Let's Book Your Cruise Blog

It’s true — there’s not much to do in some ports. But you don’t have to just stay on the ship.

This will be a short post because, well, there wasn’t much to our day in Freeport. Not that that’s a bad thing.

Although the cruise industry can seem sort of traditional, some things are always changing. My last cruise on Royal Caribbean visited the port of Freeport on the island of Grand Bahama, which has traditionally been a port for other cruise lines like Carnival and Margaritaville at Sea. 

As a frequent cruiser, I was honestly a bit perplexed at being in a new port and not really having a plan for what I should do with my port time. I decided that my best bet was to book an excursion through the ship where I would tour the island and spend some time at a local shopping area.

Usually, I’m not much for ship’s excursions – in Europe especially, they can be kind of long, and I often prefer to take private excursions, such as visiting Maya Chan when my cruise ship stops at Costa Maya. 

But in Freeport, I learned that sometimes it’s a good idea for me to change things up as well. My half-day tour took all the stress out of exploring Freeport, and it gave me some good ideas of what I could do when I came back.

The tour was pretty simple. We met in the port area off the ship and were escorted to our bus. We had a fantastic tour driver who told us all about Freeport as he drove us out of the port and through the downtown area. We made two stops, one at a small market and another at a bigger shopping area, Port Lucaya.

The real highlight of our tour was our friendly tour bus driver/tour guide, David. We had a great time learning from him and chatting with him about Freeport and the changes coming for this island, where Carnival just built its new Celebration Key. (David told us that Royal Caribbean is planning some expansion there, as well!)

This was the first cruise for my friend Lily (you may know her as the brains behind the Let’s Book Your Cruise newsletter), and we agreed that our tour was a great introduction to the city of Freeport and the island of Grand Bahama!