If you fancy mixing a relaxing holiday with a kicking city break, then check out the Travel Department's Miami and Caribbean cruise trip. The great thing about Travel Department trips is that you can choose how involved you want to be with the group aspect of the holiday. Plus, the company goes out of its way to help you. All transfers from the airport, port and hotel are taken care of via coach. There are also excursions to acclimatise you to, and inform you about, your destination. On this particular trip, over the first couple of days there was a guided tour of Miami and South Beach; a half-day excursion to the Everglades safari park, including an airboat ride; and, on the way back to the airport on our final day, a visit to a gigantic shopping mall, which pretty much took care of all our personal and present shopping. The group on this trip was diverse in terms of age, with most people in couples or small groups of friends.

First stop: Miami. The Travel Department put us up in the four-star Hyatt Regency hotel in downtown Miami. It's a large conference-style hotel with a very decent breakfast buffet, gym, coffee bar and restaurant. There's also an excellent outdoor pool nestled among the skyscrapers of downtown, which is perfect for a swim after dark. The staff are incredibly friendly, keen to assist in whatever way possible, especially when it comes to public transport. In a city that values cars (you can't swing a mojito without hitting a Hummer), it's a relief to find that bus services are pretty decent and will lead you to whatever area of the city you wish to visit.

Miami is a blast of a city. Trying to walk its streets without humming the theme tune to CSI or one of Will Smith's more notable hits proves quite a challenge, but that noise soon gets drowned out by the hustle and bustle.

Florida's largest city is divided by water at nearly every juncture. Cool palatial homes with speedboats docked out the back line its waterways as you make your way towards the beaches from downtown. Your main destination will be South Beach, where most of Miami's famous and beautiful art deco buildings are to be found, and home to great bars, nifty restaurants and a few museums. The Miami look is all quite Kardashian, but clubs and bars can be informal too, so there's no need to doll up nightly unless you're hitting the serious VIP spots. Walking down Ocean Drive by the Palace Bar – where muscle-bound gays sip cocktails on the terrace beneath an almost invisible mist of cold water that takes some of the almost relentless heat out of the air – you'll eventually come across Gianni Versace's awesome villa, now a hotel.

Of course, all of this posing will work up an appetite so check out Jerry's Famous Deli on Collins Avenue. Housed in a beautiful high-ceilinged art deco mirrored room, it's a mecca for giant sandwiches with a menu that will take you a good 15 minutes to get through. Afterwards, hit the brilliant Wolfsonian design museum on Washington Avenue. Music is everywhere too. From every shop window, bar and club, Miami's tunes pump. If you're into big Ibiza-style clubbing, then it's one of the best cities in the US to be in.

A few days in, it was time to get the boat. I'd never been on a cruise before and quickly realised that it's all about switching off both mind and body. If you want to laze around a pool, eat as much as you want and take in frivolous entertainment, then this is the place for you. The endlessly enthusiastic staff encouraging everyone to get up and dance around the pool are met with whoops of enjoyment from the passengers. Solace can be found in the onboard casino, the swimming pools and jacuzzis, bars, rock-climbing wall, basketball and table tennis courts, and sun decks.

Our first stop was Key West, an idyll right at the western tip of Florida's southern island chain. You can while away your hours here in a few ways. I took a jet ski for a spin into the ocean beyond the docked cruise ships; you can also take guided jet ski tours around the island. Shops are a clutter with tie-dye tee-shirts, pirate merchandise and the all-important slices of key lime pie. If you fancy a stroll, head over to the Winter White House compound, a mini-mansion that became a holiday refuge for several US presidents.

Key West has also played a part in literary and musical history. Ernest Hemingway wrote A Farewell To Arms when he was living above a Ford showroom on Simonton Street, and Tennessee Williams wrote his first draft of A Streetcar Named Desire while he was vacationing at the La Concha hotel.

Back on the boat then, and next stop Nassau. The Bahamas stir up images of tropical islands and rum cocktails, but the reality is a lot more commercialised. The unavoidable colossus of the salmon-pink Atlantis resort dominates the entrance to the capital Nassau. This massive hotel on Paradise Island employs 6,000 people, and houses a giant water park and an aquarium with the world's largest open-air marine habitat. But I didn't want to spend my time in theme-park hotel, so I hopped on a scooter in an attempt to get out of the choking traffic by the port and explore some of the more remote parts of the islands. Inevitably, I ended up back on Paradise Island. I gave in and tried to go for a swim, which is harder than you'd think because publicly accessible beaches are sandwiched between the private resorts.

Come sundown, it was time to board the boat again, with our final stop being Cococay, an island that the cruise company owns and a little artificial for my liking. And finally back to Miami. There goes the theme to CSI in my head again.

The essentials

* Return flights from Dublin to Miami via London Heathrow.

* Three nights at the four-star Hyatt Regency in Miami.

* Excursions and coach transfers.

* Four-night cruise with Royal Caribbean on the Majesty of the Seas, stopping at Key West, Nassau and Cococay.

* €1,169 per person, plus taxes and charges (€300).

* www.thetraveldepartment.ie

Three more cool cruises

Norway

Norwegian travel specialist Project Travel offers a number of half-board special offers for departure in spring and autumn of this year, which need to be booked by 31 March. Prices vary on the time of year booked and whether you opt for a north or south cruise. If you choose to go in April on the classic voyage north and stay in an inside cabin, the price is €1,622 to include one night's B&B in Bergen, six nights' half-board on the ship and one night's B&B in Oslo, as well as return flights to Ireland, including taxes. The trip starts in Bergen and takes in Trondheim, Tromso and Kirkenes, which is just a few kilometres from the Russian border. Visit project-travel.ie for details.

The Med

GoHop.ie offers 50% off its original price of a western Mediterranean cruise, which is for travel on 9 or 23 May this year. The cruise will take you from Barcelona to Malta, Italy and France before returning to Spain, and the price is €599 per person, sharing an interior cabin for seven nights. Not included are the return flights from Dublin or onboard expenses, but seven nights' accommodation on the MSC Cruise ship Fantasia and full board is included. Children under 18 can also cruise for free. Visit gohop.ie for more details.

The Caribbean

If the western Caribbean sounds appealing, American Holidays offers a package on board the brand new ship Allure of the Seas. Your route takes in Fort Lauderdale in Florida (you'll spend one pre-cruise night here) and then Haiti, Jamaica and Mexico before a return to Florida. The date of travel is 24 September and the price of €1,489 includes flights and seven nights' full-board cruise on the ship, as well as all taxes. Visit americanholidays.com for more details.