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Gary Bembridge author of "The Cruise Traveler's Handbook" provides another 60-Second Cruise Tips. For more visit http://www.60secondcruisetips.com and http://www.tipsfortravellers.com/cruise-travelers-handbook

Excursions will add significant amounts to your cruise budget. A family of four can easily spend over $200 a day on cruse line excursions. With even basic three-hour coach-based tours around a port of call costing about $50 per person, cruisers always ask me for ways to save money without missing out on seeing the best that a port has to offer.

I use and recommend taking the local hop-on hop-off bus tour. Virtually every port I have been to has one of these. Most seem to be run by global operators like “City Sightseeing” and “Big Bus Tours” with reliable standards, quality and good prices.

Hop-on Hop-off buses usually stop at, or close to, the port and sell tickets as you disembark the ship. The tours provide a helpful map of the city, take you to the key sights, provide multi-lingual recorded commentary and run frequent schedules - enabling you to hop off at the sights you want to without worrying about long waits for the next bus.

Visit city-sightseeing.com and bigbustours.com to check if your ports are covered before cruising.