You're about to discover
the eight destinations that are better to cruise to
than go on a land-based vacation.
I'm Gary Bembridge.
This is another of my Cruise Tips for Travellers.
I want to talk about eight places, eight destinations
that I think are much better to visit
on a cruise than go by land.
So, this is not about why cruising
is better than land-based vacations,
it's literally about the places to go
and why I think you should go on a cruise
rather than go by land.
So, there's eight of them, starting with this one.
Well, the first is simply if you want
to go somewhere, anywhere in the world,
and you're terrified or don't want to fly.
Any destination then is better than a land-based,
so if you want to go somewhere internationally,
somewhere where you have to leave the continent
or place that you're on to get there,
then clearly that place is best visited on a cruise,
because if you're terrified of flying or won't fly,
then you're never going to get there,
so it liberates you, it means you can go there.
So, for example, a friend of mine, Danielle Fear,
she's called Cruise Miss at cruisemiss.com,
she doesn't like flying but she travels around the world.
Literally, she's been on two world cruises
but whenever she goes anywhere,
even if it's on a river cruise in Europe,
she'll get the train to get there
because she doesn't like flying,
so she'll either get a cruise across to Europe,
she'll get a train across Europe on the Eurostar,
and everywhere in the world she goes, she goes on a ship
and never steps on a plane.
This means that by cruising,
she can travel anywhere she wants to go in the world.
The second are places that are going
to be very difficult for an English speaker,
either because of the language or culture,
so if you're concerned about it.
A really good example, I think, is Japan.
So, I'd always wanted to go to Japan, it's a magical place,
but I knew that actually Japan
is going to be more of a challenge culturally
and from a language perspective.
So, the first time I went to Japan was on a cruise
and we circumnavigated Japan,
there's lots of cruise lines that do that,
and it was fantastic because we got a way of seeing it
in a way that was more curated and helped us get around.
As we got through the trip, we got more and more confident
and started actually not going on organised excursions
and heading out ourselves because we'd learned
how to navigate the culture, the language,
the way things had worked.
Obviously we didn't speak Japanese but we'd learned
how to navigate our way around all of that,
if you excuse the pun.
So definitely, if there's somewhere
that you think you'd like to go to but you're worried
about language and culture and how to manage all that,
a cruise is a great way to go,
because they'll the whole experience, they'll have guides,
they'll have help, they'll have talks on board.
So, that's the second critical place,
anywhere that you're worried about that.
The third is also another kind of obvious one
and that's when the destination
is actually the cruise itself.
The most obvious of those is
the iconic transatlantic crossing on the Queen Mary 2.
So, the destination is the sea, it's the North Atlantic,
and you're going on that because that's the experience,
so that's, you can't do any other way obviously
than go on a cruise.
There are, of course, other transatlantic cruises
you can do, they're repositioning cruises,
but the iconic one is the Queen Mary 2
from Southhampton to New York.
That is a destination in it's own right
and you can only, of course, do that by cruising.
The fourth one and this is one that I think
is absolutely important and really fundamental
is when the only real way to explore the destination
is on a cruise.
So, its very, very difficult to actually get there
and see your way around any other way, certainly on land.
So, what are the examples?
There's probably four that I'd like to talk about.
The first of those is the Arctic and the Antarctica.
Now, there are some options where you can fly, for example,
from Ushuaia into Antarctica but you then have to
get on a cruise to see it, it's just impossible
from a logistics perspective and availability perspective
to see it any other way than on a cruise
and the same is true on the Arctic
if you head up to Svalbard.
The second is if you want to traverse the Panama Canal.
Now, of course you can go alongside the Panama Canal
part of the way on the train but if you really want
to experience the iconic Panama Canal,
you have to go on a cruise.
So, you can get some day trips
where you could go land-based,
but you're still going to have to cruise
and go on a small cruise down it but the best way to see it
is on a big, massive cruise ship
where you're heading through either
the old canal or the new canal.
The third one is the Amazon River.
Again, if you really want to explore the Amazon River,
a cruise is the way to go.
The fourth one of those is if you want to do something like,
you actually want to head around the base of South America
and you want to experience
that famous, traditional cruise itself as well
and head up around to the glaciers in Chile,
which you can really only see from a cruise.
The fifth place or destination
that I think is really fundamental to see on a cruise
is actually when the best way to see the destination
is on a cruise ship.
And there are a number of these when going on a cruise
is way better than a land vacation,
partly because just the logistics
of getting around are solved on a cruise
and actually the destination you see best from the water.
So, what are those?
I think there's probably five of those
that I've experienced.
The first of those is the Norwegian fjords.
