When friends ask where we are going on our next vacation, we often tell them: "On a cruise." More often than not, their response is: "I'm not a cruise person; I don't think I would like those parties and midnight buffets."
We wonder how they would have reacted if they had been with us during our visit to the 3,000-year-old city of Ephesus, as we strolled past the reconstructed homes and municipal buildings on the same stones once trod by Saint Paul, Mark Antony and Cleopatra. Or whether they would have felt the romance of that moonlit night on Venice's Piazza San Marco, where we enjoyed espresso and gelato while being serenaded by three bands. Or felt the grandeur of the moment in the Ekaterina Palace in the village of Pushkin near St. Petersburg. There, as the sun slipped to the horizon, our small group enjoyed a private concert and dance performance in the Grand Hall, an enormous room whose gilded columns and decor, mirrors and crystals turned the hour into a million twinkling reflections. Perhaps they would have enjoyed something simpler, for example the night on a huge sailing ship when the Caribbean skies seemed afire with more stars and galaxies than we could ever dream.
All these travel memories are just a few from our many cruises. And while we understand why some people say they would not enjoy a cruise, we are amused when they almost always add they have never been on a cruise.
For us, cruises are many things: a journey to distant cities and lands, a visit to a resort, a chance to relax - - and fall asleep - - while reading on the deck, a nightclub show and a place to meet (and sometimes keep) new friends.
Let us make it very clear: Most of our travel remains firmly on land, far from any cruise ship. We've written seven "Romantic Getaways" guidebooks, all centered on travel on land. We thoroughly enjoy our weekend escapes and longer driving vacations.
But we will continue to cruise, because we are captivated by the possibilities, the romance and the adventure of travel on sea. We look at our cruise vacations as multifaceted journeys. Here is what we like - - and dislike - - about cruises.
Ships are beautiful, romantic, self-contained floating worlds in an ever-changing landscape. We have sailed on ships with 15 different cruise lines, but never on the same ship twice. The reason: We are still seeking the perfect ship and the perfect itinerary.
After our first cruise on a large ship from New York to Bermuda with more than 1,100 fellow passengers, we believed that perhaps a smaller ship with fewer passengers would be better. That next summer we sailed on the Wind Star, a 440-foot modern sailing ship that carried 148 passengers on a cruise from Monaco to other jet-set cities on the Cote d'Azur. The cruise was spectacular in all ways, and remains, even to this day, the only ship that we did not want to leave.
We carried this smaller-is-better idea to a greater extreme the following summer, with a cruise on the Sea Goddess I, a luxurious, yachtlike ship carrying only 116 passengers. This time we sailed, unbeknown to us, with three large family groups from New York, Los Angeles and Mexico. These groups took up all but 10 or so cabins. Worse yet, they didn't want to socialize with anyone not in their group. The cruise itinerary -- Istanbul to Venice -- was spectacular, but the shipboard ambiance was the pits. We felt like interlopers at a private party. Obviously, smaller was not better!
Since these first cruise explorations, we have sailed on tall ships, stern-wheel steamboats in the Mississippi, nature cruises in Central America and more conventional cruise ships ranging in size from 600 to 1,600 passengers. And while we are still seeking our perfect ship, we do have a vision of what it would have:
More spacious cabins with double, or better yet, queen-size beds. (Narrow twin beds are a common feature on many ships. If togetherness is important, be certain what your sleeping situation will be before you book a cabin.)
A veranda open to the elements. We long thought these porches off the cabins were unnecessary, but then we got a cabin with a nice veranda on the Crystal Harmony. Our veranda was a perfect place to unwind after a hard day on land, and now, whenever possible, we get a cabin with one.
A ship carrying somewhere between 400 and 800 passengers seems perfect for us. This means the ship will have a full array of activities, and we will enjoy meeting some new friends. However, there is a disturbing trend that nags at our vision of a perfect-size ship. Carnival Cruises, Royal Caribbean International and Princess Cruises have or will soon launch ships with displacements of more than 100,000 tons. Bigger may be more efficient, but we are not convinced that it will be better.
Open seating at meals and more dining options. We tolerate assigned seating and fixed meal times, but there are days when we would have preferred an earlier meal or the choice to dine at a more casual restaurant on board. Fortunately, another cruising trend is more dining choices.
Are there ships that meet all these criteria? No, but the Crystal Harmony and Crystal Symphony, the three Windstar sailing ships, the two Star Clipper tall ships, the Silversea Cruises vessels and a few smaller, elegant sailing ships come close.
So, while the cruise industry appears to be heading in the bigger-is-better direction, we are looking at cruises that fall outside the industry's mainstream. These include barge cruises on the canals of Europe; nature-oriented cruises on small ships to Alaska and Antarctica; chartering a crewed sailboat with friends for a cruise in the Caribbean; and cruises on exotic vessels, such as the elegant Sea Cloud, the world's finest sailing ship; the Star Clippers; the windjammers off the Maine coast; or the Delta Queen steamboats on the rivers of America's Heartland.
And what about the Wind Star, the gorgeous sailing ship that we didn't want to leave? We will return to it; we're just waiting for a very special occasion.
Perhaps as important as finding our "right" ship is choosing an itinerary that captures our attention. Since we started cruising, we discovered that cruises are a perfect way to sample a country or region to learn whether we want to come back for a longer land tour.
