P, E, O, P, L, E - PREPARATION-
SHORE EXCURSIONS
BOOKING SHORE EXCURSIONS
BOOKING SHORE EXCURSIONS
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BOOKING SHORE EXCURSIONS
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We often say that part of the fun of travel is the planning and preparation and research that goes into each and every trip. This applies to determining what you will do in each port of call.
You can never begin this research to early and we highly encourage you to begin working on this as soon as you book your cruise. This will ensure that you have sufficient time to do the research but to also book the excursions as often popular private excursions and ship sponsored excursions book quickly.
We believe in pacing ourselves when we cruise and to balance the number of organized tours we take with days where we tour on our own. This can be very challenging in the Mediterranean were there are very few sea days and often require full days of touring, including long drives between the port and the city. If you have full day tours planned in all cities, by the middle of the cruise it can become very tiring and almost like work.
We prefer to pace ourselves. We determine and prioritize the places where an organized tour is in order and whether it will be a full day or a partial day tour. We consider several factors such as the distance between the port and the city, whether we have been there before, and whether an organized tour would add enjoyment and value We consider other factors such as our ability to go out on our own, safety, and any other concerns such as getting back to the ship in time.
We consider three types of tours; private tours, group tours as well as ships tours for those places where we believe an organized tour is the way to go.
Our preference for private tours is to either do it as a tour just for the two of us or to invite others to join us as opposed to booking a private group tour with people we don't know. The advantage of doing this is that we can change up the tour on the fly whereas that is really not possible on a group tour. A group tour does have an advantage which is not only to get to meet other people but realizing a lower cost.
Whether we take a private tour on our own/with friends or book a private group tour the research is the same. We first begin by determining what we want to see during a particular port stop and then we attempt to find a tour that meets those requirements. Often on a private tour, you can customize the tour. As was the case in researching pre/post cruise tours, we make use of the Internet and we might Google tour companies for a particular port stop as well as using Trip Advisor to not only find tours but to read reviews from those who have taken these tours. One thing to be careful on when it comes to review is that you cannot always be 100% sure if the review was written by the vendor themselves or by a competitor. We try to find vendors where lots of reviews have been written.
We also evaluate tours offered by the cruise line and their benefits. This includes that the tours meet the safety guidelines of the cruise line, that there is recourse in the event that a tour did not meet its advertised description, the ability to get to know fellow guests during the tour and knowing that with very few exceptions that the ship will wait for the tour to return even if it is running beyond the time frame for all guests to be back on-board the ship. In the event the ship did have to leave, our experience is that the cruise line would make arrangements to get the guests to the next port of call. It is always advisable to confirm this with the cruise line prior to booking the tour. Another benefit is that should the ship have to cancel the port due to factors such as weather that guests would not be charged for the ships tour.
The downside to a cruise line tour is that they tend to be more expensive than touring on your own and that some tours involve a large group of guests and some sites are just better seen and experienced without being part of a large tour.
As mentioned, we also balance all of this with seeing a port city on our own which we will do quite often if we have already visited the port before or just know it is easy to see on our own or we do not find a tour that interests us in the first place. In some cities, we might also augment this by taking a hop-on-hop-off bus and in cases where we have more than one day in a city we might take the HOHO bus the first day to get a sense of the layout of the city and then go back out on our own the next day.
Next we will discuss developing packing lists and the option of shipping luggage to and from the ship.
You can never begin this research to early and we highly encourage you to begin working on this as soon as you book your cruise. This will ensure that you have sufficient time to do the research but to also book the excursions as often popular private excursions and ship sponsored excursions book quickly.
We believe in pacing ourselves when we cruise and to balance the number of organized tours we take with days where we tour on our own. This can be very challenging in the Mediterranean were there are very few sea days and often require full days of touring, including long drives between the port and the city. If you have full day tours planned in all cities, by the middle of the cruise it can become very tiring and almost like work.
We prefer to pace ourselves. We determine and prioritize the places where an organized tour is in order and whether it will be a full day or a partial day tour. We consider several factors such as the distance between the port and the city, whether we have been there before, and whether an organized tour would add enjoyment and value We consider other factors such as our ability to go out on our own, safety, and any other concerns such as getting back to the ship in time.
We consider three types of tours; private tours, group tours as well as ships tours for those places where we believe an organized tour is the way to go.
Our preference for private tours is to either do it as a tour just for the two of us or to invite others to join us as opposed to booking a private group tour with people we don't know. The advantage of doing this is that we can change up the tour on the fly whereas that is really not possible on a group tour. A group tour does have an advantage which is not only to get to meet other people but realizing a lower cost.
Whether we take a private tour on our own/with friends or book a private group tour the research is the same. We first begin by determining what we want to see during a particular port stop and then we attempt to find a tour that meets those requirements. Often on a private tour, you can customize the tour. As was the case in researching pre/post cruise tours, we make use of the Internet and we might Google tour companies for a particular port stop as well as using Trip Advisor to not only find tours but to read reviews from those who have taken these tours. One thing to be careful on when it comes to review is that you cannot always be 100% sure if the review was written by the vendor themselves or by a competitor. We try to find vendors where lots of reviews have been written.
We also evaluate tours offered by the cruise line and their benefits. This includes that the tours meet the safety guidelines of the cruise line, that there is recourse in the event that a tour did not meet its advertised description, the ability to get to know fellow guests during the tour and knowing that with very few exceptions that the ship will wait for the tour to return even if it is running beyond the time frame for all guests to be back on-board the ship. In the event the ship did have to leave, our experience is that the cruise line would make arrangements to get the guests to the next port of call. It is always advisable to confirm this with the cruise line prior to booking the tour. Another benefit is that should the ship have to cancel the port due to factors such as weather that guests would not be charged for the ships tour.
The downside to a cruise line tour is that they tend to be more expensive than touring on your own and that some tours involve a large group of guests and some sites are just better seen and experienced without being part of a large tour.
As mentioned, we also balance all of this with seeing a port city on our own which we will do quite often if we have already visited the port before or just know it is easy to see on our own or we do not find a tour that interests us in the first place. In some cities, we might also augment this by taking a hop-on-hop-off bus and in cases where we have more than one day in a city we might take the HOHO bus the first day to get a sense of the layout of the city and then go back out on our own the next day.
Next we will discuss developing packing lists and the option of shipping luggage to and from the ship.
