Cruising: A Budget Friendly Vacation

Have you've been thinking you would like to go on a cruise but couldn't afford it? Cruising can be a budget friendly vacation as you will find out out when you read this post.

If you are planning to travel to Europe on your cruise read our post, Packing For Our 12 Day Mediterranean Cruise, before you start packing.

This post was originally written in February, 2018. We just got back from a cruise and I am happy to say that cruising is still a budget friendly vacation. Look for updated (October, 2025) information and new pictures throughout this post.

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I can't believe we have been retired for 2 1/2 years now.  I have to say that we are enjoying every minute of it.  One reason we are so happy with our new life is that our dream of traveling, when we retired, is really coming true.   Since retiring, we have made several quick road trips that brought us to Washington, DC, Charleston, SC, Columbia, SC,  Gatlinburg, TN and Cherokee, NC.  We enjoyed a vacation in Cancun, Mexico, our first all-inclusive ever.  We spent a week in Vegas with family and friends and just got back from our second cruise.  I thank my kids for gifting a couple of these trips to us and for my sister for inviting us to Gatlinburg to join her and her husband when she was offered a free hotel stay there.  We did treat ourselves to the two cruises though.  Traveling is wonderful but does cost money and being retired means not having the income we used to have.  But we have found that we can enjoy a wonderful vacation on our tighter budget by cruising.

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I can't believe it's been 10 years since we retired. We bought a travel trailer and have traveled to all 50 states crossing off 2 huge retirement goals on our bucket list.

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We definitely had to tweak our budget since we retired but when we did, we made sure that we were budgeting enough for vacations.  For a look at how we've been budgeting you can read our two previous posts:  Keeping Track Of Every Penny and How We Save On Groceries To Have More For Vacations.

So how do we make cruising work for us. 

1.  When we cruise for the sake of taking a very nice vacation, we worry less about where the cruise will take us and more about the best deal.

The cruise we just came back from took us to Cozumel, Mexico and Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands.  We have been to both of  these destinations before.  We cruised to both places on our very first cruise 15 years ago.  But we found a great deal on Carnival.  The cruise cost $279.00 per person and they were giving $50 onboard credit per room.  If you have not cruised before keep in mind that there are Cruise Government Taxes and Fees, $186.50 for this cruise, and mandatory gratuities charge which we prepaid when we booked our cruise and that added another $129.50 to the price of the cruise.

*The price of cruises have not really changed from 7 years ago. This is the price of we pay for an interior room on the cruise line's smaller ship. You will pay a lot more than this on an oceanview stateroom and higher on a larger ship.

2.  We are not fussy about the cruise line we choose.   

We will go with the line that is offering the biggest bang for the buck.  We look at the deals of all the cruise lines.  We have only vacationed with two cruise lines so far, Royal Caribbean and Carnival and have been very happy with both.  

*We have been "loyal to Royal" and Carnival. We have reached Diamond status on Royal Caribbean which gives us a number of perks including 4 free drinks each per cruise. Also, playing at the casino, and we are definitely not high rollers, has the cruise lines offering us "casino" deals (special discounted cruise rates and free drinks (Carnival) while playing the casino.

3.  We cruise out of the ports we can drive to.  

We save a ton of money on not having to fly to a port.  Now that we are snowbirds and live half the year in Florida, we have 3 ports all within a 2 hour drive and Miami is 4 hours from us.  We do need to park our car for the duration of the cruise.  It cost us $75 to park for 5 days at the Tampa port.

*The parking rate is the same at Tampa.

4.  We skip the expensive excursions and get to the beach on our own.

We went to the beach in both Cozumel and Grand Cayman.  Our friends recommended that we spend the day at Mr. Sancho's Beach Club if we wanted to do the beach in Cozumel.  It cost us $40.00 round trip total by taxi to get there and we spent another $10.00 for drinks.   We paid $20.00 total round trip to get to Seven Mile Beach in Grand Cayman and $10.00 to rent two lounge chairs at Public Beach.  There was no charge to get onto either beach.  Compare that to the $69.99 per person excursion that gets you transportation to the beach and a chair at a beach in Grand Cayman.

