And here I go…..

A couple weeks ago I booked our next big international getaway, a cruise ship out of Athens to the Greek Isles, Turkey, Croatia, and Montenegro. The cruise itself is a bit over a year away, so we booked it now entierly so we would get it out of the way and perhaps save a few bucks in the process.

I had previously taken a cruise back when I still lived in the midwest to Alaska, leaving out of, oddly enough, Seattle. This was my first time to Seattle, and all I really got to see was the airport, and the seaport, not much else. And, at that time, I had no idea that a little over a year later I would end up moving out there and becoming a Seattleite for over a decade now.

The Alaska Cruise, with my prior wife was booked at the last minute to bridge a gap between when she left her old job and began her new one. Being in early stages of the 2008 financial crisis at that time, I had no job and was a very stressed out man of leisure, so why not go on a cruise.

That was onboard the Celebrity Infinity, a six day cruise that had stops in Sitka, Juneau, Ketchikan, and the Hubbard Glacier. The cruise was very regimented with set times for dinner, people who we were assigned to eat with, and excursion groups we signed up for, all coordinated by the cruise line. It was a fun vacation, but there wasn’t really any time to do our own things. Also, all of our destinations were under 10 hours, so there were pretty tight timeframes for being on and off the boat.

For this cruise, were taking Virgin Voyages, which at least labels itself as more laid back, allowing people to go to one of numerous mini restaurants on the ship, at it sounds like whatever time we wish, we’ll have to see how that goes. In addition we will be in some of the ports of call for over a day so it should be a different experience.

Also, hopefully this time around, I will be less stressed about money and whatnot being older and more financially independent, and, hopefully still employed, and will be able to do some of the more extravagant activities available on this trip.

This cruise was inspired by our recent adventure to Southeast Asia, Singapore, Cambodia, Vietnam, and South Korea. Although we had fun on this trip one of the tiring aspect was having to switch hotel rooms every few days. What if instead we just stayed in the same room and the Greek Isles, Turkey, Croatia, and Montenegro came to us, or at least our room traveled to those places so it would feel like they came to us.

So, we went ahead and booked it, and now we’re set for a 10 day cruise slightly over a year from now. In the meantime I have become a bit of a cruise connoisseur, looking up the various cruise ships, various ports of call, and all the off shore excursions we could do. This should be my most heavily researched vacation ever. We ended up getting one of the top level sea view terrace rooms, that includes a hammock, I intend to spend a lot of time in the hammock.

This will also be my wife’s first cruise, which I was able to talk her into after our Southeast Asia Airpot and Customs/Immigration Tour of 2024. Too much time in airports for two weeks.

I have also discovered there is a whole internet culture around cruising, and what are the best ships of the best lines. Which companies are the most/least kid friendly, which lines angle themselves toward just grown ups, who has the longest ports of call, minimal/maximum days at sea, what not.

I also found myself briefly fantasizing about what it would be like to take one of Virgin’s Trans Atlantic cruises, which, needless to say, involve essentially 10 straight days at sea followed by calls in the Azores, Morocco, and finally Barcelona. Travel to Europe the way they did in the truly olden days. Maybe this is something we could do post retirement, when we really might as well take two weeks to get to Europe cause we got nowhere else we need to be.

My current line of thinking for this trip is that we get to Athens a day or two before hand, then we take one of the ‘pre ship excursions’ around the Athens area, before checking into the ship.

Something else I am looking forward to is a Game of Thrones tour of Dubrovnik, who wouldn’t want to go on a guided tour of Kings Landing. Who wouldn’t want to retrace the steps of Queen Cersei’s Walk of Shame.

Yeah, this is the level of detail I am currently planning, even though I know it makes absolutely no sense to try to book hotels, and flights this far in advance likely aren’t even available yet.

Why is it that I get so excited and so ready to plan out events that are way in the future. Before then I still have a trip I want to take to visit my dad, and a trip that I want to take to New York City for my 50th birthday, a somewhat major milestone.

I suppose it comes back to my desire to retire early and become a man of leisure. Right now, those vacations are the only chance I get for that life. So, plan ahead forth to the extent that I can, and wait for the day to to come when I can afford to become a permanent man of leisure. Hopefully a less stressed man of leisure than I was back in 2008, when I was a poor man of leisure.

Enough of that, time to get back to cruise researching.