You're about to discover the six best vacation alternatives
when you can't, or don't want to go cruising, including what lets you pack
and unpack just once, the things that incorporate the best parts of cruising
without the worst, and one or two rather unusual ones that I
think cruisers will like. I'm Gary Bembridge
and i've been taking a look at what we can do when we can't or don't want to go
cruising. I asked people on my channel about their plans for cruising, and
surprisingly two-thirds of people are not sure if they are going to go
cruising for some period of time, so we're all looking
for alternatives to cruising vacations. So I've taken a look
at what i think the six very best alternatives for us who love cruising
are. Of course cruising is all about being
on the water, so are there any alternatives that are open to us
that involve going on the water there are actually three quite exciting
alternatives. First of all river cruising, so when we
talk about cruising most of us think about ocean cruising but river cruising
is operating certainly across Europe there are a
multitude of rivers you can cruise on, whether that's the Duoro in Portugal the
Rhine, the Danube and all the rivers are opening up, so you
can go river cruising quite extensively in Europe. Of course
if you're traveling from the USA or Australia, we do need travel restrictions
to be lifted before you can do that. However if you are in the united states
you can also go river cruising as that starts to open up.
It's opening up particularly on the Mississippi, but there are cruises right
down in Florida, you can go and also on the
East Coast Inland where you can cruise all the way from
Jacksonville right up to Baltimore, so river cruising is definitely an option
to take a look at. Secondly if you are in Europe,
particularly in the UK, in France or in Holland or you have
access to those countries, barge cruising is opening up. So in the
UK you have the narrow barges, but certainly places like
France you have those great barges, one of which I went on last year with
CroisiEurope where we cruised in this magnificent
barge which holds up to 16 people, so barging is a big opportunity. European
Waterways has opened up where they offer the chance to actually
charter entire barges yourself, so six or eight of you can go as a family
unit off barging if you're worried about mixing with other people.
Cruising on lakes is also a great opportunity, this is particularly
relevant if you're in the United States where there are some amazing cruises
around the Great Lakes which are opening up take a look at
Victory Cruise Lines because they offer a myriad of lake cruising options.
One of the great things about cruising of course is you can unpack
and pack just once, so what are our alternatives here? There's one really big
one that is taking off enormously, and that's
traveling by RV or by caravan. I read some data other day that the sale and
hire of RVs, those mobile motorhomes, has grown by
over 180% in the USA, and we've seen the whole
explosion around Europe of both RVs and caravans. The great thing about that is
of course you you have effectively a cabin like you'd have on a cruise ship,
you can move around different places without packing and
unpacking, although obviously there's a bit of setup. The great news about those is also
you can travel as a family unit. The actual caravan parks or RV parks
already are socially distancing because you have a little
patch of ground, but also it's a very social activity. So you'll find there's
lots of people being very friendly, so a lot of those things that you get on
cruising with a sense of community and being together, so it captures all
the good things about cruising: ability to move around, see different
places with unpacking and packing just the one time. A group of friends of mine
just last year actually hired an RV and traveled the
whole way across Canada over a couple of weeks. So this
shows you that you can really have a fantastic
time doing an RV vacation and recreate a lot of the things that you have with
cruising. The third thing that cruising does of
course is cruising is a kind of a curated
travel experience. The itineraries are chosen, you're given a range of
activities to do, your accommodation is all organized, you
don't have to worry about dining because that's all laid on.
So what is the best alternative for that? A really great alternative, and something
that I've done a number of times, is to actually go on
an escorted tour. Now there's two different ways you
can do that, one of the ones which is the most classic one is a bus
escorted tour. I've been on a score of tours with companies like
Titan Travel for example out of the UK, i've also done some with Latin Routes, but
you can also do those domestically if you don't want to travel
internationally and across borders. The great advantage of
an escorted tour is you have a tour guide and a driver,
the whole activity is laid out, the excursions are included,
they've normally sorted out all your dining options, you'll find that
accommodation is all sorted, so you basically can sit back
go with the flow and pretty much like when cruising, you don't have to make many
decisions. Another alternative, which is one that
really appeals to me enormously, is you can also do that by train.
There are companies, for example Great Rail Journeys,
where they organize a huge wide range of escorted tours but
using trains instead of buses. So for example you can travel the whole way
across the United States using a combination of different trains,
you can travel around the UK, Europe, wherever. So again it's the
same approach, you have a tour guide, all your
accommodations organised, excursions organised, everything's
bundled in the cost, so definitely take a look at escorted tour options
whether it's internationally or even domestically, definitely a
fantastic alternative. I've had some brilliant times on
escorted bus and train journeys. For me another
one of the appealing things about cruising is the sense that you're
traveling on these magnificent and significant forms of transportation.
