Cruisin'

Shane and I just returned from a week-long Baltic cruise.  It was a fun but hectic week.  I will write a blog post (with pictures) about it later.  But for now, I wanted to talk a little bit about cruising.  Shane and I have now been on three cruises (does that make us old?!)... so we can speak with some authority on cruising.

There are many pros and cons to cruises.  And it also depends on where the cruise is going and how much there is to see where you're stopping.  Here's what I think of cruising.

Pros:
-You can unload all your stuff in the cabin room and not worry about re-packing and shuffling stuff around as you go from one place to another.
-On days at sea, it's total relaxation.  No agenda.  You can go for a walk on the deck, enjoy the spa, read a book, or sit in the hot tub.  You can take naps.  You can just wander aimlessly around the boat, exploring all the different areas.
-You get to dress up on "gala nights".  This may not appeal to certain people, but I personally love dressing up fancy, and I don't get too many occasions to do it.  So it's fun to break out my nicer dresses and heels.
-You can see a lot of places in a short amount of time.

Cons:
-You don't get to fully experience the cities that you stop in.  Port stops are usually only 6-10 hours, which is not enough time to fully explore a city like St. Petersburg.  During your day at port, you often feel rushed.  When we went on our Greek cruise and stopped in Athens, we literally only had enough time to jump into a taxi, go see the Acropolis, and then return to the ship.
-There is a time constraint.  If you don't do an excursion and you decide to tour a city on your own, you are responsible for making sure you get back to the ship on time.  And oftentimes the ship ports 20-30 minutes away from the city center, so you have to take that into consideration as well.  If you are someone who stresses about time, you may not be able to relax and enjoy wandering around a city during a port stop.
-The food is often mediocre.  Maybe this is because Shane and I have only done low-cost cruises.  I've heard about other cruises with amazing food.  But in our experience, the food has been very mediocre, especially the breakfast and lunch buffets.  The sit-down meals for dinner were usually quite good.  But the buffet food was no better than hospital food.  And the coffee was terrible.

Overall, I enjoy cruises as a way of getting a "taste" of an area.  It's helpful if you want to explore a bunch of places and decide which one destination you would want to return to.  For example, after our Greek cruise we knew for sure we would go back to Santorini one day.  But we don't need to go back to Patmos, Mykonos or Athens.  Also, I love being out on the sea.  This last cruise we got a room with a balcony, which was really nice.  I loved watching the sun set on the water, and listening to the waves at night.  Shane and I walked around the deck several times, and it was so nice and peaceful.

We will probably do more cruises in our future, but not as a regular thing.  After 3 cruises in the last 3 years, I think we will be taking a break from cruises for awhile!