*Before every cruise I research to find out if there are things to do within walking distance of a cruise port. For example, there is a beach with lounge chairs and everything else you could need that requires a 5 at the Grand Turks cruise port. It costs us $0 to spend the day here.

5.  We drink the water, coffee, tea, hot chocolate, lemonade and iced tea (and juice and milk during breakfast hours) and not purchase the beverage packages.

We had a few beers from a machine where you dispensed your own.  Soko loved it!  It cost slightly less than if we got a beer from the bar.  After using the onboard credit we had, we were left with a bill of $38.00 at the end of the trip for drinks (and bingo!).  Compare that to $56.95 +15% gratuity per day per person for the beverage package.

*RC and Carnival allow each passenger to bring two bottles of wine onboard and I see lots of people carrying on 12 packs of soda. You can also bring water aboard, in a sealed bottle, but no liquor.

When all was said and done, we spent a grand total of $1,057.00 for a really nice vacation.  Where can you go and spend only $212.00 per day and get a room (a really tiny room) 3 meals a day (and a midnight snack), 2-3 comedy shows a night (the comedians, Spike Davis and Kelly Terranova, were hilarious) live music (in different venues around the ship) and a stage show every night (I didn't want the Epic Rock show to end.  It was amazing!)  

*We paid less than this on our recent cruise. 

We love cruising! A fun part of the experience is that it gives us a chance to try new food like this eggs benedict with salmon. Yum!

And cruising definitely works for us as far as staying within our vacation budget!

Good To Know: If you are new to cruising, you might want to check out this website to see which cruise line is a perfect match for tastes and interests.

Check out this post before you book your Mediterranean Cruise.

Pros And Cons Of A Mediterranean Cruise Vacation

Did you just come back from your first cruise? Please let us know how you liked it by sending us a comment. We would love to hear what you thought of it.

14 National Parks In 5 States 2025 Road Trip-Stops 1, 2 And 3

Our latest road trip is named 14 National Parks In Five States. Do you name your road trips?

Read this post, What We Learned On Our First RV Road Trip, if you are thinking about going on your first road trip in your new RV.

Our road trip didn't start as it usually does with hectic last minute packing the night before, getting up early the next morning and then heading to our first stop where we set up and level the trailer, unpack the groceries and get the food from the cooler into the fridge in the RV. After that's done, we finally get to pull out the camping chairs and some cold drinks and relax.

This road trip started with a hectic packing of the car and RV two nights before the start of our trip and then Soko driving me to the airport the day before our road trip.

After dropping me off at the airport where I boarded a plane to NY, Soko went back to the RV to do the last minute grocery packing by himself.

The following day Soko headed out to the first stop of our road trip, a quick one night stopover at Blackwater River State Park in the panhandle of Florida while I spent time with these cuties.

On Sunday, Soko made his way to the second stop of our trip, Horseshoe Lake Charles, a hotel in Louisiana while I joined our older son, Joe, and his friends at Citifield to watch the Mets and to celebrate his 40th birthday. 

On Monday, I flew to Louisiana and finally caught up with Soko at the hotel. I know people that just jump into their RV's with a plan in mind but without reservations and wing it as they go. They can stay somewhere as long as they like or cut the visit short if they want.  We are not a spur of the moment people at all and that kind of a plan would stress us out. But we can now see how not having reservations might be the way to go. Maybe one day...probably not lol!

After spending the night at the hotel, it was finally time to start our road trip. The first stop we were heading to together, South Llano River State Park in Junction, TX, was actually the third stop of our 19 stop road trip. But first we needed to make our first of many Walmart stops.

After unpacking our groceries and settling into our campsite we had a chance to look around the park a bit. We found a steep set of stairs that led to the South Llano River, a popular place to swim, float, fish and paddle.

The following day, we googled things to do in Junction, TX and the #1 attraction was the park we were camping in. #2 was the Deer Horn Tree so we started our one and only full day in Junction with a ride to see the tree.

