Cruising Your Way

We do a lot of Internet surfing looking for prices to start with our cruise. We check the cruise lines, many of the cruise travel sites, priceline.com, travel on yahoo.com (and others) and some of our personal cruise agents. The pricing varies and the difference could mean whether you are located on the bottom deck or a few decks up. Pricing also depends on what port you want to leave from, how many days you want to cruise and what the port destinations are. Leaving from the US mainland (if you are living in the US) would be less expensive than leaving from another port not part of the US. The closer the embarkation port to your home is, the less expensive your total trip would cost. So, before you book a cruise, do your homework. What do you really want? What do you really want to see? How many days at sea do you want? What is your budget? Answering these questions is the first step to Cruising Your Way. It pays off in the end.

After you booked your cruise, you begin to work on what you want to do. We usually plan a pre-cruise stay in the port of embarkation and then are usually busy when we cruise. After all, we cruise our way and use travel 'cents' when doing it our way. The good thing about cruising is that you can do nothing or do many things. It is all up to you and the way you want to cruise your way. Our latest cruise was on the Empress of the Seas owned by Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines. It was a nice ship but very small. It had the basics that every cruise ship has, even the Rock Climbing Wall. But it was dwarfed by the new Mega ships that cruise today. It no longer leaves from any US ports, for it has moved onto the Mediterranean area - a more suitable destination for that size of ship. Still it would be missed by those who enjoy the smaller ships.

Cruising and how much fun you will have and how much money you will spend depends on how much you want to do by yourself or whether you have someone do the work for you. We do the work by ourselves. So it really is cruising our way. Check into this blog soon and I will leave tips on how to do this and what to do when cruising.

(Pictures are from the Port-of-Miami area and of the Empress next to one of the Carnival Mega Ships)