Tag: discerning travel

The discerning guide to cruising: Part 1

Cruise ships come in all sizes and flavors! You may not believe it, but there is something for everyone
Cruise ships come in all sizes and flavors! You may not believe it, but there is something for everyone

Despite the Costa Concordia disaster, hurricanes and the annual Titanic remembrance, a cruise still holds an allure for many travelers.  People who shun cruising usually have one the following reasons:

  • They believe that a cruise will be confining and claustrophobic.
  • They believe it will be crowded.
  • They believe that they will be bored.
  • They believe that they can’t experience other places and cultures.

You may have your own excuse that doesn’t appear on this list, but these are the ones most often reported and we’re here to tell you – every single one of them is a misconception.

Our documents for our upcoming Caribbean getaway just arrived from our travel agent, Angela, this week, and we don’t know about you, but the anticipation of an upcoming sojourn somewhere south is all a part of the vacation excitement.  It’s still two weeks out, but we can already picture checking into our Seabourn cruise aboard the Spirit at the Barbados cruise terminal (we’ve been there before on more than one occasion!) and sipping that champagne that will be in our hands shortly thereafter.  Of course, that will be after we’ve acclimatized ourselves to the southern climes with six days in Barbados at “The House.” And we’ll tell you all about it and the six days in St. Maarten after the yacht harbor cruise when we get back…but back to the why and how of cruises…

If you’ve never been on a cruise but have wondered what it might be like – and whether you would like it or feel safe, or how you could ever decide which cruise to pick – stay with us for a few posts and we’ll take you aboard some of our own cruises to show you what you’ve been missing.  If you’ve cruised before, come along with us and add your own comments to help all those novice cruisers who can benefit from experience.  This week we’ll dispel misconceptions – then we’ll look at finding the right one for you, how to get ready, and how to get the most from every minute on board – and in port. Then we’ll tell you about our latest one when we get back.

A quiet drink on our verandah.
A quiet drink on our verandah.

Let’s begin with the ‘confining’ and ‘claustrophobic’ part.  We have traveled on cruise ships that range from 280 to 2400 passengers (this year’s will be the smallest at 204 passengers), and we can assure you that never once did we feel either confined or claustrophobic.  If you’re interested in the 6000-passenger mega-ships, we can’t really help you since we have not the slightest interest in them.  The only time in selecting a cruise where we believe bigger is better is when it comes to choosing a stateroom – but we’ll get to that in a later post.

Every cruise ship, regardless of its number of passengers, is designed with public spaces that are more than sufficient for every one on board to find a quiet place.  In fact, we’ve spent a lot of time strolling through cruise ships wondering where everyone is!  And that’s on sea days where everyone is on board.  The one thing that would be claustrophobic to us at this point in our cruising career would be to stay in a small stateroom.  That would be confining for us since we do like to spend time away from all others on our own verandah enjoying a cocktail and the peaceful sound of the ocean rushing by.

There are, however, places on cruise ships that are crowded.  Think buffet and you’ll get the picture.  Discerning travelers, however, avoid the buffet at all coasts.  Avoid a buffet, you say?  Yes, avoid the buffet.  Even on the smallest cruise ships, there are various places to eat.  Lunch in the main dining room is a relaxing, quiet time, where people wait on you impeccably.  And the larger ships will have other, more casual spots to be served your lunch.  (Cunard has an English pub, for example).  If you want to stay in your bathing suit all day on a southern voyage, you won’t be able to do this, though, so you’ll have to chow down at a buffet of one sort or another.

Another place where it might be crowded is during a Caribbean cruise, on the pool deck, on a sea day.  Discerning travelers will want to have their own verandah.  But if you don’t need to have the pool in view, there is always a deck with a chair away from the madding crowd.

So you think you’ll be bored.  Or as one of our acquaintances who has never been on a cruise ship once said, “Oh, I like to be active.”  The snickers started from over in our direction.

Active folks will find a lot to occupy them on a cruise.  Consider first the possibilities on dry land in port.  This is one reason why your selection of itinerary is so important.  In fact, after you research the cruise lines (we recommend Frommer’s Cruises and Ports of Call which even provides a snap-shot of your potential fellow cruisers based on past-guest statistics), choose by itinerary.  For your first cruise, you might be a bit broader and less discriminating.  For example, if you want to go to the Caribbean, that’s where you start.

