56 Days On This Bus Sounds Way More Enjoyable Than A 9-Month Cruise

Photo: Karl Hendon (Getty Images)

We’re not entirely sure why, but last month Royal Caribbean kicked off a cruise that’s scheduled to last nine months. It sounds miserable and exhausting to us, even if we’re happy to enjoy the inevitable drama from afar, but what if you like the idea of visiting a lot of countries in a short period of time but don’t have nine months in you? You might want to cross your fingers that the 56-day-long Bus To London runs again in 2024.

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As the name suggests, the final destination was London, but for the 2023 trip, passengers started out eight weeks earlier in Istanbul. The first week took them to Sofia, Bulgaria, then Belgrade, Serbia and finally Zagreb, Croatia. The route began to turn north in week two, winding from city to city on its way to Honningsvag at the very northern tip of Norway. It then headed south, taking passengers to Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and finally the United Kingdom.

In all, the Bus To London visited 22 countries in two months. And if you were expected to sleep on the bus overnight, it would have probably be even more miserable than spending nine months at sea. Thankfully, that’s not the case. The cost of a ticket included a stay in a hotel every night, and most legs included a rest day once the bus got to a new destination. You might not have had time to see everything that Prague had to offer in a single day, but you at least had the option to make your stay as touristy as you wanted.

Aside from being a shorter trip, that just sounds like a more enjoyable experience overall. Sure, there was probably less room to move around on travel days, but there was also no risk of getting seasick, and a bus isn’t limited to coastal cities with a port large enough to dock a cruise ship. Plus, the scenery on travel days was probably absolutely gorgeous the entire way.

The 2024 version still hasn’t been officially announced, so there’s no telling how similar it will be (if it even happens at all), but at least that gives you time to save up the nearly $25,000 that Business Insider reports a ticket cost in 2023.