Cruising, part 1

It seems there are cruise people or people that hate cruises with a passion and not much in between. We have heard tales of wonderful trips on the grand Alaskan cruise and terrible times on a certain family themed cruise. There is the tale of gaining 10 lbs in 5 days and the one of losing 10 lbs because of catching the dreaded Norovirus. Our opinion before taking the cruise is that cruises are for when we are old and cannot walk like we like to.

So, why did we book a cruise? We were researching ways to travel to Russia as an American and it seemed that cruises are a pretty easy way to be able to. We started looking into cruises and happened to find one that visits, not only Russia, but 5 other countries for half of what it would cost to fly, rent a car, eat, and stay in hotels in all these countries. What a deal! If you haven’t noticed by now, we love a deal almost as much as we like to explore. Booked it!

Now that the deposit is paid and we are getting exited about all the counties, we see the price of the excursions…uhhhh wow, not doing that. Actually, we end up booking a very reasonable one, last minute, into St. Petersburg and it was totally worth it. But, $400 to drive us to the city center with 50 other passengers, so we can shop and eat…nope.

Looking over the places of interest in the excursion brochures did give us a place to start planning our siteseeing trips and we found that we could easily walk to most of the main cities and see things that others would miss (like the first 3D printed building in Europe). It also meant we got some exercise to burn off the 2x a day dessert run at the buffet.

The question is…are we cruise people or do we hate it?