It only took a few minutes to see the tree and then the whole town. After our short visit we headed back to to the park. The Buck Lake Trail trailhead was across from our campsite and, when we read the description of it, it sounded like the kind of hike we wanted to do that day.

A few feet into the trail we found this bird blind.

We saw a number of birds here including this gorgeous female Northern Cardinal.

We logged our sighting on a chart in the bird blind.

                                              

We spent a good amount of time in the bird blind and then continued on our hike. The trail was an easy, flat hike that we leisurely strolled along. It was appropriately called the Buck Lake Trail as we found out on our walk.

We passed this fishing dock along the way.

And lots of cactus.

At the end of the 3/4 mile in and out trail, we were back across the way from our campsite and it was time for lunch. Lunch was leftover pizza that Soko had for dinner his first night on the road without me.

After lunch we headed to the South Llano River to find tubes to rent. Someone told us it would be at this bridge. 

We never found the tubes and didn't see anyone tubing so we decided to give up on the tubing idea and just explore the park instead. We found this path to the amphitheater.

Nothing was going on here but it was a very nice space with very cool looking but not so comfortable seating.

We passed by the Buck Family ranch. Walter Buck Jr. donated his family's land to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department for the purpose of wildlife conservation and public park use.

Unfortunately, Walter Buck Jr. passed away 9 years before his land became a park and never got to see how really nice this park is. He would have been very happy to see that there was plenty of wildlife roaming around throughout the park.

Our last stop was to check out the camp store. It was a big store in comparison to most state park stores with plenty of supplies and souvenirs. I couldn't believe I walked out of there without buying anything. It was probably due to the fact that neither of us had any money on us :).

We enjoyed our quick stop in Junction, TX but it was time to move on. We were on a schedule. We were heading to Stop 4, El Paso, TX, in the morning.

Read about our Stop 4 here.

Things To Do In And Around El Paso, TX

Read about another great city in Texas here.

Dallas, TX

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The Cottage Market

Visit their Etsy Shop here. Enter the code WELCOME for a $2.00 coupon.

Have you been on a National Park road trip? How many did you get to see?

Things To Do In El Paso, Texas

Are you looking for things to do in El Paso, Texas? You came to the right place!

Is this a stop on your road trip like it was for us? You might want to read this post - Getting The Car Ready For A Road Trip - before you go.

We name our annual road trips. The name of our most recent trip is called "14 National Parks in 5 States". The 4th stop we made on this trip was El Paso, TX. We had already visited the two National Parks in Texas, Big Bend NP and Guadalupe Mountains NP so we didn't have a National Park to visit here this trip. This was one of the states we were just passing through on our way to the parks. We were not just going to pass through without checking out the city though.

The first thing we needed to do was find a campground. We always try to find a state park in the area we are staying in. If not, we'll find a KOA. But sometimes we can't find either. We got very lucky in El Paso. We found a beautiful state park here. I wouldn't be surprised if one day Hueco Tanks State Park was given a National Park title. But before we were able to go to our site, we were required to attend an orientation first. We learned about how delicate some of the things in this park were, especially the pictographs and we needed to understand what might be harmful to them. Cooking with charcoal for one thing could do real damage to the ancient drawings.

We were thrilled when we were finally able to go to our campsite. We were surrounded by the the most amazing views of the low mountains that are everywhere in the park. Hueco Tanks State Park is a favorite of rock climbers and we could see why it would be.

We got to the campground late the day before so that left us with only one full day to explore El Paso and we wanted to make the most of our time. We wanted to visit the city but also enjoy some time in this beautiful park so we got up early and started our day with a couple hours of hiking.

We were on a quest to find some of the pictographs we we heard so much about while watching the orientation video. We found a few of them scattered around the park. We hiked up on the rocks to get a close up view of them.

There is graffiti mixed in with the ancient pictographs and it was hard to tell what was what but it was still fun hunting for and viewing all the drawings.

After we were done hiking it was time to head out to the city. The first thing on our list of things to do was to have lunch. When I was googling places to eat L & J Cafe kept showing up as highly recommended so that was where we decided to go. Mexican food seemed like an appropriate cuisine to try out in this area and this restaurant looked like the best place to have it.

