Cruising: But then again …

  • Hav­ing given all sorts of caveat emp­tor dis­claimers to the idea of going on the vaca­tion cruises, I thought I should present some­thing of the other side of the story. So, on the plus side

    • You get to visit a lot of places that would be more expen­sive to go see indi­vid­u­ally. Yes, it’s true that you’re giv­ing sort of short shrift to each one. We’ve spent one day each on four dif­fer­ent Caribbean islands (with one more to go), and even though the islands aren’t big, you’re not see­ing all there is to see on them. But some­times you don’t know what places you’ll like until you visit. And if it turns out you really do want to see more of the place, you’ve got an idea what you want to see and you can make some informed choices about another trip of your own.
    • Staff on the ships are uni­formly pleas­ant, con­di­tions are clean and com­fort­able and fel­low pas­sen­gers are usu­ally friendly. Have to empha­size ‘usu­ally’ with the fel­low pas­sen­gers, because there is a small per­cent­age that turn into grip­ing, surly lit­tle swine who com­plain con­stantly. We call those ones “cruise crabs” and all I can fig­ure is that the indul­gence of these vaca­tions goes right to their heads and makes them into lit­tle dic­ta­tors. All the same, they are in the minority.
    • You get to do things you’ve never done before. A cou­ple days ago I went snor­kel­ing again for the first time in 20 years and kayak­ing for the first time ever. Last night I sung karaoke (another first) and right now I’m sit­ting here with my hair all fan­cied up wait­ing for tonight’s for­mal night. I should be more adven­tur­ous and do things like that with­out need­ing a cruise excur­sion as an excuse. But I do bet­ter in a group set­ting (and one where I know there are a lot of other neo­phytes). It’s a chance to try some­thing dif­fer­ent or maybe just act silly. But it’s not just that it’s fun — it also recharges your bat­tery a lit­tle bit, and who doesn’t need that?

    So that’s the idea. And BTW, I still think there should be some money to be made for some enter­pris­ing Ortho­dox soul who could put together a cruise or vaca­tion pack­age for Ortho­dox in places like Alaska or Rus­sia to go tour the Ortho­dox churches, hear some his­tory and wor­ship in the churches.


    Related posts:

    1. Do you want to cruise or not?
    2. Trav­el­ing

    March 23rd, 2006 | Grace | 2 Comments |

2 Responses and Counting...

  • Mimi 03.23.2006

    Yes, yes, yes, I think that’d be a fab­u­lous cruise. I’d go.

    I’m glad you are enjoying.

  • Grace

    Hooray — so there’s two peo­ple signed up. Another cou­ple thou­sand and we’ll be on our way. :-)

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