From Business Insider · Alesandra Dubin · · 1m 20s
I avoided cruises for 50 years. Then I took one
A lifelong traveler with a low opinion of cruise ships spent nine nights on one and found most of his assumptions did not hold up.
In brief
A lifelong traveler with a low opinion of cruise ships spent nine nights on one and found most of his assumptions did not hold up. The version of cruising you have pictured in your head may be decades out of date, and the only way to find out is to book one. Originally reported by Business Insider.
Fifty years, zero cruises
A seasoned traveler who has been almost everywhere had never once set foot on a cruise ship. It took until his late forties to board one.
“it took me nearly five decades to get on a cruise ship at all”
Never even curious
This was not a scheduling problem or a budget one. Cruising simply never registered as something worth trying.
“I had never been particularly curious about cruising”
The picture in his head
He imagined mountains of mediocre buffet food, drinks in loud colors, and decks packed shoulder to shoulder with other passengers.
“heaping buffets of dubious food, brightly colored drinks, crowded decks”
Too packaged to tempt him
The deeper objection was not the food. It was the sense of a trip decided for you in advance, with no room to wander off the plan.
“a style of travel that seemed much too packaged for me”
Nine nights up north
He finally tested it this summer, sailing through Northern Europe for nine nights on a luxury ship.
The assumptions collapsed
By the end of the trip, most of what he had confidently believed about cruising had not survived contact with the real thing.
“much of what I thought I knew about cruising was wrong”
The big picture
The version of cruising you have pictured in your head may be decades out of date, and the only way to find out is to book one.
