Why it’s actually better travel to Europe with kids on a cruise – The Points Guy

Occupancy limits

First and perhaps most importantly, booking traditional hotels might frustrate you quite quickly when you’re in Europe with a family.

Familiar foods when you want them

While eating and experiencing different kinds of cuisine is a big, fun part of exploring Europe for adults, that may not be the case for children. Not every kid is ready to scour a new menu, in potentially another language, for each and every meal.

When we travel, it can be tough to keep one of my kids fed since she struggles with eating unfamiliar food (though not for lack of trying). So, a cruise is a great option for our family. We can go ashore for a local lunch and then return to the ship at night for some easy comfort food.

For example, a few culinary highlights (for me) on our trip included lunch on a Tuscan farm featuring cheese, truffle honey and oil-dipped bread, and a paella in Barcelona.

As excited as I was about those dishes, my 8-year-old was equally thrilled to see some familiar favorites back on board. In other words, it was a win for all involved.

See a lot without working hard for it

Traveling through Europe with kids is amazing, but it’s also work. There’s packing up, dealing with checking in and out, making sure you didn’t forget that charger or stuffed animal, hauling everyone’s bags to the train station or airport, unpacking, restocking the fridge, and on and on — all of that can get old quickly.

Conversely, if you are cruising Europe with kids (at least for a portion of your trip), there will be no packing or unpacking to deal with during that part of your journey. Simply drift away to sleep at night after sailing out of, say, Barcelona and wake up in Livorno, Italy, just a short drive from Pisa, while leaving the “work” of getting there to the ship. You get somewhere new to explore virtually every day without worrying about the logistics of getting there.

Not only do you have the option of some of the larger ships on lines such as Royal Caribbean and Disney available in Europe, but there are even some river cruises that are family-friendly, such as the Adventures by Disney river cruises, which opens up all kinds of additional ports and destinations.

By sailing from port to port, you can get a taste of an area without committing to multiple days there. The worst-case scenario with less time in each destination means that you may fall in love with a place and want more time. But then, you can always plan another trip there in the future.

All that said, it is worth noting that when you cruise in the Mediterranean, some of the frequently used ports are quite a distance from the major cities you’ll likely want to experience. For example, the port used to visit Rome, Civitavecchia, is about an 80-minute bus ride from the Eternal City itself. The considerable distance between the port and Rome can lead to early mornings, long days and tired kids. In our case, we used our time on the bus to take some power naps and keep everyone happy.

Something for everyone

In my opinion, if you’re going to Europe, you should do things that you can only do in Europe. That might mean walking through the Roman Forum, seeing the Leaning Tower of Pisa or dancing under the Eiffel Tower in Paris. And often, if you are traveling as a family, you will be doing those things as a family.

However, there may be times when some family members don’t want to do things at the same time as everyone else for days on end.

Maybe you want to enjoy some jazzy piano tunes and a quiet drink at a bar while your tween wants to play basketball with their friends and your partner wants to go for a swim. After returning from a day out and about onshore, everyone can return to the ship in the evening to do exactly what they want to do when they want to.

A little time (slightly) apart can be a fantastic way to reset so you’re ready to enjoy more experiences together the next day.

Cool off easily

A lot of Europe is quite warm in the summer — hot, actually. When we visited Rome in mid-July, temperatures clocked in at 100 degrees, and it felt even hotter than that.

In much of Europe, widespread air conditioning and swimming pools are few and far between, so it can be tough to cool off between adventures. However, if you stay on a large cruise ship, you will have access to not only some pretty great air conditioning (which means a whole lot, especially in southern Europe) but also pools, waterslides and plenty of ways to cool off.

Readily available ‘easy button’

Just before boarding our most recent cruise, the kids needed something familiar for dinner on our fourth night in Barcelona. So, since I had spotted a global pizza chain across the road from our hotel that night, I fired up Google Translate, went online and ordered some pizza. It wasn’t fancy, but I hoped it would be easy and affordable.

When I walked across the street to pick the order up, there was no pizza. There was no record of the order despite my email confirmation number. My Spanish and their English weren’t meeting in the middle enough for anyone to understand the problem — or solve it. Magically, after an hour or so of confusion and two trips into the store, my order eventually appeared, but it’s a good example of how sometimes the “easy button” can be hard to find abroad when you’re doing it yourself.

On the ship, when we wanted a pizza after a long day exploring Rome, we simply walked up to the top deck and got it.

While each ship is different, some other amenities of a large ship that may make your life easier include a way to do laundry, really good air conditioning waiting for you, onboard medical assistance if someone in the group is unwell, and easily accessible staff members that speak your language in case you have questions or are in need of recommendations.

You may not need those conveniences, but knowing they are there can take away some of those stresses you may have in the back of your mind.

Combine time at sea with time on land

Of course, if you do head to Europe for a family cruise, then you might as well go a little deeper and at least explore the city you’re departing from. If you have time, you can even tack on more time in the city that your cruise will end in, too. That means you can get the best of all worlds: You can enjoy all the conveniences and made-for-kids entertainment available on the ship and have time to really explore Europe on your own, too.

For us, that meant spending more time in Barcelona at the beginning of our cruise. We had plenty of time to walk the Gothic streets; shop; feast on Iberian ham, paella and gelato; enjoy an evening stroll in Park Guell; and, of course, visit the Sagrada Familia, among other things.

After the cruise disembarked in Barcelona, we took a train to Paris and spent several nights exploring there, too.

In both of those locations, we were often shelling out for multiple rooms each night, grateful for the easy days in the middle of the trip that we’d spent on the ship and — every now and then — really missing the familiar food waiting on the ship and the fun (and friends) readily available in the kids and teens clubs.

Bottom line