cruising | In Retrospect

When we depart in nine days now I want to write a bit, but not too much, and I want to do it every day. What I intend to do is be particular about what I put down on paper. Every day I’ll put a pen to paper briefly about:

Logistics and reality
Remaining active and fit on vacation
Food and entertainment, but only if it’s interesting
Opportunities for rest and relaxation, in the literal sense
What experiences in the moment inspired the strongest emotions

Logistics. This is actually the least most important subject. You can learn this anywhere, but it is essential to having time to have fun and remaining stress-free. What are the logistics of being where you are? Was the ride smooth or bumpy? Was it warm or cold or wet? Were the seas rough?

How to remain active. Particularly true on package tours and / or cruises. How do you remain healthy? How do you stay young? How do you keep up your fitness program rather than gaining weight?

Then, the opposite – food and entertainment. Did you see a band play? Did you see a show? Write about it if it’s interesting. Don’t right about it, except in passing, if it is just background music. If you decided to follow them on social media write about it. Same with the food. Once you’ve established the same dull habit of a bowl of fruit and yogurt in the room for breakfast every day no matter how much joy it brings you, don’t write a photo, but if you went to Morimoto’s latest or you found the freshest oysters in whatever strange country you’re visiting, go ahead share a photo and write.

The next is where I am going to get controversial. I want to keep track of how I stayed well-rested. If you’re going to go on extended travels, you need to track your energy levels. Otherwise, you’re going to get sick. Fortunately, we have modern technology on our side.

Finally, this is what matters most. What did you see or experience that inspired you today? What was that one moment? Was it a flash of light across the sky? Or the sound your footsteps made in an alley on cobblestones? What will you remember the most about being there, away from home?

What will make you come back?

This post is entitled why we go on cruises. It’s about the obvious. I’m the type of person – we’re the type of people – who actually enjoy doing things when we travel. We’re active. We run. We run in port. We walk across the Brooklyn Bridge to Kings County Distillery in the Navy Yard. We go on an architecture boat tour in Chicago. When we visit a city, we stay somewhere comfortable and wander around and try to be like locals. Well, we try. We walked to the top of Cadillac Mountain instead of driving. But we go on cruises. Why?

We go on cruises so we don’t drive each other nuts. We like to do certain things in the morning and we also appreciate a fair amount of downtime. Sometimes one relaxes while the other goes to the casino. We don’t like to haul our luggage back and forth constantly; instead, we want to pretend we’re home. We don’t want to sit in a place for a week or two or three weeks, at least not most of the time. We want to experience a place but also relax.

So let me start out by telling you how I started cruising.

In 2016, I took my daughters on a cruise. I drove to the cruise port with them and we sailed south for a week. Planned ports included Port Canaveral in Florida (a success, we visited Disney for the first time ever), Nassau in the Bahamas, and Freeport (fail, due to planned hurricane). Did I mention the hurricane? My worst experience at sea was my first one, the one where the ship was listing sideways as we skirted a Cat 1 hurricane off Cape Hatteras.

In 2017, I took them on a cruise with my mother. Or rather, we went on a transatlantic passage on Queen Mary 2. Again, the main reason I did this is because it allowed a degree of relaxation while also entertaining my family. It was to some degree tiring though – travel with family is often not about relaxation. We did go to Scotland though.

I went on one solo cruise on a ship called the Royal Clipper, and then I went on two more – one, another Transatlantic, on Celebrity Silhouette as a “first vacation since COVID,” and one on Queen Victoria at the edge of winter to Spain and Portugal. That last one was in many ways the best – we, meaning we and not my daughters, visited a number of different interesting ports and towns in Spain and Portugal. This is really where we established our cruising habits and learned some lessons.

Always dine in port, because the food in port is one of the strongest identifiers of a culture.

Always give yourself downtime. Don’t attempt to try every event on the ship. Remember, if you’re on a ship for more than a week, just as you do with work at home you also need a day off to sleep in, rest, and relax. Also, don’t drink heavily before a day where the captain is telling you that you will have rough seas.

And move into your cabin. Act as if you own it. Find that one spot on the ship you find relaxing and keep coming back to it. Watch the sunset, watch the waves change day after day. Look for whales and dolphins. And enjoy yourself.

Subjects to write about when traveling

Why we go on cruises