Restaurants Everglades Florida
Let’s Book on a Cruise from Florida
Have you even been on or considered taking a cruise? Cruising in this country is a billion dollar enterprise with thousands of singles, couples, families and senior citizens enjoying all types of cruises each year. Florida has 5 main cruise ports and over a dozen cruise lines that sail out of them, everything from the family friendly Disney cruises to the super luxurious Cunard Cruise line. The top three cruise lines are Carnival, Royal Caribbean and the Norwegian Cruise lines and they all sail at least half a dozen cruises from several Florida cruise ports with Miami, Fort Lauderdale (Port Everglades) and the famous Port Canaveral being the largest, most popular ones.
When planning a cruise the first thing to consider is; where do you want to go? This is important because it can often determine what port you sail from and even what time of the year you sail. For instance if you’d like to go to the Panama Canal that cruise is pretty much available all year round but if you’d like to take a transatlantic or world tour cruise the different ships for those trips are in port at different, specific times of the year; they aren’t weekly, scheduled trips and often times will leave from either the Port of Miami or Port Everglades which are closer to the open ocean and therefore it’s quicker for ships to get to the ocean and get going.
After you decide where you want to go you then have to decide how many days you want to be gone. There are many options from a one day Bahamas excursion to a 3 or 4 night weekend jaunt to somewhere or you can go for a full 7 days. There are 10-15 day transatlantic and extended Caribbean cruises, 142 day world cruises, that are sometimes longer or shorter and there is even a ship called ‘the World’ that you can buy staterooms in and live on as it travels the globe, wouldn’t that be wonderful. Really it all depends on how long you want to be gone and how much money you want to spend.
A great thing about cruising is when you get to a ‘port of call’, which simply means a place you are stopping in port for a day or more, you can go on shore and do things you might not get to do at home, tour the town you’ve stopped in or buy things to remember your trip. Sometimes they even have discounts on things such as jewelry and booze and some towns have specific areas specially designed for their cruise guests with specialty shops and restaurants. They also offer things like boat tours of the area, parasailing or zip line excursions, snorkeling or diving trips, historical tours of museums or churches in the area and sometimes you can even swim with dolphins, sting rays or sharks. You can book these activities when you book your cruise or when you get on the ship and sometime even the day of but most of the time spots are limited and fill up so they like for you to sign up for things in advance.
Ship range in size and style from the luxurious yacht types that the Seabourn Cruise Line is famous for to the newest Disney ship the Dream and the huge Royal Caribbean International ships the Oasis of the Seas and its brand new sister ship the Allure of the Seas, which is two inches longer making it the world’s longest cruise ship. Cruise ships, especially these days, are literally floating cities. Some have half a dozen restaurants, night clubs, casinos, world class spas and fitness centers, high end shops and movie theaters. In addition to more than one swimming pool or Jacuzzi some offer water slides and wave pools where you can surf or learn to surf and many now have rock climbing walls right on deck, it’s quite the experience.
So matter what your tastes or budget whether you’d like to go for a day, a week or half the year, cruises are a great way to spend a vacation. If you think you couldn’t spend that much time ‘cooped up’ on a ship then you need to take a good look at the ships now days and how much fun there is to be had on one, then go book a cruise and see for yourself.
About the Author
Cruising is a great way to spend time on the ocean and see different parts of the world in a safe, expense controlled way. Florida cruise ports often have many things to do before you even get on the ship. The cities that host the ports are among the best places in Florida to spend few days too either before or after your cruise because of all the activity that normally surrounds them.
Oyster House Restaurant, Everglades City Florida
