All at sea, and basking in every minute of luxury
With sufficient staff to wait on her every need, 24 hours a day, Brenda Power found it all too easy to relax on her Princess Line mini-cruise
I’m sitting on a sun lounger in the blazing sunshine on the 16th deck of this massive cruise ship, a book on my knee, a sparkling pool at my feet and a ridiculously enormous sun hat (all of a tenner in one of the ship’s many boutiques) on my head when it occurs to me there’s only one thing missing from this scene. A glass of chilled rosé wine, perhaps, and a light snack: I reckon a plate of fresh oysters from the buffet would just about fill the gap before it’s time to dress for dinner.
The problem is that I’m far too comfortable to get up, find the nearest bar, take the lift two decks down to the 24-hour buffet and carry a tray all the way back here – after a couple of days of endless pampering on a luxury cruise, you’d be amazed how even the simplest effort begins to feel like an utterly unreasonable demand. Just as well, then, that I don’t have to budge.
On my wrist there’s a little medallion in a pink strap, which looks a bit like a fitness monitor. On my phone there’s an app, MedallionClass, uploaded with my photo and personal details. I open the app and order the wine and food and within a matter of minutes, a waiter has shimmied to my side, greeted me by name and presented my little picnic. The medallion pinpointed my exact location in the 18 decks of the Crown Princess, basically a floating five-star hotel carrying more than 3,000 souls, and from the data encrypted on the ship’s system, the waiter had my name and my mug shot. And just in case that wasn’t enough, didn’t I only find a little pearl in one of the oysters? When the waiter noticed me fishing it out of my mouth – I thought it was a tooth, to be honest – he called a colleague and soon I was surrounded by fellow guests, all wanting to see my treasure and suggesting that it was a sign of good luck. You’re telling me – since none of my friends will ever be rich enough to own a posh yacht and invite me as a guest (let’s face it, if I was that rich myself I certainly wouldn’t invite them), with enough staff to wait on my every need and my own valet on round-the-clock call, I reckon this is the closest I’ll ever get to finding out what that might be like.
Welcome to the 21st century cruising experience, courtesy of the impressive Princess line. If you caught Francis Brennan’s All
Hands On Deck on RTÉ One recently, set on one of the Crown’s sister ships, the Regal Princess, you’ve some idea of the scale and splendour of these vessels. The amounts of food, drink, laundry, personnel and management required to run these productions is truly mind blowing
– one large room on the Crown Princess is reserved for the storage and ripening of the ship’s banana supply alone. The end result, from the passenger’s viewpoint, is a total retreat from the rhythms and routines of everyday life, into a world where much thought and manpower has been devoted to anticipating and serving your every possible need, including several you didn’t even know you had.
The ‘smart’ technology of the medallions is an example. As hardships go, I wouldn’t have thought it was a great chore to heave myself out of a sun lounger on a cruise ship and fetch my own drink, or even to carry a key-card to enter my own stateroom. But once you’ve had your door light up at your approach, flash up your picture, open automatically and welcome you by name, your own front door back home feels positively sullen by comparison. The app also allows you to keep track of kids/friends/ partner on board, and even if you’ve left the phone in your cabin, all the same functions are available on any of the screens, dotted around the ship, at a tap of your medallion.
For all the high-tech gadgetry, though, there is something timelessly stately about a cruise – it is a particularly cossetting form of holiday. I was probably too young to appreciate my first ever cruise, on the grand old Canberra many years ago, but once you’ve done your share of organising family holidays over the years, having someone else take charge of just about everything is deliciously relaxing.
And they really do think of everything. If you find the beds exceptionally difficult to leave in the morning, after you’ve had breakfast delivered to your room and you’re perusing the daily newsletter of events and entertainments, it’s because the mattresses have been devised by a sleep doctor to give you the best possible kip: you sink down through layers of soft cushioning so that even if the ship rocks, you won’t feel a thing. With all sorts of activities scheduled round the clock, and a spa, gym, running tracks and assorted swimming pools and Jacuzzis, as well as a cinema and a theatre for your entertainment, you can comfortably account for every minute on board, in between regular shore excursions. On my mini-cruise we visited Edinburgh, including a tour of the castle and a visit to Arthur’s Seat, and took a taxi to the gorgeous Normandy town of Honfleur to browse the street market and be elegantly dissed by the wonderfully rude staff in a gourmet restaurant, during a day-long stopover in Le Havre.
While at sea, you can enjoy distractions like wine tastings, cookery demonstrations, make-up and fashion events, you learn to dance, play mini-golf or basketball, gamble your life’s savings in the casino or blow them at an auction in the art gallery, have a facial or a massage in the spa, join a book club or try your luck in the ‘Mr & Mrs’ quiz nights. There’s a live show in the theatre each night, and the staging, costumes and performers are of a calibre that wouldn’t be out of place in the West End. And you can eat, all day and all night, in the 24-hour restaurant or else save your appetite for dinner in one of the many dining spots on board. The days of fixed sittings and tables shared with strangers are long gone, you just rock up at the restaurant whenever you fancy and get a table for however many you like.
For some people, it’s the social element of a cruise and the chance to meet and chat with strangers that appeals most of all, and there’s no shortage of chances to hang out with fellow guests. You find yourself chatting to people by the pool, in the bars, or just walking the deck: One elderly lady showed me her tattoo in the lift, and another confided, as we strolled the promenade, that she was busily spending the inherit
THE END RESULT FOR PASSENGERS IS A TOTAL RETREAT FROM THE ROUTINES OF EVERYDAY LIFE
ance her late husband had intended for the stepchildren who hated her ...There’s even the occasional singles event, although given the age profile of most of the guests on my particular cruise I doubt there were too many takers for the ‘LGBT Mix ’n’ Mingle night’.
But the real beauty of a cruise, for me, is that you feel equally entitled to do absolutely nothing but sit at the poolside if the weather is good enough, or on your balcony if you’ve got one, or one of the many cosy lounges with a book and a drink. There’s something about being at sea to make real life feel remote and slightly irrelevant, just for a week or so, and the sea air, the huge skies and the empty horizons on all sides are the perfect circumstances for a complete reboot. The appeal of letting someone else do the planning and organising seems to have struck a particular chord in this era of Brexit uncertainty – next summer’s bookings on the Princess line are particularly healthy, it seems, with holidaymakers, concerned about new red tape on European trips, quite content to delegate any potential hassle to the professionals.
And delegating hassle, if you’ve always been the one to shoulder it, has an addictive charm. I realised long ago that I’m never going to be one of those intrepid travellers who enjoys hair-raising bus trips through narrow Indonesian mountain passes or fishing for my own supper on a dog-sledding trek through Antarctica: give me a cruise liner, with mints on my 300-thread-count pillows, a soft cotton bathrobe for lounging on my stateroom balcony, a large television with the latest movie releases, a wristlet to summon a drink and a snack to my side within minutes, and nothing to worry about beyond which restaurant to choose tonight, any day.
THEATRE’S SHOWS WOULD NOT BE OUT OF PLACE IN THE WEST END