When it comes to booking a cruise ship holiday, most of us would be looking for the widest range of onboard amenities, balanced, of course, against the all-important price.
But cruise holiday expert Gary Bembridge has shared on his Tips for Travellers YouTube channel that there’s one important detail that anyone planning an ocean-going vacation shouldn’t overlook.
Whether you’re planning a cruise in the Caribbean, the Mediterranean, or further afield, the same principles apply, he says.
In his latest video, he says: “I decided to share in one place what I have found, from my experiences, to be the very best cruise lines to choose in each of the eight most popular cruising regions.
« I have cruised several times and many of the lines are not the obvious, nor the biggest.”
Indeed, Gary says, it’s size that matters the most: « Many of the ports within the Mediterranean are working container ports.
« So smaller ships can often either go to more interesting ports that cannot take big ships or can dock more centrally.”
He contrasts two different holidays that he recently took – with similar destinations – but on wildly different ships: “When I went to Marseilles on Azamara Quest, a ship holding around 700, we were docked in the heart of Marseille.
“But,” Gary adds, « when I went on Norwegian Viva – a big ship – we were miles away in a large working port. When I went on Seabourn and Azamara, we docked right in Monte Carlo, but on Norwegian Viva, we had to go to nearby Nice.”
Apart from the disadvantage of having to traipse all the way from a huge seaport to the picturesque tourist attractions, there’s another, less-obvious, penalty of being on a mega-liner, Gary says.
He recalled: « When I went to the Greek Islands on Azamara and later Seabourn, we visited small islands not crowded by land-based tourists or hordes of mega ship passengers.”
For that reason, he highlights operators such as Azamara and Windstar, who have a number of smaller vessels that will be able to take you to more interesting harbours.
It’s a similar story in the Caribbean, Gary says, where, again, Windstar is a favourite choice – “They have the smallest ships, including their sailing ship, and call on smaller, out of the way places ».
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