Ever go to a new restaurant, can’t decide on an entrée and order a sampler platter featuring small portions of their famous favorites?
That’s our idea for cruising: a personal smorgasbord of regional travel delight, allowing us to sample a bit of everything so we can enjoy our favorites more fully on future visits. Cruises also help us to travel in comfort and simplicity, avoiding the troublesome packing, relocation and resettling that inject extra stress and lost time at great destinations.
Our idea for cruising: a personal smorgasbord of travel delight
When We Got It All Wrong!
We weren’t always cruisers. In fact, as our kids went through middle and high schools, we often questioned the sanity and frugality of friends who routinely cruised during school breaks and summers. For us, piling everyone into a car, driving for hours and having our own transportation to wander more at our destination sounded like a better approach. Looking back, we admit that our cruising friends were on to something that we missed — totally.
We took our first cruise as 20-somethings in 1982, and it managed to dissuade us from trying again for nearly 30 years. I was working for LSU’s alumni office, and assigned to escort a seven-day Caribbean cruise on the high-end Cunard Line. Those were the days when cruise dinner meant assigned tables, tuxedos and formal dresses, and a midnight buffet that awaited the gluttonous late-night crowd. On our first full day, we hit rough weather which confined my wife to our cabin for nearly four days. And we hadn’t done our homework to determine how we wanted to spend our time on or off the ship. Playing it by ear, we missed much, and it caused us to miscalculate for too long.
Our Cruise Conversion
Fast forward to 2008. Seeking escape from the omnipresent work cell phone while celebrating our 30th anniversary, we booked a seven-day Alaska cruise round-trip from Seattle on Holland America. That experience – relaxing travel, great food, and adventures like helicoptering to a glacier and kayaking through pristine covers — was to addict us to cruising in the future.
Since then, we’ve enjoyed nearly 100 days of cruising in the Mediterranean, the Baltic Sea and Scandinavia, Norway and Scotland, Canada and New England, several Caribbean voyages and a return to Alaska. We’ve visited 25 countries in the process, including a fabulous 3-night, 2-day extended visit to St. Petersburg, Russia, the absolute highlight of our touring stops for me – a kid growing up in the 1960s who never imagined it would be possible to travel to places like Russia and China.
For our age and tastes, Holland America is our cruise line of choice, with mid-sized ships, a personal attention to service details and a focus on fine dining options. We’ve also cruised recently on Royal Caribbean and Carnival, and don’t plan to return to either line. While our experiences and the perks earned from participating in the Holland America Mariner Program bring us back to HAL, we’re thinking of trying a Celebrity X or Princess cruise for our next ocean-going trip.
Aboard Holland America’s Eurodam, we enjoyed a sea day lecture by Captain John Scott, who with his wife Susan authored a book called “Driving the Hotel.” He described the intricate planning and flawless execution required behind the scenes to make our perfect cruising seem easy. By this time in my cruising experience, I was thrilled to leave the driving, planning and headaches to him and his crew while I sipped another refreshing adult beverage.
Cruise Line Tours
Early in our cruising days, we took the easy route to destination planning and booked port excursions through the cruise line. We enjoyed the simplicity and certainty, and never having to worry about being left behind if we ran late.
We still use cruise line excursions for some extended tours, especially where we’re venturing far from port on a long touring day with a tight schedule and lots to see. Two perfect examples: a 14-hour stop in Civitavecchia for a full day of touring the heart of Rome, and a similar 200 kilometer roundtrip from Livorno to Florence and Pisa, and back to Livorno. For us, those distances mean more complexity and higher risks. Thus, we stick with cruise line tours for those and focus on enjoying our day rather than worrying about a missed return.
We also book cruise line tours when they offer a special attraction or itinerary not generally available through other sources. In St. Petersburg, Russia, we were among a limited number of cruise passengers permitted to tour the Hermitage Museum during a special evening opening, avoiding the day-time madhouse that develops when passengers from a plethora of ships descend on an overwhelmed location.
Guided Adventures
These days, where we are familiar with cultures, languages and safety, we often book directly through local tour companies, who meet us at the ship and take us in smaller groups to locations not always reached by the large ship-run tours. We research these through travel sites like TripAdvisor.Com and various blogs and other travel accounts produced by frequent travelers.
One of our favorites was in Warnemunde, Germany, where we passed the cruise-sponsored long rail trip inland for a short day in Berlin. Instead, we booked with a friendly local group called “Friends of Dave” and, with 10 others, spent a wonderful casual day in the port city, then hopping a local train to tour castles and landmarks in nearby Schwerin. Comparing next-day stories with those who made the grueling day trip to Berlin, we were glad that we stayed local and saved Berlin for a multi-day stop on a future trip.
Another example was a four-hour tour of the Scottish Highlands, distilleries and Loc Ness riding on the back of a custom three-wheeler touring motorcycle driven by a wonderful local host, Steve. We chose in advance one of several basic options Steve had mapped out, then asked for a few “tweaks” which he was happy to make. Steve also brought along “a wee dram” of local Scotch and fresh biscuits, which we enjoyed along the way. Departing and returning to the ship on our private chariot, we were the center of attention for the cruise cattle being herded onto the large buses.
We also tried this in the Caribbean, booking a 6-hour excursion of waterfall jumping and zip lining in the Dominican Republic through a reputable tour company found through Costco Travel. As Costco members, we’ve discovered that often the prices, perks and excursion options available through their aligned travel company are excellent. But beware, self-service may mean some troubles when things go wrong — as when our helicopter trip was grounded in Alaska due to fog and we had to deal with the cancellation long distance through voice mail and follow-up e-mails.
Costco Travel also has worked out well for us to book affordable trips that may not be available in the same manner from a cruise line or port agency. In Ketchikan, Alaska, we were able to reserve a half-day salmon fishing trip which promised no more than six guests on a boat. Our tour ended up being only four people — our three-person family and one other person, and we were able to fish the entire time rather than take turns among a larger group.
On Our Own
In some European and most North American ports, we set out unaccompanied and on our own, maybe using tour guide products from Rick Steves, Lonely Planet and local sources we’ve researched ahead of time. Among our favorite stops on our self-guided days are local open air food and merchandise markets found frequently in European cities.
We often rely on one of two favorite touring options on these self-guided days. In many ports, we look for the Hop On / Hop Off bus company. These operators generally run standard, narrated bus routes stopping at major areas of interest in larger cities. As the name implies, you can hop off at will to explore, then hop back on another bus later. We’ve done these in Barcelona, Glasgow, Oslo, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Montreal, Vienna, Paris and elsewhere, often booking a two-day pass during our pre and post-cruise days.
Guided bike tours are another favorite for our “on-your-own” touring, usually booking these ahead at our cruise stops. Bikes allow us to cover more ground than walking, and they don’t get slowed by novice operators or frequent mishaps like those popular Segway tours. In cities with great bike trails and friendly biking streets, we’ll often just rent a bike for a full day and head out with our preplanned stops for touring and great exercise. We’re always ready to enjoy dinner after these!
A Few More Days, Please
In Barcelona, Copenhagen, Venice, Montreal, Vancouver, Seattle and Boston, we’ve tacked on extra days before and after cruises, both to expand our adventures and take advantage of the investment in time and money to reach some of these locations. We’ve made a conscious effort to avoid repeating ports of call, but when it occurs, we simply seek a different adventure or return for a longer visit at a favorite one.
We look forward to the days when we can return to cruising in a post-COVID world. Until then, rather than writing more about our smorgasbord, I’ll leave you here with a few more pictures from our 100-course, 25-country cruise buffet.
