Cruise excursions are one of the biggest upsells you’ll see when planning a cruise. As soon as you book, they start showing up everywhere: And for a lot of travelers, booking excursions through the cruise line feels like the default move. But for us? It often isn’t. We do book excursions sometimes. In fact, some…
On a Norwegian Cruise Line sailing, the Freestyle Daily is one of the easiest ways to understand what is actually happening onboard each day. It shows the activities, entertainment, dining hours, venue schedules, youth programming, meetups, seminars, shopping events, paid extras, late-night options, and all the little things you might miss if you are only…
If you’ve never been on a cruise before, the sail away party is one of those traditions you may not even realize is a thing — until you experience it. It’s the moment the ship leaves port, the music starts playing, the drinks start flowing, and the trip finally starts to feel real. Vacation has…
There are a lot of great resources out there that go very deep into credit cards and all the ways to maximize points. We read them.We follow many of them.And sometimes, we even use the strategies they recommend. But over time, we’ve learned something important: There is no single credit card strategy that works for…
When we’re planning a trip, we almost never look at one option and say, “Yep, that’s it.” Even when something looks good at first glance, we usually pause and compare it against a few other paths before we book. Not because we want to overcomplicate travel. Because we’ve learned that the best travel option is…
We went into our Norwegian Bliss repositioning cruise from Los Angeles to Vancouver with a goal: Take people along with us in real time and answer questions while we were actually on the ship. This was not the first time we had tried this. We had shared real-time cruise content before on the Norwegian Bliss…
Updated June 22, 2026: We’ve refreshed this trip report as a stronger real-life travel example, with clearer notes on the surprise, the same-day flight risk, the Hawaii weekend, and what made this trip memorable beyond the points. Some trips are planned months in advance. This was not one of them. This was a Monday booking…
Choosing a cruise is not just about the ship, the price, or even the itinerary. It is about you. Because the truth is, the same cruise that one person calls “amazing” could be one someone else would never book again. We have seen it over and over. The difference usually comes down to one thing:…
Most travel mistakes don’t happen during the trip. They happen before you ever leave home — when you’re booking flights, hotels, cruises, resorts, rental cars, and experiences. And the tricky part is that a lot of these mistakes don’t feel like mistakes at the time. They feel like: Sometimes you can. But sometimes, that “great…
Most people think of points the same way: Flights.Hotels.Maybe an upgrade if you’re lucky. But there’s another category of rewards that many people never even look at — and in some cases, it can create some of the most memorable parts of a trip. We’re talking about experiences. From VIP event access to once-in-a-lifetime activities,…
