Cruising is not for everyone. There are various reason why somebody loves or hates taking a cruise vacation. Here are the obvious ones (why you love cruising);
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- You don’t have to worry about your transportation. Depending on the ship’s itinerary, you are in a new city or town or country everyday.
- You don’t have to worry about your accommodation. Once you embark on a cruise, your accommodation is assured. You will have a nice cleaned room and made-up bed everyday.
- You don’t have to worry about your meals. Buffet meals are available almost 24 hours. Take note of meal times, you might end up with pizza or hamburgers all the time.
This past summer or early fall, we went on vacation in Berlin then embarked on a cruise from Hamburg. The cruise brought us to 5 countries (including Germany). We had stops in Le Havre (northern France), Southampton (in U.K., remember Titanic), Zeebrugges (Belgium near Bruges), and Amsterdam (Netherlands but ended up in Rotterdam – read below why). This itinerary is nice because it gave opportunity for cruise passengers to visit Paris and London (albeit expensive). We have visited Paris and London years ago, so we didn’t plan going to those cities this time. Thanks to the Internet, we were able to research most of the places we planned on visiting during our vacation.
Here are some more things I’ve learned on this cruise trip.
- Use the same cruise company (if this is not your first time to cruise and your previous experience was pleasant), you might get an upgrade. In our case, we use the same cruise company (MSC Cruises). We booked it ourselves from the cruise company travel agent. We booked a “2-for1” interior room. The interior rooms of this ship class were very good (judging from our previous trip with the same cruise company). So, we were confident booking an interior room will be a pleasant experience for our trip. A couple weeks after our booking, we noticed our assigned cabin (based on the ship’s deck layout) is a balcony room. The upgrade value was over $400 for both of us.
- Check out the Cruise Terminals where your ship docks. Cruise company website have tons of information about their ships and their itinerary. They even have actual location and web cam view of their ships. Cruise Terminals will give you a sense of your proximity to places you plan to visit. If you are not taking the excursions sold by the cruise company, this is important to help you find your way around the city. Most cruise terminals we have free WiFi, too. Even the cruise staff use this service at the cruise terminal. The cruise terminal in Southampton is walking distance to the train station where you can take the train to London.
- Ask your cruise reception if Shuttle Bus (to city center or port gate) is provided. Some ports have ‘dedicated’ piers for cruise ships, other ports are multipurpose – cargo ships use the same pier. In some cases, these cargo ships are docked at the same time your cruise ship is docked. If you didn’t purchase an excursion from the cruise ship, having a shuttle bus (free or paid) is important. Walking on the pier is not advisable nor pleasant. Shuttle buses normally brings cruise passengers to the city center or shopping malls. They are provided by the cruise company or the city tourism bureau. They could be tourist bus or transit bus. However, if you have researched the location of your cruise terminal, public transit might be close by which negates the need of a shuttle bus. In Rotterdam, the cruise terminal is close to the Wilhelminaplein subway and tram stations.
- Create your own excursion. This needs planning ahead of time. We don’t know anything about northern France. After a few clicks online, we found out Honfleur is quint town not far from Le Havre where out ship will dock. Some passengers opted to purchase the Paris excursion (over €150), others took the €59 bus to Honfleur. We joined a group (of British nationals) who took a taxi from the cruise terminal to Honfleur for €25 (return).
- Your ship might not docked on the designated port on the itinerary (because of external factors, like the weather). Our ship was supposed to dock in Amsterdam but because of thick fog and tricky route (going into Amsterdam), the captain opted to turn the ship around and go to Rotterdam instead. It was a disappointment not to dock in Amsterdam. Rotterdam is not far from Amsterdam. The train (from Rotterdam to Amsterdam) took just over an hour. The express train coming back was faster (about 45 minutes). It was a “2-in-1” city visit as well albeit short.
- Always enjoy the trip. You have spent a fortune planning for you cruise. Enjoy every moment of it. Our ship docked around 2 pm in Rotterdam. It took us over 45 minutes to disembark to the cruise terminal. We didn’t have enough information about Rotterdam so we took the shuttle bus to the nearest train station (Rotterdam Blaak) that will take us to Amsterdam. We were able to catch the 4:06 pm train to Amsterdam. We were in Amsterdam after 5 pm. After browsing brochures at the Tourism Info office outside of the Central Station, we started walking towards the west side of the city. Around 6 pm, it started raining and minutes later, it was pouring as we were making our way back to the Central Station. We were soaked except for the area our jackets covered us. The visit was cut short by the rain but it was still enjoyable and fun. Using public transit (intercity train) was exciting.
If you like to try a cruise vacation, make sure you like the cities in the itinerary. For me, staying in the ship for over 48 hours (sea days) will be challenging. There are several activities in the ship like swimming, water slides, table games (some, you have to bring your own), evening show, and using the gym. The cities we docked in this cruise were great. Having to use the same currency (Euro) was also nice (except in U.K.).