52 Countries in 52 Weeks, Chapter 20: Cruise Ship

In Which I Go From Italy To Greece On A 15-Storey Floating Mall, And Become Another Journalist Contemplating Both Cruise Life, And The Genre Of Cruise Writing

Any writer writing about their cruise ship experience sunbathes in the shadow of David Foster Wallace.

In the 1990s Wallace penned the seminal essay “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again” (originally called “Shipping Out”), his account of seven days on a Caribbean Cruise, and since then people have been recounting their exploits with expense accounts with footnotes and irony, pointing out all the ways that cruise travel is Bad, Actually.

Which is part of the reason I was Actually, Excited to book a 10-day stay on the Norweigan Pearl from Italy to Greece, way back in April 2023 when the exact route of my trip was still quite murky.

For one thing, like the rest of my journey, a cruise was going to be a new thing, with experiences that would be unique to my senses if nothing else.

For another, it helped solve a bit of a transportation riddle: Greece was a logical endpoint for the Europe leg of this trip, but the train routes through the Balkans don’t really connect with one another. A cruise through the Adriatic would allow me to get to places like Dubrovnik and Santorini without any additional flights.

As the day I boarded the 965-foot ship approached, another thought experiment entered my mind: after six months of travelling on trains and buses, staying predominately in hostels and budget hotels, and rushing to a new place every second or third day, what would a cruise feel like?

What would it be like going from solo travel to travelling with 2,000 people at the same time?

What would it feel like to stop travelling, and start vacationing?

ah shit i’m writing the same godforsaken essay aren’t i

This is what was on the Norweigan Pearl, in all its 15-deck glory: 14 restaurants, 8 bars, 4 hot tubs, 3 nightclubs, 2 music lounges, a gym, sports court, bowling alley, casino, spa, theatre, art gallery, and the ambient sound of dad rock being strummed on a guitar virtually anywhere you go.

Every evening we were given a paper program for the next day, where upwards of 80 different activities were listed from 8am to midnight, from trivia and meet and greets to elaborate tributes to the music of Tina Turner and Michael Jackson.

Should you ever feel the need to disembark the pleasuredome, there were between 10 to 20 daily tours available for each of the eight days we were docked next to some city in Croatia or Montenegro or Greece.

From left to right: cities in Croatia (Split), Montenegro (Kotor) and Greece (Mykonos)

You might read all this and think “yes justin, that is a cruise, when are we gonna get to the part where you about talk about urbanism or make a joke about the bc ferries buffet?” but I mention all that to highlight the overwhelming number of things offered.

This was very much different from how I had lived my life the previous six months: instead of having to research the night before and actively plan out the best way to experience my new city the next day at my own pace, dozens of options were laid out before me. All I had to do was to click a couple links, or wander up to the seventh floor help desk, and my day was set.

You might think this is freeing.

On the second night, I had a mild anxiety attack.

There were so many things that could be done, but I couldn’t get to all of them. The people were too loud and too friendly and none of them were neurotic Millennials who enjoyed ranking things, and I am stuck with them and this boat and this 7.5 out of 10 butter chicken buffet dish, and when can I get to a quirky hotel in a big city and explore it the exact way I want at the exact speed I want as the solo protagonist in my own hero’s journey?

It was about then that I got another drink. And then went to the casino.

And then, in the course of two hours, I won $300 at Blackjack.

Which turned around both the mood, and the philosophy of the cruise.

Instead of trying to intricately plan out my days, I would let the vibes roll over me. I would amble from the bar to the gym to the casino without overthinking, or thinking much at all.

Instead of being Diane Fossey studying the gorillas, I would become a gorilla.

Turns out, it’s a lot more fun eating the bananas all day than worrying about how they’re being sourced.   

I forgot to mention the matinee movie every day.

Talking about the cities one visits on a cruise feels weird, right? Like if you *actually* wanted to visit these places along the Mediterranean, you would spend actual time there, instead of this little floating tanning hotel mall scheme you hatched up, you know?

In some ways, they definitely took a back seat on this leg — I had been to many very old cities with a plaza and an art gallery next to a Starbucks and toy story that only sells rubber ducks wearing different costumes (I promise this is incredibly real and incredibly popular), but I hadn’t enjoyed unlimited pina coladas while figuring out how to play the interactive version of Wheel of Fortune for my chance to win $500 at the duty free shop.    

