This post has been sponsored by Celebrity Cruises.

You’ve read a lot of posts here about how much I loved working on cruise ships in my twenties.

The thing is, with more than 500 days at sea, I can also say that cruising is a pretty awesome vacation too. There’s something so exciting about waking up in a different country every day.

It’s super relaxing to hit a new beach each morning that’s just a few steps from the gangway and really easy to find the right cruise deal.

Personally, I think the best possible way to see Alaska for the first time is on a cruise. There’s so much amazing scenery only available via the water – like the Inside Passage or Glacier Bay. The port time in each of these cities is really the perfect sampler of the area too.

On a cruise ship, you get to set your pace. If you want to cram as many activities into a day, you can, and if you want to take it easy, that’s an option too. You can go to a morning yoga workshop, take a tour in port, eat dinner at a five star restaurant, catch the evening show and finish up your day with a nightcap in the piano bar just as easily as you can sit by the poolside and read a book all day.

Another perk about cruising is the childcare facilities. If you have school-aged children, Celebrity has put a lot of thought into great activities for them too. While there’s plenty you can do onboard as a whole family, if you wanted to make some evening date night, Celebrity has you covered with fun activities while they watch your kids.

Besides all those years working at sea, I have fond memories of an extended family vacation as a preteen where my cousins and I barely saw our parents because we were having so much fun in the kids club.

Here’s another reason why cruises are awesome – they can seriously be the best budget vacation around.

A lot of cruising costs are add-ons, which you are totally in control of. If your budget is tight, maybe you skip the pricey shore excursion and walk around the port on your own instead.

If you just spend a few minutes looking for information about your port online, you can probably find plenty of free activities to do. Grand Turk, a popular Caribbean stop, has a free exhibit about the Friendship 7 Mercury space capsule that splashed down there. If you’re on a fall foliage cruise, you can check out the World’s Largest Fiddle for free in Sydney, Nova Scotia.

An important thing to keep in mind though, if you book an excursion yourself and it’s late getting back to the ship, you will get left behind. If you’re on a shore excursion booked through the ship, they never leave you behind. So if you want to explore some really out of the way ruins that are going to cut it close getting back to the ship, it’s probably worth a splurge on the ship excursion. If you’re somewhere like San Juan and just want to go visit the fort that’s within view of the cruise ship and then stroll around Old San Juan, you can probably handle that excursion on your own.

You can eat plenty of delicious food (like, seriously, more food than anyone could ever need) in the assortment of free dining venues on any ship and be more than satisfied, without going into any specialty restaurants.

There’s tons of entertainment onboard – from amazing theatrical productions to lectures to live music to sports – you can spend all day doing free activities on a ship and never be bored.

One of the best things about cruises, if you’re flexible on your where and when, you can get some really great last minute deals. By keeping an eye out on some cruise lines websites, you’ll see when they’re advertising deals for ships with itineraries that aren’t sold out. Those rooms will often go on sale close to the departure date.

Check out Celebrity Cruises deals for some great deals to a lot of exciting locations.

 

Have you ever gone on a cruise before? What’s your favorite thing to do onboard? What’s your favorite port city?