Handling Packages on Your Cruise Ship Vacation
If you book a cruise, that is choose to go on a passenger ship used for pleasure voyages to exotic locations, chances are you will end up buying a lot of things to send to those you care for. You have a couple of choices in how to handle such purchases. You can try to haul them home yourself, which might work if you plan ahead by taking a extra suitcase and knowing exactly what items you can legally bring back into the country with you. Another option is to buy things that are factory sealed and mail them back home. If you do the second option make sure you also invest in edge protectors or jumbo edge protectors to protect you goods in shipping. Many international post offices can direct you to where to purchase custom packaging solutions for just this need.
Anyone looking to take a cruise that has researched it knows there are a number of locations that they could visit. A cruise is unlike other vacations in that the getting there is as much a part of the vacation as the designation. Unlike other vacation options a cruise also returns passengers to the original port of call, making transport really very secondary. Although some cruises can be transatlantic in nature, there are few ocean liner style cruises today then what existed in the past. Modern cruises typically stick to shallow, protected, waters instead of trying to cross the open ocean. Cruises make up a major block of tourism business, earning around 30 billion dollars a year globally.
Modern Cruises are often on ships that approach the size of a small city. They are clustered around routes that go to the Caribbean, Alaska, or through the Mediterranean. Other places include Mexico, the South Pacific, the Baltic Sea and New England. For domestic cruises, mailing home packages is simply a matter of following state and federal laws. Shipping of food items and organics may be restricted to avoid spreading pests, but this mostly applies to handmade goods purchased in exotic places. Some of these ships enforce the same rules for bringing on purchased items as the port the originally call from. Some of the more extensively exotic locations are visited by expedition style cruises that are smaller in size and offer fewer services in exchange for less traveled routes and more wild ports of call.
No matter where you choose to travel, make sure you know the rules of how to handle things you buy to bring home. Consider shipping through international post, using edge protectors or jumbo edge protectors depending on size of the package being shipped home. No matter where you go you should find those offering custom packaging solutions just for this purpose. International post can save you the hassle of dealing with import customs on the ship as long as you follow the rules about what can and cannot be shipped to your home. Making this choice frees you up to not have an extra piece of empty luggage.