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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.
To be honest, I tend to travel mostly as a single (every few trips I go with a sister or friends, but mostly single), and I have found other singles and couples much easier to interact with and more open to meeting new people. Just my experience, but those couples who come with another couple, or groups who travel together, tend to stick together and eat together and not interact with the bigger group as much. I love traveling as a single - I get to interact with everyone and have met some amazingly interesting people, but still escape to my room if I need quiet time (sometimes being around so many people when you’re not used to it can be tiring all by itself!). I have met some life long friends on Tauck trips traveling as a single.
JaneP - I wholeheartedly agree with your statement. Couples/families traveling together usually are their own group and on one of my tours, one such group actually introduced themselves as a unit and didn't mingle at all. Small talk is not my forte, and there are times when I just need to escape the masses. On the other hand, I have met some terrific people that I have continued to travel with on other Tauck tours.
I agree, in part, with both JaneP and Goddess. We have met many nice people on our tours, but we travel to experience the culture and norms of other countries, not to befriend people.
We do enjoy mingling with others in the lounge before dinner. I find superfluous chatter to be quite draining, however. It’s always so very nice to escape back to our riverboat cabin to enjoy a glass of wine by ourselves and to reflect on what we learned and experienced that day.
I am not bothered by groups of people traveling together as long as they are courteous and do not insist on commandeering restaurant tables and seats on buses.
Yes agree, Couples tend to stick together. It turns out that way when we travel with friends. Like Kfnknfzk, our main reason to travel is to experience the culture and sites of where we visit. We very much enjoy meeting people but it comes secondary. Sometimes we like to eat on our own, primarily because if you sit at a big table, meals can be long when we want an early night.
I think the Iceland tour has changed since we took the tour, it was the first small ship we took and we were disappointed by being on the ship so much, we were only scheduled for one tour a day, some of us tried to see if we could pay for an extra tour in the afternoon when the ship was not due to move, but they would not allow it. So we want to go to Iceland again but next time a land tour.
I'm going solo to Antarctica with Tauck next February. The wife isn't interested in that region, so it's just me. I can deal with being solo, but we went on the Tauck Prague to Paris river cruise in 2025, and the times I remember as wonderful were after dinner. Some would gather in the lounge to just sit and talk to each other. Not small talk - but TALK! Sometimes I would go to the lounge and sit by myself to read, but it was never long before a nearby group would ask if I'd like to join them. I just loved those times.
And when you combine that with the wonderful things you get to see…pretty wonderful.
That’s interesting. We have been on about five Tauck small ship cruises and the evening entertainment has been very poorly attended including just the bar area. Most people seem to disappear to their cabins straight after dinner. The entertainment is good quality, a resident band duo, singer, talented dancers. There is a different theme every show with slick scene changes etc. . It’s the same with the lectures which are always good. It seems most people don’t see them as a necessity. Such a shame.