I'm Not a Cruise Person. Yet.

Hey there fellow Ramblers. Sorry for the long silence. I know how much you must look forward to these posts, but it's the cold season. Less travel, more basketball. But it is also the hot stove league of travel; when dreams are discussed and schemes are hatched, usually over coffee from the cozy comfort of our bedroom.

Our morning coversations often go like this:

Tom: "How about 6 months in Nepal?"

Lori: "What about the cat?"

Tom: "What cat?" (who is at that moment sprawled on my lap, relieving me of the marital obligation to fetch the coffee refills).

"Okay, 2 months in Croatia, and that's my final offer."

But sometimes, by the next morning, I've forgotten what we agreed to and I'm off on another tangent. And sometimes, these involve boats, because some places in the world are better to travel to by water (Kansas comes to mind). And this raises the long-standing question of a cruise.

Lori: "How about a cruise?"

Tom: "If we went on a cruise, would I have to get on a cruise ship?"

Lori: "That is the general idea, yes."

Tom: "I'll take a pass then."

Because: I’m not a cruise person.

Actually, this is untested. Pure hypothesis. Never been on a cruise. What is proven is that I'm a snob. About many things (and here again, Kansas comes to mind), but certainly a travel snob. And we travel snobs like to throw this line about not being a "cruise person" out in just about any travel-related discussion. It instantly bestows us with the style and substance that your average beer gutted, sun-burned, pina colada cruiser can only dream about. We quickly follow it with something like: “Our last trip was a single-gear bicycle tour of Montenegrin monasteries, led by eenophile monks. We booked it through Yale Alumni travel. Anyway, I'm just going to pop into the kitchen and mix myself another Pimm's Cup. I just hope they aren't out of mint sprig." Checkmate.

Unrelated to travel, but in a similar cliched vein is: “I’m not a minivan person.” As if the idea of owning a really practical family vehicle is tantamount to admitting you wore sweats to your wedding or went to McDonalds on your anniversary. I heard this one so much during my child-rearing years, that I resolved to: a) buy a minivan, and b) make them cool. Mission accomplished on the first one.

So sometimes, I rebel against my own snobbery. And cruises do sound kind of fun right? I mean, like minivans, what’s not to like? Sunshine, scenery, pools, drinks, food, and bikinis (which I can still pull off, thank you very much).

Of course, there might be one or two things to dread out there on the high seas:

1.    Lines - I picture lots of lines. Lines to embark. Lines to disembark. Lines for dinner. Lines for lunch. Lines for the bathroom—assuming there isn’t time to scurry down to Q deck, in steerage, where my own tiny head (nautical term) is. And there isn’t time—I bet the one time I tried it, sprinting down the 4 hallways, reversing course when I realized that I should have turned left and not right, dashing through the casino (cause they are smart like that), racing past the Gucci gift shop, descending the elevator in F Bank, and skipping down the stairway to Level Q 14B to our tiny cabin—it would turn out that Lori was already in the bathroom. Then, whilst fouling myself, I would curse the lines.

2.   Backed up toilets - Speaking of foul... I don’t think this happens every cruise. But once, was more than enough, thank you very much.

3.   Yahoos - Especially, if said yahoos are ahead of me in line.

Lines to play volleyball with yahoos?

For a cynical, but deeply appreciative, essay on cruising, I recommend the inestimable David Foster Wallace and his piece Shipping Out – On the (nearly lethal) comforts of a luxury cruise.

Here’s an excerpt in which he touches on one of the less glamourous aspects of a cruise vacation:

“From inside, Pier 21 seems kind of like a blimpless blimp hangar, high-ceiling and echoey. It has walls of unclean windows on three sides, at least 2,500 orange chairs in rows of twenty-five, a kind of desultory snack bar, and rest rooms with very long lines. The acoustics are brutal and it’s tremendously loud. Some of the people in the rows of chairs appear to have been here for days: they have the glazed encamped look of people at airports in blizzards. It’s now 11:32 A.M., and boarding will not commence one second before 2:00 P.M.; a P.A. announcement politely but firmly declares Celebrity’s seriousness about this.”

So, minivans Yes! Cruises, No.

Unless...

If you are of a certain age, you have almost certainly been targeted by Viking Cruises. These people know their demographic. I first saw their ad years ago whilst watching Downton Abbey and sipping tea, and I thought to myself “hmmm, hmmm, yes, now here is something for the cultured, discerning, (minivan driving) independent thinker, and travel connoisseur. What an absolute coincidence that I saw an advertisement for it here, on Masterpiece Theatre!”

Since that time, Viking hasn't let a day pass without reminding me that the treasures of Europe and the world await. They know where I live, literally and digitally. If somehow you have escaped their pitch, you are either living off the grid or you haven’t retired and thus you don’t really exist to them yet.

So, here’s the Viking deal (in a nutshell):

• This is the cruise for non-cruise people. There are no kids, no casinos, no swim-up bars, no waterslides. You don’t dress up for dinner. You don't have to sit with the same people all week at dinner.

• You are on a smaller “river boat” gliding gracefully down the Danube or the Rhine with a handful of other NPR types, enjoying sensibly priced wines, attending cooking demonstrations with real European chefs (imagine the glamour), and getting a cultured experience (not to be confused with a drunken vacation on a huge-ass boat).

• They’ve since expanded to actual cruise ships and sailings all over the world, but these basic principles remain intact.

I want to remain a lone wolf, boldly going where no tourist has gone before (like Paris) and wowing the local waiters with my dos cervezas, por favor! And, I still cringe when I see one of those small group tours being led through a tiny cobblestone street. Like, what a bunch of rookies. But... if I go on a Viking Cruise—all the work is done for me. Just book it, charge it, and sit back and let the magic unfold. Unpack once. No rolling the bags over the cobblestones and haggling with the minicab driver. Just living the dream, day after day.

Their website and the glossy direct mail pieces that arrive in my mailbox every month are like travel crack for me. I just go from trip to trip thinking “ooohh, yes, Bergen to Stockholm!” “Wow, the fjords of Chile and around Cape Horn!” “OMG from Barcelona to Dubrovnik...” and so on. It’s pathetic.

They've worn me down. They've strung me out. I have succumbed.

Our first cruise is booked: August of 2026, Seward, AK to Vancouver, BC. Nine nights sailing down the inside passage and browsing the native nick nack shops. Beer and wine is included with our meals, but who ever heard of a viking that restricted their drinking (or pillaging) to meal times? So we’ve added the $250 surcharge (a steal...) for the Silver Spirits Beverage Package allowing us to swill grog at all hours and act just a teeny bit more like our Celebrity cruise counterparts, minus the waterslides.

This rambler is retired.

I'm a cruise person now. Hopefully, I can make cruising as cool as I made minivans. Time will tell.