Cruises

[JOEL_]

What was your cruise experience?
I have never been on a cruise,but think it is a wonderful way to travel, and would like to take my next vacation on a cruiser.

[T50_Omaha8]

I've been on one in the Caribbean. I was kinda young but it was really nice. You get to go to a lot of places in a short amount of time, although it is by definition the most touristy way to travel.

I am only really interested in two cruises anymore:
1) Norwegian Fjords
2) South Alaska

The north coast of the Mediterranean would be fun too.

This of course neglects a huge travel aspiration of mine, which is a cruise to Svalbard. That doesn't really count as a 'cruise' per se though.

[Arnfinn Madsen]

[ QUOTE ]
This of course neglects a huge travel aspiration of mine, which is a cruise to Svalbard.

[/ QUOTE ]

You can combine:

Cruise Bergen - Spitsbergen

Choose "spitsbergen cruises" on the sidebar, then "Bergen-Spitsbergen" on the sidebar.

[T50_Omaha8]

Nice.

I've done Norway by train, and it's the most spectacular place I've ever been. Seeing it from the water would probably be even better. $3k/person for 13 days isn't terrible either for that type of cruise.

Their guided tours of the mainland cities are a bit expensive. I'd probably just head out and explore Trondheim and Tromso solo.

[jjp]

I've been on several cruises. The megacruises to the Caribbean are great when you have young kids, because you don't have to cart them all over the place, kids love the "kids club" so you get some adult time, and you don't have to worry about feeding them. For young adults, I loved the Windjammer Barefoot Cruise we went on before we had kids. Only 100 guests on a smaller boat that docked in ports every day. The ports were smaller, so the locals weren't inundated with 7000 tourists coming ashore at once.

I went on an Alaska cruise without kids. It is a must see, I would prefer to go on a smaller boat, but that gets expensive. Yes, most of the people on Alaska cruises are close to death. But the scenery is awesome and there are a lot of "adventure" type of excursions you can do.

I have also been on the three day Carnival "booze cruises". Different crowd, lots of fun. Go with a group and without kids.

There is poker on a lot of these cruise ships. Very bad poker. Unbelievably high rake. Still easily beatable due to the very bad players.

[C-Dog]

I have been on two Cruises. A 10 Day Alaska round trip from SF, and a 14 day Mediterranean starting at Rome (Citavechia I think) and ending in London (Dover actually). I like to Cruise as does my wife. I like the food a lot, probably because I am a fatty. But I like the choices you get at Dinner each night, and I was able to try things I may not have tried otherwise. There is limit to what you can order for dinner so if you want to try everything on the menu you can. I never did that, but I did try 2 different entrees a few times and seconds on an especially good steak.

I also like the way you get to see quite a few places on each cruise. We look at it like an appetizer for places we may want to back to in the future. For some places one day is really all you need, for others you can realize that you want to go back for a full Vacation there.

You can get some great deals on Cruises too at several different sites if you have a fairly open schedule.

C-Dog

[gusmahler]

Went on a Royal Carribean cruise last year. Had a lot of fun would probably do it again.

* Plenty of food on board. Even though I wasn't on the big ship with all the separate restaurant choices, there was still a lot of choices within the single big restaurant.

* You can make the cruise what you want. All you want to do is lay out on the deck and relax? Go ahead and do that. You never even have to leave the boat. Drink all night and sleep all day? Go ahead. Want to visit the area around the local port and take part in various "adventures" (snorkeling, hiking, etc.). Go ahead. The biggest problem is that you only have 7-12 hours to visit the locale, so you won't really get a chance to see how the place is. But I'm not much of a tourist, so that was actually a positive for me.