There’s often a particular moment on a multi-stop trip when the romance wears thin. Usually, it arrives while you’re dragging a suitcase towards a station at 6am, wondering whether seeing one more city was really worth changing hotels again. Travelling widely is exciting. Getting from A to B usually isn’t. But that can all change if you choose to cruise.
Let someone else handle the miles
The attraction of a multi-stop holiday is obvious: one trip can take you through several cultures, landscapes and cuisines. The awkward bit is everything between them.
Say you spend three days in Rome before heading to Florence. You need to pack, check out, reach the station, find your train and haul your luggage to the next hotel. None of this is especially difficult. It simply eats into a day you would rather spend enjoying yourself.
On a cruise, those in-between hours largely disappear from your plans. You leave a port in the evening, go for dinner and wake up somewhere new. Your clothes are still in the wardrobe.
Keep the admin in proportion
Building a complicated itinerary can be strangely satisfying at home. After comparing six hotels, four train times and several airport transfers, however, that colour-coded spreadsheet starts looking less like anticipation and more like work.
Cruising puts more of the trip under one roof. With companies such as Princess Cruises, your cabin travels with you, while restaurants and entertainment stay close at hand. You can concentrate your planning on the parts that deserve it: what you want to see when you step ashore.
Look closely at arrival and departure times before choosing an itinerary, as an eight-hour port call gives you very different possibilities from a short afternoon visit.
Make the journey count
A two-hour flight takes much longer than two hours in reality. Add the journey to the airport, security, waiting, and the trip into the next city, and half a day can vanish remarkably easily.
Ships make those hours feel rather different. While you travel, you can have lunch, swim, read with a coffee or simply watch the horizon for a while. You are still moving towards your next destination – you just don’t have to organise yourself around the journey.
This matters on a trip with several stops. Saving yourself four rounds of packing and checking in leaves more patience for markets and unfamiliar streets.
Give yourself room to enjoy it
There’s a fine line between an adventurous itinerary and one that leaves you needing another holiday afterwards.
Cruising can soften the pace without making the trip feel uneventful. One day might involve hours exploring cobbled lanes and neighbourhood cafés. Later, instead of finding another hotel and working out where to eat nearby, you return somewhere familiar.
Have dinner, catch a show or take a drink outside as the ship leaves port. Tomorrow brings somewhere different, but tonight you don’t need to get yourself there.
Perhaps that’s the real appeal: you can keep the pleasure of going places without spending quite so much of your holiday getting to them.
Photo credit: header, cruiseliner, venice, Cadiz, beach
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