At every single cruise port in Europe, it’s possible to get into town and be your own tour guide for the day: Just hop on the public bus or tram, pay a dollar or two, and in a few minutes you’re at the main square. Find out your ship’s policy, stop by a wine shop on your way to the ship (or buy it duty-free on the flight over), and save yourself some money.ĭon’t assume you have to pay for official shore excursions. Considering that booze is one of the main profit centers for a cruise line, it’s worth it to max out on this allowance. However, increasingly, cruise lines are allowing passengers to bring a small amount of alcohol on board, often one or two bottles of wine for the entire cruise. If you do buy a bottle of local wine, you’ll need to hand it over to the cruise line, who will give it back only when you disembark at the final port. Because of the high on-board markup - as well as for liability and safety reasons - many cruise lines don’t allow passengers to bring their own alcohol on board. Rather than ponying up $10 or $15 for a staged snapshot, get some of your selfies printed at Costco when you get home, for pennies on the dollar. And skip the gambling, souvenir shopping, and overpriced photographs altogether these are major moneymakers for cruise lines, and therefore, terrible values for travelers. But if you’re going to want a Coke as soon as you get back to your cabin, pick one up at a convenience store for $1 - before returning to the ship - rather than waiting to buy one on board for $4. Sometimes it’s fun to splurge on cocktail hour. This isn’t to say that you should skip all on-board expenses - just to choose wisely, knowing that you’re paying a premium. And that means that anything you buy on board will be heavily marked up. That’s because when you’re at sea, you are the very definition of a captive audience. Cruise lines make no money while you’re in port if they could, they’d keep you on the ship the entire time. Keep in mind that everything on board is marked up. I’ve distilled those many weeks of cruising (and those two bricklike guidebooks) into these 10 key tips for wringing the maximum value out of your cruise: which things to skimp on, which things to splurge on, and how to most wisely invest your budget to turn your cruise into the best possible European travel experience. This “consumer protection” mindset informed the way we wrote our cruising guidebooks, which are designed to empower travelers to take full advantage of their cruise experience, rather than the other way around. It’s our job to help you figure out which is which. Some of those optional expenses are worthwhile. O ne thing became clear: Especially for lower-priced lines, the strategy is to lure you in with a “cheap” fare, then bombard you with opportunities to pay more for this and that - and before long, the total price of your cruise has doubled. O ver those many cruises, i t was fascinating to see how different cruise lines handled their guests…and how they made their profits. That project resulted in our two Rick Steves Cruise Ports guidebooks (one for the Mediterranean, and the other for Scandinavia and Northern Europe) a series of travel talks on cruising, Mediterranean ports, and Northern European ports and Rick’s brand-new public television special on Cruising the Mediterranean. But if you want to get the best value and the best European experience out of your cruise, it’s essential to be prepared.Ī few years back, I went on a variety of cruises - from bargain-basement to high-end - in order to research cruising for Rick Steves’ Europe. “Because there’s no way we could possibly visit five Greek islands in a week for this kind of money…unless we slept in youth hostels and ate only groceries.” They reminded me why I was there to begin with: Cruising can be a smart choice for budget travelers. They were big fans of our Rick Steves guidebooks and TV shows, and they seemed to be smart, adventurous travelers, so I asked why they weren’t doing the trip on their own. They told me they chose this budget cruise line for their first European vacation. One evening at twilight, on the deck of a cruise ship in the Aegean, I bumped into newlyweds from the USA who had recently been stationed in Germany.

Costco wine steward