By Shari Benyousky
Guest Columnist

Column Note: This is the fourth column in a series about a European trip. Previous columns included dealing with various travel issues, how to replace a passport abroad, and sleeping in a greenhouse in Lucerne, Switzerland.

The word “ferry” probably puts a picture in your mind which may not be accurate. Overnight ferries in Europe mean sea-worthy ferries which look a bit like cruise ships and include some of the same amenities on board. Instead of paying for both a hotel room and transportation, an overnight ferry lets you pay one price for both. On a sunny July afternoon, we boarded a fast train from Paris to Cherbourg on the coast.

How Do You Find An Overnight Ferry?

We prioritized traveling on an overnight ferry for the downtime after busy Paris, and so used the website Direct Ferries which collates ferries from 4412 routes and 901ports. They help arrange 1.2 million ferry trips annually. I intended to find a ferry to Dublin, but nothing departed to Dublin on Sundays, so we ended up on the mid-range Stena Line which arrived down the coast at Rosslare, Ireland.

TIP — Trains are frequent and cheap in Europe, so don’t discount a slightly different landing location than your end destination.

Tips On Checking In For A Ferry Ride

Purchase your ticket in advance (especially if you’re taking a car along) and read the small print. Physical check-ins are often scheduled for TWO HOURS ahead of the actual time a ferry leaves port. Ferry check-ins range from little offices in front of the ferry ramp to giant terminals for multiple ferry lines.

We arrived at the Cherbourg train station with plenty of time (I thought) to shop for a few groceries for the trip across and to get the 1.25 miles from train to ferry. We decided to schedule an Uber, but none of the Ubers I asked for responded. Next, we tried to grab a bus, but the bus stop was under construction. Suddenly we found ourselves making the trek in a hurry. Unfortunately, Google routed a walking route to the Stena Line dock and not to the general ferry check-in terminal.

Cherbourg is an enormous working terminal with dozens of docks and heavy semi traffic unloading and reloading onto the ferries. Pedestrians are rare, so walking instructions aren’t great. So, this is the official shoutout to 18-year-old Jason Benyousky for running the 1.25 miles ahead of us and speaking French to the desk staff to let them know we were still coming. After the flurry of checking in and showing passports, we took deep breaths. We had made it!

Sleeping On Board

We ferry pedestrians (maybe 75 of us) waited in the ferry terminal in a little café while the rest of the passengers drove their vehicles (vacationers and business  people from Ireland with cars and lots of truckers with semis) on board. We finally hoisted our backpacks and boarded a bus for the short ride from the ferry terminal over to the Stena Line. The bus drove right up into the cargo hold to let us out and get our cabin assignments.

You can get a cheap ferry ticket without an assigned seat which means you’re sleeping in a chair wherever you can find a quiet spot on a deck. I recommend paying extra for a cabin with sleeping bunks and a bathroom with a shower. Think of it as hotel, transportation, and entertainment all for one price. A four-berth cabin with a bathroom and a “free” 24-hour tour around the coast of England for the three of us totaled $520. For comparison, airline tickets for three people from Paris to Dublin plus a hotel room would be about $636.

Jason chose a top bunk and tossed his backpack up. Cabins are tight — see picture with Tony Garza illustrating — but comfortable. Nonetheless, most of your awake time you’ll spend on one of the decks in a restaurant or a spa, reading in a deck chair, or exploring the outside decks or pools. When leaving or arriving, people line the outside rails to watch the blue streaks of wake, wave at people on the dock, and marvel at the enormous rubber bumpers keeping the ferry from whacking the dock.

Food On Board

We carried a few groceries and snacks aboard. On most ferries, you’ll see families spreading out blankets and eating their dinners. However, we also had the choice of two restaurants and various bars with limited menus.

Since the clientele for this run between Cherbourg, France and Rosslare, Ireland consists of mostly working people and families, food prices were quite reasonable. Don’t expect gourmet French meals, but you won’t starve.

Dinner for three with full-size entrees cost about $40. The breakfast buffet cost $15 per adult including all-you-can-eat and drink smoked salmon, prosciutto, cappuccinos, and everything else you can eat for breakfast between Ireland and France.

TIP – You’ll find huge lines when the onboard restaurants open. Nine hundred people were on board with us this crossing. If you don’t like waiting, hang out a bit and read or enjoy a glass of wine.

Motion Sickness

The Celtic Sea borders the North Sea, so crossings can be rough. Not long after we watched the Cherbourg harbor recede from the back deck of the ferry around 4:30 pm, the captain warned us of a storm. We entered sheets of rain soon after.

If you suffer from motion sickness like Tony does (nausea, vertigo, headache), you want to stay near the lower decks and keep an eye on a window. Seeing the horizon allows your inner ear to calibrate your internal equilibrium. An old, but effective, sailor’s trick is to dab ginger or spearmint oil behind your ears or bring candies to suck on.

Walking around a ferry with a rough sea provides its own entertainment. Everyone looks like they’ve stayed too long at a bar. You’ll see railings across most spaces where people move. You’ll see some people grasping the railings for dear life while others seemingly walk with ease. You’ll see kids giggling and rolling around with the rocking.

The rocking motion of the ferry felt soothing all night, but you had to develop sea legs quickly if you wanted to get around by morning as white-capped waves still muscled the ferry.

One enormous wave broke over the bow and sprayed the entire ferry. The ferry workers smiled and joked through it all. Just another crossing. One worker at the buffet shrugged. “Sometimes it’s easy. Sometimes it’s rolly. We don’t mind.”

Kids And Truckers As Passengers

We didn’t have little kids along, but if you brought one or 10, they would have lots to do. We saw kids in packs running between their lounge where their parents watched, and the play areas filled with ball pits and climbing gyms. I watched for a few moments and marveled that the kids seemed to have perfect balance and loved being on board.

The Stena Line Annual Report indicates that a large percentage of their profit comes from shipping freight. Dozens of truckers loaded their semis onto the ferry and spent the rest of the 24 hours in the restricted truckers’ lounge on Deck 9.

Arrival In Rosslare, Ireland

Far too soon, the announcement for docking came over the speaker, and we repacked our bags and headed with the mass of people to the outside decks to watch Ireland loom larger and larger. First, we saw windmills and then shoreline and then little Irish houses clinging to rocks.

Unloading happened in reverse, so pedestrians were last off. We walked with a dozen teenagers from the Belfast Youth Orchestra carrying musical instruments to the Rosselare Europort train line station which turned out to be a couple of benches under an awning. Rosslare is the end of the line from Dublin. Our train arrived and sat on the tracks for an hour while the conductor cleaned up candy wrappers and whistled. We ate some oranges and noticed with amusement that our legs still felt the ground roll even on solid ground.

Next up — we train to Dublin to discover if a Guinness really does taste different in Ireland.