Discover the eight best ways to avoid crowds in a cruise port.
I'm Gary Bembridge, and this is another of my tips of travellers. I'm here on a cruise
and one of the things I realized is there are a couple of ports where I
wanted to avoid crowds, because I knew there would be a lot of people
descending in one place at one time off cruise ships, so I thought it would be a
great opportunity to share with you my eight tips on how to avoid crowds in
cruise ports, starting with this one. I always check before I go on a cruise
how busy each of the ports are going to be. There's some good sites
that you can do it very easy on. For example, the one I like to use is called
cruisetimetables.com. You input the ports or you can input your
itinerary and check how busy each of the ports are going to be. This is
fantastic as bear in mind some Caribbean ports could have 15,000 to 20,000
people. Places in Europe like Santorini for example can be
absolutely swamped depending on how many ships are there, so I always take a look
at how busy the ports are going to be and then plan what I'm going to do around
how busy I know the ports are going to be, so I can avoid the big crowds there.
The other thing to do, linked to that, is if you book to cruise in
shoulder periods, for example, in the Mediterranean if you go May /June time or
September / October time you're going to find that the crowds are much less,
because the land tourists are not going to be there to the same degree, as
they're going to be there in the summer months July / August. The same in the
Caribbean if you go in the August period or you even go in the December period,
all those places are going to be really busy. Look at the shoulder periods as
it's a really good way of avoiding crowds. Check and know how many people
are going to be there. My second tip is a very obvious one, and stay on
board. There's an enormous amount of things to do on board a ship in a
port. Cruise lines run full activity programs even on port days, so
there'll be loads of things to do. There will be classes, talks,
and facilities to use. There'll be loads of things to do, so
you'll be able to keep busy and happy on board. A good way of avoiding crowds in a
port is go local. Seek out and find people who live and work locally and ask
them for tips and advice. There's a couple of
things you can do. The simplest thing of course is to just get a taxi and ask the taxi
driver to take you to places that the locals go to and will
be less busy with tourists. There are a couple of organised things you can do
and plan in advance and there's a whole load of sites which are
set up by locals. Some are just local tips, some
will provide local guides, some of which are free guides. An example of some
of those is spottedbylocals.com, globalgreeterNetwork.info. freewalking toursbylocals.com and toursbylocals. dot-com I find those sites really
These are helpful as a resource because these are people who live there, they've grown up
there, they work there and know all the tricks and tips around how to avoid
the big crowds. Many of them provide free tours and all you do then is pay
gratuities for their time. Definitely go local and look for
locals to help you avoid the crowds. They're
experts at avoiding the crowds in their home towns so go local. Another of my
favourite ways of avoiding crowds in ports is quite a simple one, and that's to get
as far away from the port as possible, and to be as active as possible. Most of
the people on a cruise ship will come off the ship and stay close to the port,
and that's where most businesses and activities set up because they know that's
a captive audience. You'll find a lot of the activities are
focused around the port. However, if you head off in the opposite direction and
find little local back streets, for example in Venice crazy busy but if you
head off in a different direction down the side streets you find
lots of really interesting places and you won't find all the crowds. Get as
far away as possible. There's different ways you can do that. There's a
lot of places where you can hire bikes or ebikes or go hiking. Plan
in advance but get as far away as possible and as important, the more
active you are you'll find less crowds. For example if you go to Kotor,
there's lots of people and it's very busy, but if you walk up
the huge hill behind the old town almost no one does that because
it looks really scary and it looks really active, it's not actually that bad
at all. If you look for more active things there will always be less people
there, so go as far away as possible and be as active as possible as you can.
That's something that I do a lot, and I find it's a really good way of
avoiding crowds crowds from cruise ships who tend to congregate close to the port.
Another great way of avoiding crowds, which is
linked to that, is avoid the obvious and the famous places. Most ports of call have a
iconic and significant things that people want to go and see, that's often why the
cruisers are going there but everyone is going to go and see it, so that's where
all the crowds are going to congregate. What you should do is look for either
tours or places that are not the obvious ones,
so in Barcelona everyone heads off to the Ramblas but very few people actually
head up the hill where the Olympic Park was, or if you're going to
Grand Cayman everyone goes to Seven Mile Beach so go to the beaches on
the other parts of the island. In Civitavecchia everyone heads up to Rome.
