear real shoes; the villages are vertical.

Day 6. Portofino, Italy A short boat ride from the ship brings you into a harbour that has been photographed by everyone from slim magazines to your own future self, and is still smaller than you expect: one piazzetta, a crescent of ochre and rose facades, and superyachts moored where fishing boats once were. This is a day without an agenda. Climb the footpath past the church of San Giorgio to Castello Brown for the classic view over the harbour mouth, continue to the lighthouse at the point, then descend for focaccia and pesto in the region that invented both. The energetic can hike the headland trail (or take the boat) to San Fruttuoso, a tenth-century abbey sitting on its own swimmable cove, reachable only by sea or on foot. Everyone else has full licence to hold a table on the piazzetta and let the afternoon pass judgement on the yachts.

Day 7. Villefranche (Nice), France You step ashore in one of the Mediterranean's most beautiful natural harbours, a seventeenth-century amphitheatre of painted houses that is worth the first hour by itself. Then the entire Riviera fans out by ten-minute train: westward to Nice for the Promenade des Anglais, the flower market and socca of the old town, and the Chagall and Matisse museums on the hill; eastward to Monaco, where the palace and cathedral crown the Rock, the Oceanographic Museum hangs over the sea, and the Casino de Monte-Carlo will happily validate a physician's grasp of probability. Between the two, the medieval eyrie of Èze floats a thousand feet above the water. Pick one direction and do it well; the ship sails at 6:00PM and the Riviera rewards depth over coverage.

Day 8. At sea (CME Day) CME runs 9:00AM to 12:30PM, then our Farewell Party from 5:00PM to 6:00PM.

Day 9. Palma de Mallorca, Spain Ten hours on the island the Spanish keep for themselves. La Seu, Palma's vast Gothic cathedral, rises straight from the waterfront lagoon and is one of Europe's great church interiors: Gaudí modernized it, and a local artist later wrapped a side chapel in swirling ceramic, so the building argues across seven centuries. The Almudaina palace next door and the old town's courtyarded mansions fill a slow morning; the circular Bellver Castle, in pines above the bay, supplies the panorama. For a different island entirely, the varnished-wood vintage train to Sóller rattles through the mountains to a valley of orange groves, and there is always the beach. Finish with an ensaimada and a caña on the Passeig del Born before the short ride back to the ship.

Day 10. Barcelona, Spain The ship arrives in Gaudí's city and disembarkation is unhurried. If you have not seen Barcelona, do not fly home the same morning: the Sagrada Família, the Gothic Quarter, and the food halls of La Boqueria deserve two or three added nights at the end of your voyage. And if you are not ready to stop at all, you do not have to: Leg 3 departs from this very pier the same day, bound for Seville, Lisbon, and the port wine cellars above Porto. Ask Arlene about combining legs. The ship docks early, but customs clearance typically wraps up around 7:30AM, and Celebrity advises against booking flights before noon.

No shirt, no shoes, no CME—but off-hours are all yours. The CMPA calls physician well-being “the missing quality of care indicator” because it so powerfully predicts patient outcomes. Physician, recharge yourself!

Your ship: Celebrity Eclipse

Half an acre of real grass, and a veranda you can actually sit on

The Eclipse is not the newest ship in Celebrity's fleet, and we chose her anyway. We chose her for where she goes. The newest hulls mostly run the same well-worn loops out of Rome and Athens. The Eclipse is the ship that gets to Tangier, and to an overnight in Madeira, and stays two full days at La Spezia so you are not forced to pick between Florence and the Cinque Terre. Solstice-class ships are named after astronomical phenomena. This one is named for a total solar eclipse, which we consider a good omen.

One thing worth knowing if you have sailed a newer Celebrity ship. The Edge-class hulls replaced the balcony with an Infinite Veranda: a window that slides partway down, with the space folded into the cabin. Some people like it. Many do not, because you cannot really sit outside. The Eclipse has proper verandas with a door, a railing and a deck chair, on eighty-five percent of her staterooms. On a Mediterranean crossing at breakfast, that turns out to matter.

Her signature is The Lawn Club: half an acre of real, living grass on the top deck, tended by an actual full-time lawn keeper, where you can play bocce or croquet or simply lie down on it somewhere north of Madeira. No newer Celebrity ship has this. Below it sits the adults-only Solarium, the AquaSpa, and a Grand Foyer built around a full-height tree with glass elevators running up through it.

She has been kept up. A full stateroom overhaul in 2021, then a three-week drydock in April 2025 that brought new carpets and furnishings throughout and rebuilt The Retreat Lounge for suite guests. If you are looking at suites, ask Arlene about the Sky and Celebrity Suites—both can be held across all three sailings, so families sailing more than one leg never change cabins.

Ten restaurants and food venues, including Le Petit Chef, Tuscan Grille, and Blu for AquaClass guests, plus a five-course menu from Celebrity's culinary ambassador Daniel Boulud. She also sails with Starlink, which is a bigger deal than it sounds. It means video calls home that actually hold, streaming in the evening, photos uploaded the same day, and a clinic you can check in on from the middle of the Atlantic if you must. Whether you tell your inbox where you are remains your business.

Traveling solo? If the cruise line's “single supplement” is deterring you, Arlene may be able to help. Call (877) 466-8228 x 333 or email vacation@cbt.ca for details.

Meet your instructor

Greg Dubord

Greg Dubord, MD is the CME Director of CBT Canada, and the prime developer of medical CBT. He has presented over 500 workshops, including over 50 for the CFPC, and is a University of Toronto CME Teacher of the Year. Dr. Dubord completed his CBT training under the founder, Dr. Aaron T. Beck. He has taught in all Canadian provinces and territories, and in over a dozen countries.

About CBT Canada

CBT Canada won the National CME Program Award from the CFPC for providing “exceptional learning experiences”, and was the first organization authorized by the CFPC to provide three-credits-per-hour CME. One accreditation reviewer wrote, “Two words: superlative & exemplary”.

CBT Canada has given over 100 workshops in collaboration with medical schools, including Dal, McGill, McMaster, Memorial, Queen's, UofA, UBC, UofC, Université de Montréal, UofS, the University of Toronto, and Western.

Over 10,000 physicians have been trained by CBT Canada over the past 30 years. Alumni include national and provincial CFPC presidents, department chairs, residency program directors—and even a few doctors who are comfortable juggling drills & saws. Read their endorsements.

The Procrastinator's Penalty

A Tardy Chief

Preferred-rate cabins on first-class ships sailing the Mediterranean deservedly sell out long in advance. Unfortunately, some doctors share traits with mere mortals, including the tendency to procrastinate. Regrettably, even the most strident cries of “Do you know who I am?” cannot secure the Chief of Staff (or the orthopod, or any other Minor Deity) the best flights and a prime cabin at a procrastinator’s preferred pace. You owe it to yourself and your family to book early. How early? Those who take their vacations seriously—and have learned the cost of rumination—snap up the prime options as soon as they’ve slept on it. That’s just how it is. Book today.