No matter how many cruises I take, I always stress a bit about time, so I thank my friend Kay for

When taking a cruise, keeping track of time can be difficult sometimes because you've got differences sometimes between local time and ship time, and it can be a big mess.

But one easy and cheap solution is this. It's a little analog keychain that you can easily hook onto your bag to make sure you never lose track of time.

And if you venture out on your own at cruise ports instead of doing a cruise line excursion, which is what I usually do, that ship will not wait for you if you come back late.

Just set it to ship time so you always know what the real time is. Because in cruise world, it's that ship time that matters the most.