So, of course it could be as exotic as something like the Queen Mary 2 which
is a big classic and the only liner in the world,
where you can whisk between the UK and the USA on the classic Transatlantics, but
it might also be that you want to go on a really
modern and new ship like the whole Celebrity Apex / Celebrity Edge ships or
certain ships that you just really like or you enjoy, like the big massive resort
ships that you would have on Royal Caribbean or Norwegian
or whatever it is, but it's around the ship itself the transportation and, of
course, there are also some amazing things you
can do when you can't go cruising. A lot of those iIwould also
recommend you focus looking at trains. There are some phenomenal train
journeys and certainly as a cruise lover I've been on some incredible
train journeys. So for example in Australia going on The Ghan
all the way from Darwin right down to Adelaide through the center, the red
heart of Australia going to places like Alice
Springs, you can also do the Indian Pacific where you go from Perth
to Sydney. In Europe you've got of course the famous Orient
Express, in South Africa you've got Rovos Rail which are these beautiful
old carriages, Pullman carriages from the 30s / 40s and 50s which have been
recreated and restored. You have the Blue Train,
as well another iconic trip all around the world you have classic and famous
trains you have the Trans- Siberian express through Russia, you have
the Eastern Orient which travels through Thailand. Of course with
international travel restrictions at the current time you may not want to
do some of those exotic ones, but you may find close to you there are some classic
and famous train journeys. So for example in
Canada you have the magnificent Rocky
Mountaineer which is one of the most magnificent
journeys that i've been on. Depending on the type of trip you choose, you're
either going to have those where you sleep on the train, so
you actually sleep across the whole time on things like the Ghan,
the Indian Pacific, Rovos Rail, Blue Train, but
you'll find on some other trains where you actually don't sleep on the train
overnight you actually get off the train and stay in hotels next to the station
itself, so for example on the Rocky Mountaineer
you travel on the train during the day, you get off in the evening to go and
stay in a local hotel, get back on the train
and the same is also true often with many of the Royal Scotsman journeys
through Scotland. So take a look at big iconic
forms of travel. One of the options you could have within this whole category
is bear in mind there's a number of famous ships that have turned into
hotels. So in Dubai you can stay at the QE2,
the old famous classic QE2 which has been turned into a hotel,
in Holland you have the absolute famous Rotterdam which is one of their famous
classic ships which has been turned into a hotel, and of course in the USA you
have the original Queen Mary which is down in Long Beach, so there is
choice of actually staying on a ship even though you're not heading out to
sea. Another key aspect for me anyway when I go cruising is the
fact that whichever place you go to there is a myriad of different things
you can do, a wide range of excursions you can do. So
you'll go to a specific port or a specific place,
and you can go on activity excursions, you go on cultural excursions,
you can go and find out more about the culture, the food, whatever
it is, whatever your interests are, and one of the things that I've certainly
been doing a lot of and doing across many weekends
away is finding places that are not that far to
travel to and going for a kind of a city or a country or a destination break, and
effectively recreating that whole port kind of experience. What
i've been doing and what i've found is i've been avoiding the big hotspots, so
avoiding going to the beaches and places like that
where there's going to be lots of people, and looking for hotels
dotted around the country or locally that are doing deals. You'll find as
hotels are opening up you're going to find fantastic
deals, so they often include you'll find a dinner,
bed and breakfast rate, so similar to being on a a cruise where you have your
meals and accommodation included, but then what i'm doing is picking a place
and then effectively building a range of excursions so assuming it's almost like
an overnight in a port. So for example recently stayed
near Oxford and did things like going to Blenheim Palace,
went and explored the old castle and the prison, on another excursion went on a
big cycling excursion all around down through the
various canals and the waterways, then went out and
sort of explored the food and sort of went on a
foodie excursion. So picking places heading off there doing a kind of a
combined and a bed and breakfast and then building a series of excursions.
A great thing about that is also you can help support
the local economy close to the country you live or where you live,
and also many of those tour operators which have lost international travelers
are really excited when you go back. So try and build
excursions around the place that you're visiting.
One of the big attractions for many people on cruising
is the fact that they're going to a resort, so particularly if you're
cruising on things like MSC Cruises on some of their newer ships or
some of the big new Norwegian Cruise Line ships or Royal Caribbean ships
there is an enormous amount of resort type activities
crammed onto those ships, so of course one of the
alternatives for vacations if you like those is looking for all-inclusive
resort vacations. I guess before the whole pandemic Las Vegas was one of the
big options, however a lot of people are
nervous about going to Las Vegas so seek out and look for
some of those more all-inclusive resort places and there are many companies
around the world that cater for those, whether it's
traveling cross-country whether it's within your local country
but you'll find a resort all-inclusive is going to recreate many
of those things, and the reason I say that is also
particularly if you've got kids those resort venues
have kids clubs and so you can recreate one of the
strongest things that i know many families like - is you have a wide range
of activities for everybody but very importantly
you have kids clubs. While we can't cruise, or don't want to cruise,
of course we still want to vacation until we head back to sea
when we feel it's right for us, these are the alternatives to vacation that I've
certainly been looking at whilst i can't cruise. Hopefully these
gave you some inspiration and you find these
really helpful. I'd love to hear what you think. Bear in mind I have loads
more videos packed full advice and tips of all sorts of
travel and cruising so why don't you watch another one of those
right now?