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Small Ship Travel
My wife and I are considering the Iceland Small Ship Tour. Is it easy enough to get acquainted with your fellow Tauck travelers on small ship cruises, or is it better to bring another couple along?
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We just did a small ship cruise this past spring and did Iceland a few years ago. We found we got to know several people but certainly not everyone. If you reach out to fellow passengers and introduce yourselves, you should be fine. While you could certainly travel with friends, I think you will find many others traveling with a spouse and some even solo. One of the things we enjoy about traveling with Tauck is meeting new people.
We have traveled both ways and each has its advantages. Don’t hesitate to travel as a couple or a single. People who travel with Tauck are interesting and friendly in our experience. It’s easy to get to know other travelers and often the tour director facilitates that, too. Often we have found that a random seating with others led to some fascinating conversations and we learned things that we never would have known had we just sat as two or with friends. On the other hand, traveling with friends is bonding in a new way through shared experiences and comfortable. However you go, go with a smile and open heart and you will have a wonderful experience.
No problem traveling without friends. It's easy to meet other people on a small ship cruise. One way is to tell the maitre d that you're willing to share a table with one other couple. It's easy to get to know other people if it's just two others.
It can be hit or miss. Most of the time we got very interesting people, but every now and then we'd get a couple that could only talk about themselves - they just had no interest in hearing anything about us. But those were few and far between. (one husband spent the entire dinner looking at his phone, ignoring the rest of us, including his wife.)
To switch from Tauck to life in general, I'm always amazed at the number of people I encounter who are completely self centered and don't seem to have any interest in anyone else. They're usually very good at doing a monolog about themselves, preventing anyone else from speaking.