We just got back from our big land trip to Europe: 2 and 1/2 weeks in and around Paris, Barcelona and Amsterdam. Wow. We'll remember this trip forever and we could not have seen half as many sights if we'd been on a cruise.
However, for our next European vacation, we plan to cruise. Here's why:
*No worries about having to plan which hotel to stay at or where to eat the main meals of the day.
*No changing hotels required during the trip. Less packing & unpacking, & less hauling suitcases around.
*No having to manage transportation between cities in foreign countries on our own.
*Having a home away from home onboard where we'll always have a ready room, good service, and lots of other people around us who speak English fluently. (We tend to get homesick abroad, and I think this would help.)
*The ability to see more cities in a shorter amount of time. On our land trip, we visited a few major cities that intrigued us enough to want to spend several days exploring each one, but we also like the idea of day visits to places that we've heard of and would like to see, but that we don't feel a need to visit at length.
*The European city I'd most like to visit is St. Petersburg, and that seems to be most easily visited via a cruise, due to Visa requirements & issues with their water.