Our lunch started with a complimentary appetizer. The homemade tortilla chips were the most delicious chips I have ever tasted. The dips that came served with them were also very good but two of the three were a little too spicy hot for me. My son-in-law would love these dips!

I had a trio of Despardo Tacos and Soko had Chicken Enchiladas. We both really enjoyed our lunch choices. After eating here, we know why it made all the lists we saw and we can now recommend L & J Cafe ourselves.

                    

After lunch we headed for the zoo. The El Paso Zoo was compact and that made it easy for us to see every exhibit. There were other things we wanted to do and see, on our one day visit to El Paso, so it was the perfect size for us.

It was very hot this day so we didn't see lots of the animals as they were inside staying cool and there was no access to see them there. We did see this Rhinoceros Hornbill who scared a toddler and sent him crying into his dad's arms when it suddenly let out a very loud, ear piercing screech. 

The most interesting animal we saw at the zoo was the Przewalski's wild horse. This horse was declared extinct in the wild in 1970. Through the efforts of several groups and with the help of the El Paso Zoo and other zoo's and facilities where small groups of the horses still survived, there are now 325 of these horses living in the wild in Mongolia. Their status has been upgraded from extinct to critically endangered.

The zoo was lots of fun and then it was time to head downtown.

We started off at the El Paso Museum of History. This small museum had no admission fee. They only ask for a donation. 

I really liked the section dedicated to women's contributions to society. There was a collection of native women's clothing. The China Poblana dress with red zapatillas and Zapatista hat was my favorite.

Next on our list of things to do was the El Paso Museum of Art. This museum also asked only for a donation.

There was an interesting exhibit called The Art of Propaganda. It took us awhile to read all the posters.

Both of the museums were very nice, and we appreciated the air conditioning lol, but what we were most looking forward to doing, on our day in El Paso, was a ghost tour. We were being hosted on this tour by US Ghost Adventures. We stopped at Starbucks for a little snack after the museums, we were still full from our delicious lunch, but it was still a little too early for the tour so we took our time walking to San Jacinto Plaza where we were going to meet Julian, our tour guide.

Right outside the plaza there were a group of people enjoying a free concert. We joined them until it was time for the tour.

We stopped to take a picture in front of this cool sculpture, the meeting place for the tour, then we spotted the lantern Julian said he would be holding so that we could find him. (Can you spot him behind us?) The night started with the chilling story Julian told us about the alligators who once lived here. He told us that after a couple of alligators were abused and one was killed by human hands, they moved the gators out of here. I got goosebumps when he said the alligators now haunt this area and people have heard growling and scratching of alligator feet on the pavement around the sculpture.

A little boy haunts The Reagan, a gastropub these days, but at one time a pediatrician had his office in the basement of this building and it is thought that the little boy was one of his patients. People have heard him crying and there have been sightings of the distraught child in different locations in the building.

Another story that gave me the chills was the one about the cleaning women who was cleaning the Plaza Theater after a show. She smelled smoke and looked up into the balcony and saw a man smoking a cigarette. She yelled to him to put it out. The man then proceeded to jump from the balcony to his death. The women started screaming for help but stopped when she again smelled smoke. She looked up on the balcony and saw the man back in his seat smoking. Before she could comprehend what she was seeing he jumped off the balcony again. Needless to say, the women frantically fled the building, quit her job and never returned to the theater again.

We went to several different sights that night. As we walked to each sight, Julian kept an interesting conversation going on about the history of El Paso. 

This was our first ghost tour and we really loved it. Besides being totally entertained with the stories about the ghosts that haunt this city, we also learned about the history of El Paso. We got some extra steps into our day and saw some nooks and crannies of the city that we missed when we were doing our own self-guided tour earlier. We have to say that this tour was the highlight of our time in El Paso, TX and highly recommend looking into doing one if you are ever here. Click here for tickets and ask for Julian!

Read about these other amazing cities.

Things To Do In San Diego, CA

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Scratch Made Food

The Cottage Market

Have you been to El Paso, TX? What was your favorite thing to do here?