Do you know where you're really cruising to?

"Of course I do! Why wouldn't I know; my cruise line has given me a clear itinerary!"
Well, it's not always that easy, strange as it may sound, especially if you're new to cruising or haven't traveled a lot in the past.
So, on the assumption that all the cruise lines aren't deliberately lying to you, just what am I talking about?

Well it's actually quite simple. A lot of ports that cruisers want to sail to aren't on the coast, or if they are they don't have a big enough port for lots of big cruise ships to dock all at once. In these circumstances what the cruise lines do is sail into the nearest large port and then offer excursions out to the advertised port.
It's important to remember with this though that the advertised city may well be half hour/forty five minutes from the port you're docked at so you can't just get off the ship and walk into town, you either have to book a cruise line excursion, pay to go on one of their transfer coaches or arrange travel yourself which, as you can imagine, will obviously add to the total cost of your cruise.

A few cities where cruise lines frequently do this are;

Rome - Port is Civitavecchia,
Paris - Port is Le Harve,
Bruges - Port is Zeebrugge,
Florence or Pisa - Port is Livorno
Seville - Port is Cadiz
Athens - Port is Piraeus

If anyone can think of any more of these examples feel free to add them below or if you have ever had any problems regarding this I'd love to hear back from you here.

Happy cruising