Ok, I was kind of dreading our Cruise. I know people who *love* them. Nothing about them has ever been appealing to me. Thousands of people in a floating hotel which also has a shopping mall, and a Casino inside! It just sounds like a nightmare. People everywhere and no way to escape for solitude. The idea of being on this floating hotel for weeks without the ability to go walk in a forest or being able to have some solitude really had my anxiety on high.
Now that we’ve done one I can say, yes… all of these things are true. But, it’s also not that bad.
The ship that I was on, the Celebrity Apex, had approximately 1300 crew and 2300 passengers, but if you want to find a quiet place to hang out, you usually can. Not interested in buying fancy watches and jewelry, no problem. Not interested in the various activities, just go do your own thing. The experience on the ship was not as overwhelming and oppressive as I’d been dreading.
The food
There were four restaurants available to everyone without an additional cost, and also a large buffet. In addition to those eateries there were four more specialty restaurants which supposedly offered even higher end food, for an additional cost. Personally, I found the non specialty restaurants to be good to very good so i couldn’t imagine spending money on an alternative when what was already included was so tasty.
We purchased the lower end drink package for our voyage. That included wine and cocktails below a certain price, specialty coffee, bottled water and soda. The package was pretty expensive so it’s hard to say if it was really worth it but it did motivate you to drink more.
...Add your gallery caption here...
Port stops
Our cruise was a repositioning cruise, meaning that the ship was crossing the ocean and not returning until after winter. These voyages have more sea days than most. After leaving Southampton in the UK we stopped at four ports on our 13 day journey. Our longest stretch at sea was four days.
With those four port stops we booked two excursions, and had no plans for the other two. The ship excursions are nice and tidy since you don’t have to worry about missing your return time. The ship organizes the tour and the operators will get you back to port on time. One of our planned excursions was canceled and we didn’t bother booking another. We just found a trail that was near the port and took off on our own.
The port stops were not the frantic mess that I feared. Getting off of the ship and taking off on your own was easy and there weren’t hoards of hard sellers pestering you at any of the ones that we visited. That was quite a pleasant surprise.
I’m still not sure how much value there is in visiting a place for a few hours. It’s not like you can really see much, and I don’t know if the short visits that we had were enough to make me either want to return, or not return to any of them.
Entertainment
I really enjoyed all of the entertainment on the ship. The Celebrity Apex had two shows most nights. There’d usually be two performances of the same show in the main theater at the front of the ship and often another performance at the rear of the ship in the space that they call “eden”.
Eden is an interesting space with a restaurant, bar and a stage. It’s also capped by windows that face behind the ship. The shows there are a bit challenging to get a good view since it’s not a proper auditorium but they did some great shows there including multiple aerial acts.
The main theater at the front of the ship is beautiful and modern. The lighting and audio were top notch. It’s a proper theater with permanent seating and a balcony. This is where the main headline shows were every night. There were singers, dancers, live music performances, a comedian and a magician. We didn’t miss any of the shows. Some were better than others but all were quite good.
During the day, we didn’t really participate in anything aside from a couple of dance classes. There was trivia, bingo and other games going on, but none of that really grabbed my attention. That said, we were on this cruise with our Go With Less crew so for the sea days we had meetups with other nomads. There were 21 of us on the ship and it was quite nice to share and learn from other folks who are full time nomads and retired slow travelers.
Go With Less
For anyone reading this who is a part of Go With Less, the GWL cruises that Amy has been organizing are a great way to meet other slow travelers and nomads. It’s awesome to share and learn from others. We did a show and tell with some of our favorite travel gear, had discussions about travel hacking, learned about various uses of spreadsheets and other tools. Oh and one of our cruise mates gave an excellent presentation on prompt engineering for getting more out of Chat GPT. If you’re considering joining one of these, you absolutely should.
Cruising
If I were a working person, I can’t see myself using a cruise as a vacation. It’s just not my style. Not nearly enough time to enjoy the port stops. I like to explore and spend time in nature, neither of which are all that compatible with being on a ship.
As a retired person who is living house free and travels non-stop, it’s not a bad deal. You get a little vacation where someone else does all of the cooking and cleaning. You have nightly entertainment and daily activities if you’re interested. Your housing needs are taken care of, you get a peek at a few cities, and if you’re doing it right you get a ride across the ocean without jetlag.
I don’t think that I’m a cruise convert, but I will say that I intend to take more of them. My primary use will be to change continents, so if the price is right and the start and end destinations make sense I think that I’ll keep doing them once or twice a year.
