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What to take? What to wear?

Getting ready for that special cruise can be quite a hassle. Here are some tips to help keep the whole process under control - but whatever you do - start planning as early as you can.

Step 1

Start by looking at the vacation as a series of types of activities. Break the vacation down into broad types of activities like:

Physical Activities

Will you be doing much lying on beaches, swimming, scuba diving and snorkelling, sailing, hiking and tramping, paragliding and such like?

In which case you'll need the appropriate outdoor gear.

Tourism/Shopping

If you are going to be seeing cities and ports, exploring historic sites or touring around ancient cathedrals and castles, or even just doing the shopping treks, the clothes requirements will have to be suitable for whatever climate you are going to be doing this in.

Informal Evenings and Dining

Informal dining has no real rules except usually that jeans and shorts, swimwear and crop-tops are not allowed.

Semi-Formal Evenings and Dining

This usually entails men wearing a jacket and tie and women being dressed in smarter clothes.

Formal Evenings and Dining

Dinner jackets (tuxedos) and bow tie for men, formal dresses for the ladies.

Step 2

Divide the days into THREE segments - morning, afternoon and evening and then decide roughly how many times you'll be doing each of the things you identified in Step 1.

Step 3

Add up how many times you plan to do each type of activity and this will give you a very rough idea of how much of each type of clothing you'll need. Then, bearing in mind that you’ll be able to wear clothing more than once for most activities and you'll be able to wash (or have washed) a certain proportion of the clothes, you'll be able to estimate how many items of the relevant clothing you'll need.

We've provided some checklists in the form of free downloads - just click on the checklist you want to download.

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