Our itineraries have included the more popular routes -- the Caribbean, Bermuda, Alaska -- as well as the Mediterranean, the Baltic states, Central America and Southeast Asia. And while we firmly believe that some areas are better for cruising than other regions, a journey by cruise is another way to explore. It is not a replacement for land tours, nor should it be. Cruising is another means to journey, a form of travel that gives you a perspective that you cannot gain from the land.
For example, Stockholm is one of the more beautiful cities on the planet. And we are sure that visitors do notice that this Swedish capital is a busy seaport. But those visitors who arrive by plane and do all their touring on foot, car or rail will never share the cruise through the 24,000-island Stockholm Archipelago we experienced. Our ship, the Crystal Harmony, maneuvered through this island paradise, sailing close to islands that held old fortresses, small fishing villages and more modern suburban communities.
A year later, we sailed on Orient Lines' Marco Polo up the Saigon River to Ho Chi Minh City, the renamed former capital of South Vietnam. Visitors can, and do, fly to the former Saigon and also experience the frenetic life of the city. But these visitors did not see the powerful scenes we passed on our 4 1/2-hour cruise upriver to the city. On the muddy river were communities, small 15-foot ships that were home and workplace to entire families. We saw these river people fishing, washing their clothes and bodies, and ferrying small cargoes from one bank to the other. Beyond the river, the flat plain of the delta was eerily reminiscent of Vietnam television footage or movies like "Platoon."
And once, while on a cruise in the Greek isles, we joined a few crew members for a Zodiac boat ride to some nearby islands. The islands appeared uninhabited then, but obviously that wasn't the case in the past. On one island, the rough hillside of gray stone rubble slowly took shape: first a wall, then a series of foundations and finally a village. As we rounded the corner of one island, a whitewashed structure, about half the size of a stand-alone garage, came into view. The building was a very small church, on an island that had no residents. We had many questions, and the memory of that church - -faith in an empty landscape - - lingers in our minds.
Would we have discovered this church during a land tour? Probably not; there is no reason to visit this island: no towns, no resorts, no beaches, no restaurants. No, this time the best view was from the water.
Our friends Ron and Allis, two PhDs who are about 50, came back from their first cruise this summer, a trip that was disrupted by a hurricane that forced them to stay on ship two extra days in Puerto Rico. After hearing their story, we asked whether they liked their cruise.
"We loved it!" boomed Ron. "It was great, the food was great!" Allis chimed in, "And there was so much to do. We were never bored."
And that is the point of any large resort, on land or sea: a cornucopia of choices of entertainment and activities. On land, resort guests frequently have the choice of golf, tennis, horseback riding, hikes, swimming, pool, or light classes in such subjects as flower-arranging or wine-tasting. They can even do nothing.
It's not much different on a cruise ship. During our cruises, we have enjoyed a relaxing massage or beauty treatment in spas that many land resorts would be proud to have. We have been entertained by nightclub shows, recitals by classical pianists, magicians and comedians.
We have improved our minds as well as bodies by attending lectures on Middle Eastern art; Greek history and architecture; the fall of the czars; the decline of the Soviet Union; Indonesian religion; the colonization of the Spice Islands; the U.S. role in Vietnam; the flora and fauna of the Costa Rican rain forests; and other subjects. The lecturers were either naturalists, guest professors from American universities or retired Foreign Service officers.
There frequently is so much to do on board that we have a dilemma: There is just too much to do. And when we get overwhelmed, it's time to head to the sun deck with a good book and just enjoy a quiet afternoon at sea. That's the beauty of it: You can try do it all, or merely do whatever makes your vacation a real escape.
When we began cruising in the 1980s, we took the Royal Caribbean Cruise Line's Song of Norway from New York to Bermuda on a one-week cruise. Our sons, Clayton (then 13) and Jonathan (then 9), thoroughly enjoyed the cruise. They found a shipload of activities, from scavenger hunts to sports tournaments to movies and pizza parties. The fact that they enjoyed it made our cruise more enjoyable: We saw them only at breakfast and dinner while we were at sea. And while they played to the point of exhaustion, we had all the privacy of a getaway for two.
The boys are grown now, but cruises are still at the top of their vacation list. A few years ago, the two of them went on a Carnival cruise in the Caribbean without us. In fact, they preferred going without us. They say they plan to go cruising again - - without us.
Why do they like cruises? A familiar refrain: There is so much to do. For children in the computer age, where stimulation is frequently measured in megahertz, cruises offer a perfect antidote to the blase attitudes of teenagers and young adults. If one activity proves boring, there is always another - - or even two or three more - - to sample.
We once took Jonathan on a nature-oriented cruise to the national parks of Costa Rica, where daily activities included several guided treks into the rain forests. And recently one summer, we took both sons on a cruise to Europe. Between visiting historic cities in England, Ireland, France, Spain, Portugal and Morocco, the two expanded their social circles.
We still enjoy our weekend getaways to the mountains or big cities as well as our longer summer vacations at the Delaware beaches. But these land-locked journeys lack one crucial element: the rhythm of the sea.
And that is perhaps the heart of why we cruise. On all our sea journeys, there are moments when we put down our books and simply gaze at the ocean. The view is always soothing and relaxing, even when there is nothing to see but the endless motion of the waves.
It's an ever-evolving landscape, home to freighters and fishing boats, whales and dolphins. The nearby shore may be a small uninhabited island or a-twinkle with the lights of modern cities. The view is always changing, bringing a sense of mystery, an air of expectation that keeps drawing our eyes back to its restless surface.
It's the sea, the place where our dreams come true.