How to make the most of your time ashore during a cruise

The art of the cruise ship shore excursion, experience tells me, lies in that fact that it pays to be sure of what you want to see and do when going ashore.

Many cruises these days favour time spent on terra firma, rather than exhaustive time aboard and at a sea, albeit with port visits usually counted in hours, not days, or, if you’re fortunate, in overnight stays. Therefore your time ashore is precious so choose and plan your shore excursion wisely and shrewdly.

Rent a bike to explore places like Bornholm, Denmark.Credit: iStock

Rome, like most places, wasn’t seen in a day, or less, so it can be worth focusing on a specific area of interest or even an interesting area.

Ocean cruises in recent times have become more akin to their destination-dominated river cruise counterparts, which invariably berth somewhere of interest each and every day of the itinerary.

(On my most recent ocean-going voyage around Northern Europe, there was a mere single day at sea, sans a port visit, providing a welcome respite after days of foot-slogging in the form of sightseeing on land).

Cruises can come complete with an elaborate, sometimes bewildering, offering of shore excursions, from escorted grand castle sojourns to guided city walking tours, with bookings required to avoid disappointment well before disembarkation.

Illustration: Jamie Brown

But, really, don’t feel compelled to reserve one. You’re more than free to be your own free agent.

It’s probably the journalist in me, but I prefer to mix it up and plan some, if not most, of my own off-ship experiences though the organised variety, of course, make sense for the less mobile and/or less confident.

The latter can mean hours of research, thumbing through guidebooks, plotting maps and being immersed in the Internet for weeks before a cruise departure. But that’s exactly how I like it.

On a recent 15-day cruise around the Baltic aboard the ship Viking Jupiter of which I was a guest, I pre-booked my own electric bike for a tour I’d carefully planned of the unique and wondrous medieval white-washed round churches spread across the Danish island of Bornholm (Viking offers a similar group excursion).

Between each of the circular churches I visited, I pedalled past wild red poppy peppered pastures dotted with charming old Danish farmhouses and their sturdy matching barns, mostly of the same hue as the iconic flowers.

E-bikes, easily rented on shore, have been a boon for the ocean and river cruise excursionist, independent or organised. They can take you much further and less strenuously in your fleeting time off ship.

Whether you’re going it alone or going on an organised shore excursion (and I have taken some memorably rewarding ones), do contribute something monetarily to the destination since something that many a port, such as Venice, abhors about some cruise ship visitors is their hit, see and run tendencies.

Of course, the caveat for the freedom offered by going it alone ashore is to keep a studious eye on the time – don’t stray too far from the ship without leaving sufficient time to return before the ropes are released for the next port.

Most cruise liner’s boarding times are an hour or so before departure so don’t push your luck, less you inflame the captain’s ire, by returning past the specified boarding time. Therein, admittedly, lies the advantage of the organised shore excursion in that you can be sure to be deposited back to the ship with ample time to spare.