We can still remember our first cruise aboard the Carnival Triumph on during its maiden year (you can tell how long ago that is when you note that it is about to be refitted!).  Our travel agent said this to us: “I would never put you two on Carnival except that you’re taking a child.  It’s great for children.”  And he was right – our then eight-year-old son loved it, spending all of his days in the company of other children in the well-designed and supervised program while we enjoyed a bit of couple time.  However, he was also right in that we would never cruise on Carnival without a child – too many partiers, loud-mouths and eaters for our liking.  But then, it just might be others’ cup of tea.

Looking forward to returning to St. Maarten this year by cruise ship. And we'll stay there for six days!
Looking forward to returning to St. Maarten this year by cruise ship. And we’ll stay there for six days!

So there is a lot for a child to do on a cruise, but there is also a lot for adults.  And being active can be accomplished in any number of ways: aerobics or yoga classes, personal training sessions, basketball on some ships, working out in the gym, walking on land and on board, and the list goes on.

The boredom factor is one that anyone who has cruised simply laughs at.  If you want to spend all day in a deck chair reading a book and sipping on a drink, then you can do that.  If that isn’t for you, select ships whose entertainment fits within your personality (dram/acting workshops, wine-tasting, music, cooking classes, computer classes, art auctions etc.).  There’s a lot more to cruise activities than bingo and shuffle-board, two activities that we avoid like the plague.

And as for those travel snobs who think that they can’t experience other places and cultures on a cruise, you’ve clearly been looking at the wrong brochures.  Our first cruise to the Mediterranean was one of the most incredible ways to be introduced to a vast array of places.  It introduced us to places to which we have returned for longer, more in-depth visits, and for those who cannot afford many long trips in their lives, a cruise will, indeed, let you visit places that you might not have otherwise gotten to before you die.

On a Mediterranean cruise for example, we began in Barcelona (our favorite city in all the world now as a result), then went onto Marseille where we took a day-trip to Aix-en-Provence, then visited Monte Carlo and Nice to which we have returned again and again, then onto Italy to Pisa and Florence and Rome to which we have returned, then to Corsica (when would we ever have had an opportunity to visit Napoleon’s birthplace Ajaccio?).  A more recent Mediterranean cruise introduced us to Sicily, Olympia, Pompeii, Monte Negro, Albania and Croatia.  So, there’s no need to be snobbish about what you can or cannot learn about the world on a cruise.  They are not all the same.

The bottom line for us is that although cruising is probably not for everyone, it is for lots of people with varying interests and styles.  Our discerning style has led us up the cruise food-chain as it were – from a mainstream line like Carnival, through the so-called premium lines such as Celebrity and Cunard, to the luxury lines Regent, Silversea and now Seabourn.

Next time join us as we get ready to leave for a southern cruise!

See “Choosing a Cruise”

Ringing in the New Year: Monte Carlo Style!

Casino Square, Monte Carlo on New Year's Eve.
Casino Square, Monte Carlo on New Year’s Eve.

There’s something about New Year’s Eve. It doesn’t seem to matter how often you say that a quiet evening at home with a good bottle of champagne is the ideal way to ring in a new year, given the opportunity to do something truly memorable, most of us would jump at the chance. The question is: precisely what constitutes a memorable New Year’s Eve?

As these discerning travelers contemplate a quiet New Year’s Eve at home for the first time in four or five years, we’re transported to three years ago when we spent the first of a couple of first nights in what is arguably the land of the most conspicuous consumption on the planet: Monte Carlo.

The day begins with a visit to the local Carrefour. A gigantic grocery store that rivals Wal-Mart for its variety and Whole Foods for its quality, the place is a zoo at the best of times, but New Year’s Eve is special. We begin (and it has to be said, also end) at the extensive wine section. The sheer array of French wines that begin at about 3 euros a bottle (we kid you not), and go upward from there is dizzying. And the problem is that we have rarely had a bottle from Carrefour that we didn’t like. So how to choose from among all of these unknown bottles?

Our usual tactic involves stealth observation. Watching the men and women going up and down the aisle filling their baskets and carts to the brim with bottle after bottle is the best place to begin. Then we get a bit more discerning (!).