There are other excursions that go to an ancient Etruscan City of the Dead
called Ceteri. So when you head to a place, don't just go to the famous
places. If you want to avoid the crowds look for the things that are off the
beaten track, look at the things that are lower down the list of things to do either
though the excursions offered by either the cruise line or independent
providers. Look at the tours which are going to places you perhaps never heard
of, because it's unlikely that the crowds are going to be heading there. One thing
linked to that is I love in ports using the hop-on hop-off bus. I find them a really
inexpensive way of getting around, hear some commentary and take you to the
usual places. As you head around on the hop-on hop-off bus, you're going to find
that people are getting off at certain stops where the famous things are, but
get off on the stops where no one's getting off because then the
crowds are not going to be there, but there's going to be something interesting to do
otherwise the bus wouldn't be stopping there.
I have found some great places, some great beaches and some really interesting sites by
getting off at the stops that other people aren't. Another really good tip
and thing that I do to avoid crowds is timing. The way the cruising works is the
minute that the ship is cleared in a port, the tours start going and people are
in a rush to get off the ship. People leave as early as the ship docks, and they
tend to then come back around lunchtime to eat on board the ship, and
often then spend the afternoon on board the ship. The critical thing to do is
to go against that flow. For example, go out exploring in the afternoon or if
you've got an overnight stay out late, or get up early in the
morning (even before breakfast) head out and do your sightseeing really early and
perhaps have breakfast out. The morning is going to be really busy
wherever you go. Lunch time is a great time to go to some of the key sites.
You'll find a lot of the cruise passengers will head back to the ship to
have their meals as people don't like to then pay for meals out and about, so
lunch time is a really great time to go to some of the famous and big sights if
that's where you want to go. Bear in mind as soon as the ship arrives,
everybody will be rushing out on excursions. Afternoons, lunch times and as
late as possible is when to go. If you have an all aboard time of 7pm, 8Pm or later
do your sightseeing at the end of the day. It's
also really good of course for photography, because the light is
better for it. Timing is key to avoiding crowds. Cruise passengers are
very predictable in the way that they see places and sights, and go against
that flow. Another thing that I like to do to avoid crowds is to go on tours
that have either early access or after closing access, or to book
tickets which enable you to go early to places or will give you a skip the line
entrance into a place. There's a couple of ways you can do that. Some cruise
lines have tours which have early opening access. For example, in St.
Petersburg we were able to get into the Hermitage Museum an hour before it
opened, so we'd almost finished our tour before the big crowds arrived.
There was a slight premium for that. You can also usually go online to the
places you want to go and see and book Fast Pass entries. What I often do if
there's specific sites, museums or tall buildings like the Empire
State Building or whatever that want to go and see, I buy the Fast
Pass pass and scoot past everybody and go and see the sight, a
avoid the lines and crowds. It's much more efficient. There are a couple of
resources online, for example avoid - crowds.com which at the moment is
focused on Europe. They give you lots of tips for all of the key cities
on how and when you should go to avoid crowds, so look at
resources like that. Cruise lines will often offer early access tours and those
fast passes, or you can use resources online to find ways of going when the crowds
aren't there. Even on some sites like Google,
for example, they often show how busy things are by the hour, so look at
when the crowds are going to be there and try and plan to buy tickets for
entry or to go on tours when it's not going to be busy. It sounds kind of
obvious but people don't look before going usually. I've also learned another little trick over the
years of cruising to avoid crowds, and that's particularly in really busy ports, which
is go on home cooking or craft type tours.
There are increasingly lots of tours where you can go and eat in families
homes, go to a small artisan bakery or cooking class with
small numbers. It's a great way of avoiding crowds
because you're going to have a small group. Increasingly Cruise Lines
are starting to offer those excursions, or you're also able to find a lot of those
yourself. For example one of the sites that I like to look at is a site called
eat with calm. In lots of places around the world you're able to book
home-cooked meals or cooking classes with people who live locally.
It's a great way of avoiding the crowds because some of them only take 4 to
6 people.
you can avoid the big crowds and the busy places this way.
I hope you found
these tips on avoiding crowds helpful, I
have loads of videos of cruising tips and advice so why don't you
watch another one of those right now?