Looking Along The Coast of Málaga, Spain

There is one substantial difference that I have discovered between travelling by land and travelling by cruise ship. That is often the ports you visit by cruise ship tend to get pushed to the back burner a little in terms of research. With destinations, you are visiting by land getting the much bigger share of research time. While there are two goods reasons for this I will get to in a moment I wanted to first share a little photo from Málaga, Spain.

Málaga, Spain

The city of Málaga in the south of Spain is a rather good example of this. It was in the middle of the cruise from Fort Lauderdale to Venice. In some ways, I kind of forgot it was even on the itinerary. In another way, the visit, to this city has definitely left me wanting to return, not just to the city of Malaga but the surrounding area as well.

Málaga sits at the foot of some rather impressive mountains, some of which you can just see on the right-hand side of this photo. However, it is the mountains which sit behind where I took this photo to the East of the city that looked even more impressive. As the ship was departing the city in the evening I had dinner looking over the mountains and it is one of the few times I did not have my camera with me but wish I did.

A Lack Of Research

As I mentioned above there are two reasons why I tend to spend a lot less time researching the ports I visit on a cruise.

The first is that in many cases there is a big lack of time when you visit a city on a cruise ship. In many cases, you might be in port for 8-10 hours. Sometimes less if you have to tender or depending on the port and sometimes more. But in almost every case when you start to research a port there is so much that you could do. Of course, there is not the time to do everything and for that matter, I prefer to just find out what I do when I arrive.

The second reason is that often there is the chance to take a tour that is reasonably comprehensive. You get to have a good introduction to the main attractions in the city without having to guess from your research. It gives you an opportunity to better identify cities you might like to return to at a later time by land.

How do you go about researching your travels? Do you approach the way you are travelling to a destination or the time you will have in a different way?

Instagram

The post is a slightly adjusted cross post that I recently shared on my Instagram account. If you would like to see more posts I share on Instagram why not connect with Travel Explored on Instagram.