We look at how many bottles of each kind of bubbly make their way into how many baskets. Then we watch the individual purchasers. Are they old enough to have experienced a bottle or two? Is the arrangement of their scarves just stylish enough to imply a bit of je ne sais quoi? Are they secure enough in their choice that there is no waffling? When all systems are go, we swoop in and choose the right bottle of champagne – and make no mistake, it is always right. But then where to drink it? We’re getting to that.

Grabbing a glass of bubbly at the Monte Carlo Christmas market.
Grabbing a glass of bubbly at the Monte Carlo Christmas market.

The day is young so we’re inclined to wander a bit through the Monte Carlo Christmas market where we indulge in the decadence of a glass of quality champagne outdoors from a plastic flute. We watch the skaters take a turn around the temporary rink on the MC waterfront, as ludicrous as that seems.

Then we head back to the hotel to get dressed.  We’re going to the ballet this evening. We don our finery and make our way to the Grimaldi Forum with what appears to be the majority of the Monagasques themselves.  Situated on the shore of the Mediterranean, the building is actually built right into the Med with the main performance space where we’ll see Les Ballets de Monte Carlo dazzle their home crowd below sea level. Down, down, down, three very long escalators to reach the entrance to the orchestra seating. We sip more champagne while we people watch  — can there be a more decadent place to people watch than MC?

We spot Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Chanel, D & G, Hermes, all milling around the bar. Then the bell chimes three times — time for the curtain. We take our seats and Patty puts her handbag on the hook on the back of the seat in front of her. Such a thoughtful touch – the designers must have thought of all those expensive handbags that would grace their auditorium through the years. We then glance surreptitiously toward the royal box to see if Princess Caroline might be gracing New Year’s Eve with her presence – or perhaps Prince Albert (that was before he married Charlene).  Then the curtain rises, the orchestra begins, and we’re transported into the rarefied world of the ballet, thanks to our son the dancer who is sharing the stage with his colleagues.

The ballet is over at 11:30, and all of us spill out into the Mediterranean night that is lit with hundreds of thousands of twinkling lights. We make our way up the hill to the casino square where side by side with the palm trees lit for the season are 50-foot high fir trees brought in and decorated so that the lights change colors. We are transported along with the crowd.

The champagne is flowing!
The champagne is flowing!

Once in the square which is already shoulder-to-shoulder full of well-dressed revelers, we get into the spirit of the night. The countdown begins. “Dix-neuf-huit-sept…deux-un! Bonne année!” And the corks begin flying! Pop! Pop! Pop! Then splash! As the champagne is poured from bottle to plastic flutes as everyone wishes anyone around a happy new year.

Coming as we do from North America, the very fact that it is perfectly acceptable for this crowd to pop their champagne corks in this very public place and enjoy a sip of New Year’s bubbly makes the experience all that more decadent (there’s that word again!). We are delighted and know that it will be a good year, indeed.

Happy 2013 everyone!

One perfect day…in London

The Renaissance St. Pancras Hotel in London used to be both an old hotel and the train station. It has been fabulously restored.

A quarter of a century seems like a long time in a life – but for these discerning travelers it seems to have flown by.  So, last week on the occasion of our 25th wedding anniversary, we spent another perfect day.  Unlike other perfect days we’ve spent, this one was not on the water.  It was determinedly on land – in London.

We awoke to a wonderfully sunny and crisp autumn day – just the way a perfect fall day ought to be – with only a vague notion of how the day would progress. We only knew how we would cap it off in the end – we’ll get to that.  So, we did what we usually do when we visit a city: we walked.

Staying at the St. Pancras Renaissance Hotel, we had little choice: as our son who now lives in London remarked, it’s not really close to anything.  But for us that is not a shortcoming.  The hotel is a remarkable architectural treat in itself, with a rich history, and when you walk through the Booking Room Restaurant & Bar and exit through the back door, you find yourself on the platform where the Eurostar trains leave for Paris & Brussels.

That morning we headed out toward Regent’s Park (which is but a five minute walk away – who says the hotel isn’t close to anything?).  What a beautiful oasis in the city – one of many.  London is dotted with these green spaces, a fact that often surprises people whose only view of London has been of traffic jams and hordes of ogling tourists as shown on the nightly news.  We enjoyed our walk and just kept going into the heart of down town, browsing the many wonderful shops along the way.

Art strolling in Regent’s Park, London.