It's quite difficult and quite hard
to get around the various fjords and it could take
a huge amount of time if you were trying to do it by land,
you'd have to a bit of land and ferry anyway,
but seeing it from a ship,
you're sailing right down to the fjords,
you're surrounded by the beautiful scenery,
scenery you'll never see if you're doing it by land.
Second is also sort of linked to that
and that's New Zealand's equivalent of the fjords,
which is Milford Sound.
Again, the best way of seeing that is on a cruise
sailing through Milford Sound.
Absolutely spectacular, you get up close,
you see the beautiful waterfalls,
things that you just wouldn't be able to see
if you were doing it by land.
For me, I think also the other example
is the Alaska Inside Passage.
Now of course, you can go on land-based vacations to Alaska,
some of them are quite difficult because some of the places
you can only really get to either by flying into them
or by going on a cruise but the Inside Passage
is easiest and best seen on a cruise
and that is one of the iconic trips,
visiting places like Juneau and Skagway,
absolutely magnificent, best way is on cruise.
Although you can visit the Galapagos,
and you can fly into Galapagos, to get around the islands,
you have to go on a cruise so the easiest thing to do
is to do a cruise which basically takes you
from point to point and you head around all of the islands.
There are ways where you can do it on the land,
where you then do a ferry between the different islands,
but the best and easiest way of seeing the Galapagos,
the most simple way is on a cruise.
I also think that the French Polynesian islands
is a great example of this.
So, for example, I did a Paul Gauguin cruise
and we managed on the cruise to go
to loads of different islands, even incredibly small,
little out of the way islands.
You can also do it on Aranui,
which goes even to even more exotic and smaller islands.
If you're trying to do that
by flying between them, you would struggle
because some of them you can't even fly between,
so you do have to get on the water for some of those,
but definitely French Polynesia is another great example
of where a cruise way beats a land vacation,
just because you can see so much more.
For me, the sixth one is if you want
to get a taste for a region.
So, for example, let's take the Caribbean.
There are so many different islands and if you want to go
on a land-based vacation, you're going to have to pick one
and I do know people that have headed off to the Caribbean,
they've picked an island, and they've been very disappointed
and felt they've missed out.
So, going on a cruise to get a taste,
where you're going to see five or more islands in the cruise,
helps you decide, is this the region I want to go to
and which of those islands would I want
to spend more time on?
So, definitely I think getting a taste of a region
is a really good example.
The same is true if you are heading
to other parts of the world, whether it's the Baltics,
where you want to see the region,
the different places around there,
decide what you what to want to go back to.
The same true, of course, of the Mediterranean.
So definitely, if you want to go to a region
but you're not sure exactly which part of the region,
a cruise is the best way to go.
Don't go on a land-based vacation for the first time
because, for example, someone I know has just come back
from the Caribbean, really disappointed
with the island they chose and felt they'd missed out.
If they'd gone on a cruise, they would have known
much better which island to go to.
The next is if you want to see a huge amount
in a very short space of time.
So, particularly for people based in the U.S.,
you have much shorter holidays
than perhaps people do have in Europe
but you want to go and you want to see all the iconic sites
and you want to see as much as possible
in a week or 10 days or whatever.
So, a cruise is a great way of doing that
because you can move between countries,
you can move between destinations,
it's normally done when you're sleeping,
you don't have all the hassle of hanging around in airports
because you're travel time becomes enjoyment time,
so it's a really efficient way.
So, if you want to see Europe, for example,
you could in one simple week, you could see Spain,
Barcelona, you could see Pisa, you could see Florence,
you could see Rome, you could see Monte Carlo.
Just so many different places that you could see in a week.
If you did the other itinerary, for example,
you could go, you could see Venice, you could see Dubrovnik,
you could see Split, you could see the Greek Islands,
you could see Athens, all in the space of seven days,
which would be really hard to see that much of Europe
or that many countries if you're trying to do it land-based.
Another key thing, and this sort of links back
to where we started, is if you want to see the world,
you want to travel right around the world,
you want to circumnavigate the world,
you want to stop at every single continent,
you would find that really difficult to do as land-based.
You can, of course, buy around the world tickets
but many of them limit you to seven stops, for example.
So, you can only an around the world ticket,
which you have to keep moving one direction
and only seven places, so once you get there,
you're going to have to then spend
a lot of time travelling out and about.
So, if you want to go on a world cruise,
you want to circumnavigate the world,
you want to see the whole world,
go to as many continents as possible,
a cruise is definitely the way to do it.
It becomes a logistical nightmare
and extremely complex if you are trying to do that
and organise it yourself.
The cruise line will have really thought it all through,
they'll have got the destinations, they'll have excursions,
they'll have information,
and that's definitely a key way to go.
Those, in my view, are the eight destinations or places
that are better to go and see on a cruise
than a land-based vacation.
I have many more cruising and destination tips
and advice videos, so why don't you watch
another one of those right now.