Are Shore Excursions Worth It? Our Cruise Expert Weighs In

After I had just arrived home from a 10-night cruise on the 600-passenger luxury cruise ship Seabourn Ovation, during which I indulged in all-you-can-drink-and-eat champagne and caviar while navigating the coasts of Spain and Morocco, a friend said to me, “You know, you can’t have a real travel experience on a cruise.”

That launched me into a response that started something like, “Did you know there is a thriving Jewish community in Gibraltar?” My friend, who is Jewish, like me, said she did not.

I told her how my 41-year-old daughter, Erin, and I, traveling on our own without our spouses or her seven-year-old daughter, had a blast on Seabourn cruising together and interacting with locals at ports of call. We did not book shore excursions in most places but instead explored by ourselves. We did some research, but mostly we improvised, our hearts and eyes open to discovery. We wandered more than we planned, just as “real” travelers do.

In Gibraltar, a British territory on the southern coast of Spain, after walking miles from the pier to the tourist funicular, we rode up to see the famous wild Barbary apes (macaque monkeys) who live at the top of “the Rock”—a 1,400-foot-high limestone mountain. Then, we headed back through the walled old town, where we saw a fading building decorated with the six-sided Star of David. Curious, we stopped at a nearby café and ended up practically being adopted by the local Jewish community.

A kind high-school student welcomed us past a gate and inside a synagogue with roots dating back to the 1700s, one of four synagogues on Gibraltar, and we talked about life for the 1,000 Jews on the peninsula. After we asked where to eat, he walked us past the kosher grocery store to a new kosher restaurant, Grill & Grain, where we indulged in delicious hummus bowls. There, the young owners told us proudly that they had been open only three weeks and had already hosted a bar mitzvah for 400 people.

Photo by Eric Laignel/Courtesy of Seabourn

An easy, all-inclusive vacation

Cruise lines promote that they offer a one-stop shop for vacations, bringing you to several countries in comfort and ease, so you can avoid the need to navigate multiple flights, trains, or bus rides, allowing you to unpack your suitcase once. Cruises also offer shore excursions to see top attractions, such as UNESCO World Heritage Sites, presumably with guides who know what they are talking about regarding the history and culture. Among the advantages of these ship-provided tours is that if they run late for some reason, your ship won’t leave without you. They are also a worry-free way to explore, as you put yourself into the hands of a knowledgeable local guide rather than having to do much research or troubleshoot on your own.

Shore excursions are also the way to go, in my opinion, if you’re looking for adventure, such as outings with kayaks, bike operators, and other outdoor vendors who have been vetted by your cruise line.

But with so many shore-excursion options offered by the cruise lines, it can be easy to forget that you are also free to simply explore on your own—as long as you return to the ship at a designated time. On this Seabourn sailing, Erin and I mostly went this route so that we could set our own pace should we, for instance, spot enticements in the window of a boutique or bakery and opt to pop inside, or want to wander off the tourist path.

Spending the night on shore

Another misconception about cruising is that you have to spend every single night on the ship. When our ship overnighted in Casablanca, Morocco, instead of going it alone, I got lazy about planning and booked us a 36-hour overnight experience via the cruise line to Marrakech ($2,500 per person, including meals and hotel). The ship’s other option to get to Marrakech was a long, full-day tour by bus (about $300 per person), but I couldn’t stomach the idea of more than seven hours in a bus for about five hours on the ground.

Photo by Oussama Sabri/Unsplash

The overnight tour proved to be an easy way to navigate the dusty chaos of Marrakech, and we did get a peek at some of the city’s trademark luxurious sites, such as the magnificent Jardin Majorelle, where Yves Saint Laurent is memorialized amid gorgeous plantings, and we dined in the dreamily lit garden of the riad hotel Dar Rhizlane. But our local guide, it turned out, was more into cheesy jokes than talking history or even Moroccan culture. And as we rushed from one site to another, our only longer encounter with other locals was a hard pitch to buy rugs at a store chosen by our guide, one not even in the city’s famous souk. I found myself envying the one couple from the ship who chose to take the train to Marrakech, overnight there, and explore on their own.

That being said, one of the tour options I tend to really enjoy on small-ship cruise lines such as Seabourn and Windstar is the often-included opportunity to go shopping with the ship’s chef at local markets. In Málaga, we joined Seabourn’s enthusiastic culinary advisor and master chef Tony Egger as he bought seafood, jamon, dates, tomatoes, olives, almonds, and other supplies at the historic 19th-century Mercado de Atarazanas market hall. Egger made sure our small group tasted items, and it was fun to later detect his purchases, including fresh tuna, on the ship’s menus.

After the chef’s tour, Erin and I once again broke away from the group itinerary because we didn’t want to miss an opportunity to indulge on our own in churros and pudding-thick hot chocolate at an outdoor café, perfectly perched for people-watching. Even on a tour, as long as you alert the guide, you are free to leave the group and make your own way back to the ship.

We aren’t the only cruisers who find some of their best experiences happen off the cuff when not part of a tour group. Joyce Nutta of Orlando learned this on a recent 124-day world cruise on Holland America Line’s Zuiderdam, when she and her husband, Giorgio, spent free time after a tour to see the dragons on Indonesia’s Komodo Island, taking a floating tuk-tuk to a nearby pink sand beach.

“The driver had basically a lawnmower engine, but we crossed a channel, and he introduced us to his family, [who were] selling trinkets,” Nutta says. “We didn’t buy anything but ended up sitting under a banyan tree with them for an hour and a half, talking about their dreams and where they wanted to go in life, and that was one of my favorite moments of the cruise.”

The verdict

Cruise passengers may have only a day or an overnight in port cities, but they are not any different from other “real” travelers. Ultimately, they can explore as much or as little on their own as they would like. And that in and of itself is the big advantage of this style of travel: You can make it your own. While some cruise passengers prefer to do shore excursions at each port for convenience and don’t mind the price (you are basically paying for hand holding and information), I prefer to get lost and wander and to stop to smell the roses or eat the falafel, as the case may be.