Eventually it was time for a late lunch.  It’s often best in our view to wait until the weekday office crowd has returned to their desks to take fuller advantage of restaurants.  In the past when we have visited London we have concluded that we don’t go there for the food – but this trip seemed different somehow.  Every restaurant we had chosen in the days leading up to our anniversary had proved our previous experience to be so wrong.  And this time was no different.

In Swallow Street just off Regent Street, we discovered Bentley’s Oyster Bar.  With options that included the oyster bar itself, an outside dining space and an upstairs dining room (a bit more formal, said the hostess), the restaurant had a wonderful British ambience, replete with attentive, professional wait staff and fabulously prepared and presented food.  We opted for the ‘more formal’ dining experience upstairs and found ourselves surrounded not by tourists, but by well-dressed business types.  It was wonderful.  It also reinforced for us one of our rules of traveling: always dress comfortably but well: you never know where you might end up.  We may not have been dressed as we would for a formal presentation at work, but we comported ourselves quite well, thank-you very much.  Let that be a lesson to any travelers who favor those god-awful, hulking white sneakers and (we can hardly bring ourselves to say it) the fanny pack!

Bentley’s Oyster Bar & Grill in London

We treated ourselves to their wonderful seafood, a bottle of reasonably-priced Sancerre from France and even their trifle with mascarpone, and then returned to the street to continue our wander to soak in the London ambience.

Returning to the Renaissance, we made our way into the Chambers Club which has to be the most impressive concierge lounge among the Marriott properties.  It is massive, well-staffed, well-victualed and does not charge for wine.  We were in the mood for a few hot appetizers and a glass (or two) of their cold sauvignon blanc on offer.  We were not planning to eat until after the evening’s entertainment.

We changed and made our way to the west end in time for the 7:30 curtain of the new production of Cabaret which had officially opened with press night just the evening before.  We were eight rows back, dead center when Britain’s first Pop Idol, and platinum British recording artist Will Young emerged from the “O” in “Wilkommen” as the emcee in this astounding production.  Of course, our interest was a bit more personal.

The marquee at the Savoy Theatre.

Several minutes later, we spotted him – Hans was the character’s name – and he was very familiar to us since we’ve been watching him perform since he was three years old.  It was our 23-year-old son Ian making his west end debut, and it was the most unique and wonderful way to celebrate 25 years of marriage.  We congratulated ourselves on having “done good” as they say.

The cast poster outside the Savoy Theatre.

We capped off the day with a late dinner at Café des Amis just off Covent Garden with Ian & Jeremy – another west end musical theater veteran, and returned to our hotel via the tube. We are now the proud owners of London Underground ‘Oyster Cards’ which we intend to use often and soon!

All the world’s a stage: Travel and theater do mix

The Discerning Travelers off to the ballet in Monte Carlo.

We’re counting down now – to London, that is.  In about 10 days we’re off to celebrate two very important milestones in the lives of the Discerning Travelers.

On October 10 we’ll spend our 25th wedding anniversary (OK, we weren’t exactly ingénues when we married!) at a very special theatrical performance.  When you have offspring who are performers (and we have two), there are many memorable performances through the years, but this one is especially poignant.  Our now 23-year-old ballet dancer son has moved on – from Monte Carlo to London – to revisit the reason he started dancing in the first place.  He’s a triple-threat musical theater performer.  No longer even a wannabe performer, he is currently touring the UK in the newest remount of Cabaret starring pop idol Will Young, a production that opens in London’s West End at the Savoy Theatre on October 3.  And on October 10 we’ll celebrate our son’s debut and 25 years of wonderful marriage.  We’ll be having a glass or two of champagne late that evening for sure!

This planning has made us consider the joys of taking the time to see theatre productions when traveling.  We can’t now remember the first time we attended a theatrical performance when away, but it was probably Cats in New York on Broadway (the US equivalent to London’s famed West End).

We’ve had a number of very memorable experiences.  The first was on a trip in 2006 to London.  It was spring break and we had son Ian with us.  Seventeen-years old at the time, he was at the National Ballet School (Canada) and of course we had to plan on taking in a number of performances.  Usually when we travel we don’t ever book theater tickets of any kind for the first day or night of arrival – you can never tell when you’ll be delayed and these tickets can be astronomically expensive.  This time we took a chance, though.  After applying some adolescent persuasion to his parents, Ian convinced us that we had to see famed French ballerina Sylvie Guillem in the Royal Ballet’s production of Romeo & Juliet at Covent Garden.  The only hitch was that her very last performance was the evening that we arrived on an overnight flight very early that morning.

