Cruise Research begins

It's no secret to those who know me that my joy of travel starts well before I actually leave the house. It could sometimes be said I almost enjoy the planning and research around a trip as much as the trip itself .

While I say this I also do love to leave some aspects to chance, but for the most part my planning has served us well and really maximised the experiences we can fit into the short time we are away. 

I use an app called Wanderlog to assist with travel planning. I've tried several and this seens the best of the lot.

When it comes to a more structured trip like a cruise, much of the normal planning has already been taken care of. Things like route, accommodation and most meals require much less research ( only the few days either side of the cruise. )

It's for this reason I chose the itinerary and the cruise line for our next trip carefully. 

We are taking out 15 day cruise on the Oceania Insignia. 

A very small ship by current standards, it only carries 670 passengers. The small size means it can dock in ports the larger ships can not get to, mostly closer to the sights for that area. 

A look at the itinerary gives a good insight into this

if you look carefully you will see that two of the ports visited actually aren't even on the coast. Look at Seville on the a map and you will see it's 60km inland up the Guadalquivir River. Most cruise ships have to dock on the coast in Cadiz or similar and bus their passengers into Seville but the Oceania Insignia is able to sail up the river and dock right in the middle of town. 

Moreover it overnights there, allowing us to experience the city at night as well as during the day. 

Later in the cruise, the ship sails down the Garonne River and docks (and overnights) right in the centre of Bordeaux as well .

Being close to the action so to speak also plays to my love of research. It means we are less in need of ships excursions to access the sights in those towns. 

Not that I have anything major against excursions per se. In fact a good tour guide can really make a huge positive difference to a trip. Sadly though the opposite can also be the case . I've experienced my share of excellent tours and probably an equal amount of poorly run tours. 

Our fare included $1650 credit to be used on excursions. That seems like a lot but on first sight Oceanias excursions seemed to be astronomically expensive. I wasn't going to waste that credit though so I waded my way through them and initially chose 3 and that would use up all the credits+ another $124 each . My first pick was an excursion from the Port of Motril to Granada and the Alhambra. Sadly though it was already sold out . Because it requires transport from the port to another town it is would be better to do with an organised tour so I quickly booked a semi private excursion with a third party company (Spain Day Tours) . At 90€ it was a bit cheaper than the ships excursion and will be a smaller group so  plus plus. 

So I still needed 3 more to use the credit . 

I looked carefully and in the small print saw that if I booked a minimum of 7 excursions they all would reduce in price by 25% . 

To choose them I researched the opposite way round, looking for places I felt I didn't need an excursion . Alicante, Seville, Lisbon,Porto and St Malo all seem doable on our own, leaving me lots of opportunity to research . In addition we will spend 3 nights in Barcelona before the cruise, a couple of nights in London near the airport, and a few nights in Dubai to break up the homeward flight. 

Plenty of research to fill that need! 

In a later post I'll go through some of the quite interesting excursions I actually have signed up for