I’ve already written quite a lot about why cruising isn’t for me, both in other blog posts and on social media.
The noise. The queues. The crowds. The buffet. The feeling of being transported from place to place along with several thousand other people. The organised excursions. Those brief encounters with cities I would much rather have had time to explore on my own.
But then something occurred to me:
Everything I experience as a limitation may be exactly what other people love about cruising.
Maybe it simply comes down to the fact that we’re looking for different things when we travel.
I like figuring things out for myself.
I like walking out of a port without knowing exactly where I’m going. Finding a café. Asking someone for directions. Discovering a street I didn’t know existed. Taking the metro in Marseille without knowing how the ticket system works. Getting a little lost. Changing my plans along the way.
To me, that’s part of travelling.
Other people may want something completely different.
Perhaps they don’t want the freedom to figure everything out for themselves.
Perhaps they want the freedom from having to figure everything out.
That’s quite a significant difference.
Think about how much many people organise throughout the year. Work. Family. Appointments. Meals. The house. Bills. Cars. Birthdays. Shopping. A calendar that is never empty.
Perhaps, then, the ultimate luxury is to step aboard a ship, unpack your suitcase once and let someone else organise your world for the next twelve days.
The food is there. Your bed is made. The entertainment starts at a scheduled time. The ship sails while you sleep.
And in the morning, you can open the curtains and discover a new city outside.
Provided, of course, that you’ve paid for a cabin with a window or balcony. I didn’t know this before I started looking into cruises: many cabins have neither a window nor a balcony. You feel as though you’re sleeping in a sealed box.
When the ship arrives in port
Sometimes the cruise ship docks close to the city. Other times it docks a long way from it. Shuttle buses are usually waiting to take you into town.
Now you can go ashore. Or you can stay on the ship.
That fascinated me.
I met people who chose to stay on board while the rest of us went ashore.
I could hardly understand it.
We’re here! Don’t you want to see the place?
We had sailed all night and woken up in a new country. How could you not be curious about what was out there?
But of course, I was looking at it through my own idea of what travelling should be.
For me, Vigo, Málaga, Alicante, Barcelona and Marseille were the whole point.
For others, perhaps Costa Diadema itself was the destination.
The pools. The sun deck. The restaurants. The bars. The shows. The dancing. The people they had met. The same cabin every night while the ship made sure the world outside kept changing.
Maybe they don’t need to “discover Spain”.
They want a holiday. Sun. Food. Shows. Dancing. Security. Perhaps an organised bus tour around Barcelona. And then back to the ship for dinner.
I can understand the idea.
But I’ll admit something that may not be particularly diplomatic: I still can’t quite understand how some people can love cruising so much.
Not that they try it once. I did too.
But that they come home, book another cruise and look forward to doing the same thing all over again.
Part of me thinks: Aren’t you curious about what exists outside this organised bubble?
And an even less diplomatic part of me wonders whether cruising is particularly appealing to people who don’t really like stepping too far outside their comfort zone.
Because almost all the uncertainty has been removed.
You know where you’re going to sleep. You know where you’re going to eat. You can book a bus that takes you to the sights, have a guide tell you what you’re looking at, be driven back to the ship and be there in time for dinner.
You barely have to figure anything out for yourself.
For many people, I’m sure that is precisely what a holiday should be.
For me, something important disappears. Because what happens to travelling when we never have to feel a little uncertain?
When we don’t have to figure out how the metro works?
When we never take a wrong turn?
When we don’t have to make ourselves understood in a language we don’t speak?
When we never sit down at a café we hadn’t planned to find?
In Marseille, we weren’t sure how the metro worked. How do we buy a ticket? Where do we get off? How do we get back?
And then we figured it out. A tiny thing, of course. But also a small sense of achievement. And perhaps that’s exactly where the difference lies.
How much of the unknown do we really want when we travel?
Some people want to step right into it. Others want to see it, but from a safe and organised starting point. And some may simply want the sun, the sea, the food, the shows and a freshly made bed – knowing that everything has been taken care of.
Maybe it’s about comfort zones.
Maybe it’s about feeling safe.
Maybe people who make a thousand decisions throughout the rest of the year find it wonderful not to have to make any while they’re on holiday.
There are probably as many reasons as there are cruise passengers.
But I know what I need.
I want to go out.
I want to find my own way.
I want to be able to change my mind.
I want to sit in a café I didn’t find on Tripadvisor, talk to someone I’ll probably never meet again and discover something that wasn’t on the itinerary.
And yes, I want that little moment when I look around and think: Where on earth am I now?
To me, that isn’t a problem with travelling.
That is travelling.
Still, I understand better now why some people choose a cruise for the cruise itself.
It also explains how people can come home from exactly the same journey as I did and say: “That was fantastic. We’re definitely going on another cruise.”
While I’m thinking: “I never need to do this again.”
We experienced the same ship, the same ports and the same twelve days. But we weren’t necessarily looking for the same journey.
I wanted freedom, spontaneity and the feeling of getting close to the places I visited.
Others may have wanted comfort, predictability and the freedom from having to organise anything at all.
One doesn’t necessarily have to be more right than the other.
But cruising isn’t simply transportation between different places.
It is a very particular way of travelling. And perhaps that’s why some people love it so much. And why I now know, after twelve days on board, that the next time I go out into the world, I want to do it in a completely different way.