Ian takes in the beautiful interior of the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden in London.

Our usual approach to dealing with potential jet lag is to immediately get ourselves on the new time zone and carry on through the day as normally as possible, going to bed fairly early so that we can make up for lost sleep (no matter how much we spend on airline tickets to have space and flat-out beds, sleeping is usually a fleeting dream).  If we were going to experience this R & J, however, we’d have to prop our eyes open for some hours that night – which we did.

What a terrific experience – but it will go down in our family history as the time we coined the phrase “DTP” – in other words, “drink the poison.”  This particular production of R & J is excruciating for one particular scene at the very end of the ballet.  Romeo takes so long to decide to “drink the poison” as he writhes in the pain of seeing his Juliet dead (at least he believes she’s dead – we all know the sordid story).  All we could think of as we watched him on stage was, “For the love of God, Romeo, just drink the poison and put us out of our misery.  We all know how this ends!”   Well, of course he did drink it, he died, Juliet woke up, writhed in anguish and stabbed herself to death.  Then we could sleep!

Ian at 17 in front of the Victoria Palace Theatre in London where we saw Billy Elliott. In just over a week he’ll make his own West End debut just down the road at the Savoy Theatre.

Over the years we’ve seen musicals like Thoroughly Modern Millie and Wicked in New York; Billy Elliott and Phantom of the Opera in London (actually we’ve seen Phantom several different places), and its sequel Love Never Dies.  We’ve seen The Thirty Nine Steps in London (highly recommend that one), and ballets galore.  One of the most memorable for us was the Matthew Bourne rendition of Swan Lake that we happened upon when we arrived in New York last year.  As we sat in the bar at the Renaissance Times Square where we were staying, we noticed a very large billboard outside the window advertising this production, and it was in town for only a few days while were  were there.  This production is the one that Billy Elliott is in during the final frames of the movie and casts men as the swans.  We had to see it.

We approached the concierge and asked him if it might be possible to procure tickets.  With a twinkle in his eye, he told us that “anything is possible.”  And so he did.  But at the same time, we also learned that the concierges in New York hotels have access to online coupons that you can use for same-day tickets at the theaters thus avoiding that horrible, long line at the TKTS both in Times Square.  It was worth every cent we paid.

Of course, we can’t forget all of the ballets we have seen in Monte Carlo when Ian danced there for three years.  That included world premieres of Scheherazade on New Year’s Eve 2010, and last year’s new Swan Lake.   And then we followed the company to Los Angeles last year and saw them on tour.

Theater experiences when traveling are entertaining and illuminating for more than just experiencing the production itself.  The theater buildings themselves are so very interesting.  The old (Covent Garden in London,  The Garnier in the Casino building in Monte Carlo, most Broadway and West End theaters), the new (The Grimaldi Forum in Monte Carlo, the Marquis on Broadway, the Segerstrom Center for the Performing Arts in Orange County California – so impressive).

Then of course there is the audience.  Audiences around the world are also interestingly different.  Ask anyone who has performed in live theater of dance in different countries and they’ll tell you that the response of the audience is very cultural.  In some countries, at a ballet, there is no applause whatsoever between scenes or at the end of specific performances – the applause comes at the end of the act.  This can be unnerving for audience members who are used to applauding whenever impressed by a performance, and you can just imagine what the performers must be thinking.  In some places, a standing ovation is extremely uncommon, saved for only the most astonishing performances; in other places, it seems any performance short of god-awful inspires the audience members to jump to their feet.  You just have to go along with the prevailing cultural response.

Les Ballets de Monte Carlo takes a bow at the end of the world premiere of Jean-Christophe Maillot’s Swan Lake at the Grimaldi Forum in Monte Carlo in late 2011.

We usually buy our most important theater tickets online before we leave to avoid disappointment.  Often these days you can simply print off the ticket and the bar code is right there, like an online boarding pass.  If you have time, you can have the tickets mailed, but that can be dicey if you don’t leave enough time.  You can also pick them up at the theater when you get there – but remember to take with you some identification and the credit card you used to purchase online.  And remember to book it into your day’s plans unless you want to wait in that line at the theater before the performance.

However you buy your tickets, just do it.  It will be one of the most memorable parts of your travel experiences.