I’ve been thinking about booking a cruise for a while now. After this pregnancy, and Mini Madam is old enough to travel, I’ll definitely be in need of a trip away. Traveling by plane with two under two doesn’t sound like much fun at all to me… placating screaming children at 20,000+ ft with horrified onlookers gawking and shaking their heads at your lacklustre parenting skills, changing bums in space approximating 2ft squared, spending 5+ hours sharing your lap with a sweaty baby… sometimes it’s a thankless task being a parent.
Cruising offers a whole host of advantages. There will be room to walk around in and plenty of things to excite the littlies - from swimming pools, to onboard entertainment, to wide open spaces to run around in. If you travel with Fred Olsen cruises during easter, peak-time summer, and Christmas, there’s also a children’s club onboard so you can go hands free for a few hours! With a small baby there’s also countless quiet spots to breastfeed and nap, and medical staff available on call to help if anything unexpected crops up.
Cruise ships nowadays also benefit from plenty of child-friendly dining options. Every holiday we’ve been on with Dexter has been disastrous when it comes to evenings out. There’s calling a taxi company and pulling out your GCSE language skills to explain there’ll be a “Bambino” (or equivalent) riding with you, then you’re waiting for an hour in the villa with a tired, bored and hungry tot to contend with. When it finally arrives, there’s no car seat. The taxi driver seems completely content for you to ride with the baby on your lap but you spend the entire journey expecting to get pulled over by foreign police. Then there are tears at dinnertime as you have to explain for the fiftieth time that chippies and fries are the same thing, only fries are skinnier. You’re home by 8.30pm with a bag of alcohol from the off license but too tired to drink any of it. The thought of all this with two babies is enough to make you pass up a summer holiday altogether.
You can also baby-wear the entire holiday if you want to. Nothing is too far to walk to and there are lifts, escalators and ramps to help you get from a to b. It’s also far easier to tag team the night shift so both parents get an opportunity to stretch their legs and enjoy a few cheeky cocktails in peace.
During stop-overs you’ll still get to experience foreign climates and culture on terra ferma yet still have the home-from-home experience waiting for you at the end of the day. Knowledgeable staff can also help you plan your day time wanderings so you can get the best out of the experience. With destination Fred Olsen cruises from Southampton to the Canaries, Europe, and the Baltics, there’s plenty of choice, and the appealing prospect of getting to experience more of the world on a single holiday than you would ordinarily.
Sound good? I thought so. Now, to convince Craigy…
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