I am booked on a Regent Seven Seas cruise and I’m excited!
In November, I will board Seven Seas Voyager with my brother and sister for a seven-night cruise from Trieste to Athens.
There is plenty I am looking forward to, from having time with my siblings to experiencing Regent’s much-lauded onboard service, restaurants and all-inclusive offering.
But one part of the cruise has already surprised me, months before I have even stepped aboard: the included shore excursions.
When the time came to choose our excursions, I expected the complimentary options to consist of a small selection of walking and sightseeing tours. Anything involving a boat, a meal, a tasting or something a little more unusual would surely come at an additional cost.
I was wrong.
The itinerary calls at Split, Dubrovnik, Kotor, Katakolon and Mykonos. Across those five ports, Regent is offering 54 included excursions, excluding the complimentary shuttle services that operate where the ship is not docked within walking distance of the city centre.
Those excursions are offered across 65 departure times and range from 90-minute outings to experiences lasting more than six hours.
In Split alone, there are 15 included excursions. I could see the city by tuk-tuk, explore Diocletian’s Palace through virtual reality, visit Game of Thrones filming locations or head underground into Vranjaca Cave before visiting an 18th-century water mill.
In the end, I chose Poljica Republic: Life And Food, a four-hour excursion to a small Croatian village. We will help prepare soparnik, a traditional meat-free dish made with Swiss chard, onion, olive oil and garlic and cooked in an open hearth.
It is described as Dalmatian pizza and is included on Croatia’s list of intangible cultural heritage.
Soparnik
Once it is cooked, we will sit down to eat while local musicians perform. It was exactly the type of excursion I had not expected to find among the included choices: local, interactive and centred on meeting people rather than simply viewing the sights through a coach window.
The choice becomes even more extensive in Dubrovnik, where 18 included excursions range from walking the city walls and cycling through Konavle Valley to exploring the Neretva River Delta by traditional wooden boat.
Guests can visit an oyster and mussel farm, combine wine tasting with a cruise around the bay, tour Dubrovnik’s Game of Thrones locations or explore the city by tuk-tuk. There are also photography-focused excursions, countryside experiences and tours examining the region’s food production and history.
We chose the three-hour Tuk-Tuk Panoramic Ride And Old Town. It combines an open-air tuk-tuk ride to Mount Srđ with a guided walk through Dubrovnik’s medieval Old Town. It should give us views across the city, some history and time on foot without taking up the entire day.
Kotor has 10 included choices. Among them is a village cooking class, an olive oil experience, a tree-planting excursion and a classical performance in Prčanj reached by boat across the Bay of Kotor.
Even the more conventional sightseeing options extend beyond a simple walk through the Old Town, with tours travelling into the Montenegrin countryside or combining Kotor with Budva.
Perast, Bay of Kotor
Here, we selected the four-hour Town Of Kotor And Bay Of Kotor Heritage excursion. It travels first to Perast before continuing by boat to the man-made islet of Gospa, home to the Church of Our Lady of the Rocks.
The excursion then returns to Kotor for a guided walk through its UNESCO World Heritage-listed Old Town.
The boat trip helped make the decision. Cruising across the Bay of Kotor will provide a completely different perspective from the ship and gives us another style of experience without having to pay extra for it.
At Katakolon, the obvious attraction is Ancient Olympia, but even here Regent has found several ways to experience it.
Guests can take a traditional tour of the archaeological site or use augmented reality to see its buildings reconstructed in 3D.
Alternatively, they can combine Olympia with Greek food, wine, music and dancing, visit a winery or spend the day learning about olive oil production and regional cooking.
We chose Olympia And Zorba Event, a four-hour excursion combining the ruins of Ancient Olympia with Greek snacks, local wine, a folkloric performance and the opportunity to join a syrtaki dance lesson.
I wanted to see Olympia, but adding food, music and dancing should make the excursion more rounded and considerably more fun than four hours devoted entirely to archaeological ruins.
In Mykonos, the included programme ranges from a guided tour of the island and its monastery to a ferry trip to Delos. There is even a 3D version of the Delos excursion, using augmented reality to show how the ancient buildings would once have appeared.
For now, Mykonos is the one port where I have resisted booking anything. We had planned to leave at least one port day free to enjoy Voyager while many of the other guests are ashore. We can still head into Mykonos independently if we feel like it, but after four consecutive excursions and a day at sea, having no fixed plans may be welcome.
The excursion guide lists a retail price beside most of the tours. Among the included choices, those prices range from $107 to $311 per person.
The four excursions we selected have a combined listed retail value of $847 per person. Those prices are not necessarily what every traveller would pay if arranging similar tours independently, but they do give some indication of what is being included in the cruise fare: transport, local guides, entrance fees and, depending on the excursion, boat trips, food, wine and other activities.
There are paid Regent Choice excursions as well, including small-group tours and experiences such as ziplining, river tubing and ATV rides.
But I do not feel as though the complimentary programme has been designed merely to encourage guests towards the paid options. Many of the included excursions are experiences I would happily have paid for.
The greatest problem was not finding an excursion we wanted to do. It was narrowing down the choices.
Included shore excursions can sometimes feel like a cruise line has ticked a box. Based on the programme offered for my November sailing, Regent Seven Seas Cruises has approached them as a substantial part of the cruise itself.
Now I just have to wait until November to find out whether Regent’s included excursions are as impressive in practice as they appear on paper.