I still got to see amazing things, from the stunning mosaics of Ravenna to the postcard windmills of Mykonos. Plus, because of my ample experience spending only a day or two in different cities throughout this trip, nine hours in Kotor or Dubrovnik didn’t actually feel overwhelming or too short — I had a clear routine to see a decent amount of a city in a short amount of time, and just replaced the train station for the port as the starting point.

And some sights were genuinely out of this world. I did a field trip to the massive Postojna cave system next to Koper, Slovenia, full of thousands stalagmites and stalactites that formed over millions of years in all their gothic glory.

A few days later, we were in Santorini, where even mainlining dozens of TikTok videos in the weeks before couldn’t stop me from being amazed at the endless white and blue roofs next to giant cliffs and rocky desert. I did a 10km hike between the two most populated cities on the island, and the contrast of the colours and wealth and geography will stick with me for a long time.

These photos are mostly of Santorini because Santorini is Santorini, like come on, but there were also good caves and mosaics and hikes in other places I GUESS.

At the same time, there were moments that I was acutely aware I was on a cruise tour, and not in a good way.

Dubrovnik has a fascinating history and a rich mix of Gothic and Baroque architecture influences. Go anytime between March and October, and there’s a good chance you won’t be able to fully appreciate it because there are 2 to 5 cruise ships docking every day, cramming the main streets and beautiful old town walls.

Mykonos was a stable trading centre for centuries. When I was there it seemed little more than a chain of cafes, gift shops, Airbnbs and places for Instagram shoots.

When travelling solo it’s easy to get lost in the crowd and disassociate yourself from any responsibility. When you stumble off a port with a mild mojito hangover and turn around to see five floating hotels, it makes it harder to feign ignorance.

A non-stop cruise could get someone diabetic pretty quickly. And a small city with non-stop cruise action can get its own form of diabetes, the free market pumping in thousands of people each day that need gelato and trinkets instead of housing and multi-use spaces.

Maybe that’s hyperbole.

Then again, the neighbourhood next to Vancouver’s cruise terminal are stores that either sell stuffed beavers or overpriced art, a steam clock that doesn’t run on steam, and microsuites that rent for $2000 a month.

And like a lot of overcrowded places in Europe, Gastown also has cute cobblestones.

Left: Dubrovnik. Right: Mykonos. Centre: the things that show up on their front door every day.

I think the reason writerly takedowns of cruise ships are such a trope are twofold.

First, writers are not your target audience for a cruise ship. A typical person on one of these is over 50, decently tanned, extroverted with a decent amount of disposable income, and sort of blithely optimistic about life.

A typical writer is not.

So if you commission a writer to go on a cruise — and it isn’t a travel magazine where the nature of the business dictates that it has to be positive — you sort of know what you’re gonna get.    

And I think the second reason is that there’s a bit of joy in being at home, reading a cutting takedown of cruise life, and going “I knew it! Look at those plebs barely experiencing the culture, slowly turning into the humans from WALL-E, unlike me, a smart and ethical person who would never spend money on such a thing!”

In other words, it’s a perfect intersection of form (Journalist Writes About Different Way Of Life With Detached Bemusement) with the online economy (People Have Takes On Displays Of Gratuitous Consumption).

But I can’t find it in me to fully bash or even mock the endeavour.

Everyone seemed happy. The food was pretty good. The bedroom was nicer than 90% of places I’ve slept in this trip. People got exposed to a few different cultures a few hours at a time. It was nice to see cool things while worrying much less than normal.

No, it is nowhere close to an “authentic” experience for travelling. But the world is a stressful place, and a cruise is the adult equivalent to going to a Chuck E. Cheese for an entire week.

In a world with social media doxxing and AI destroying artistic copyright and billionaires flying private jets at abandon, there are worse crimes than a couple thousand people in garish shirts listening to 23 cover versions of Brown Eyed Girl during a week at sea.

Plus, with my $300 winnings, I went to a spa for the first time in my life.    

It was more than supposedly fun, but will I ever do it again?

God no. I am not that person. Never will be.

For one week?

It was a great vacation from my travels.