A global shore excursion
“Are you kidding? Really?” Those were questions from friends — including me — of Michele Berlyne and Rick Chisholm when they announced they had begun a world cruise earlier this year.
Our surprise makes sense because if these two were in Hollywood, they would be classified as a hard-working entertainment power couple. She is a director of the popular CBC TV shows Dragons’ Den and Steven and Chris; he was the executive vice-president of broadcast for the Olympic consortium for Vancouver 2010 and London 2012.
On the younger side of 60, they hit the career brakes — hard — in late 2012.
That was the first surprise. The second surprise, to them and their friends, was that world cruises even existed. Many of them simply didn’t know.
Rick and Michele had been on a ship once — a short cruise, to see if they liked it. They thought a world cruise was something they could enjoy and that would help them escape the daily chatter of today’s pervasive forms of communication.
But they didn’t go entirely incommunicado. To keep friends and family informed, every day they posted a picture with comments on a blog — from the time they left Los Angeles on Jan. 4, until the ship docked in Fort Lauderdale on May 1.
Their blogging humour indicated they hadn’t lost their minds.
Now there are world cruises and there are world cruises. One of the most luxurious ones is with luxury line Silversea, which Rick and Michele chose to go with. They were pampered with a butler and all the amenities that go with having one aboard the Silver Whisper.
What places were they anticipating visiting?
“We partly took this cruise because it included Southeast Asia and Africa, two areas we had never been. Every morning we left the ship and ran into something we liked. Keep in mind, in the media we live in chaos so we loved the chaos and the culture in Thailand and Vietnam. The people were great.”
Did they stick with Silversea’s shore excursions?
“For a while,” says Rick, “but we’re independent people and soon were off on our own or with couples who shared our love of modest adventure. I had googled every port and I had a pretty good idea where we wanted to go. Within reason, we wanted to eat locally and tour locally.”
The areas they really liked were New Zealand, Bali, Vietnam and Cape Town. “And of those, Bali was our favourite.”
Silver Whisper was their home for almost four months.
“For the most part, we loved it. We especially enjoyed the lectures — very knowledgeable and they set us up for whatever place we were going to next. Most of the music was from the ’40s and ’50s … we think they could add a couple of decades. Also, if you’re paying that kind of money, you should have Internet costs as part of the package. Despite that, the crew and the food were outstanding.”
And if you think cruising now will be a part of their life …
“We saw it as an appetizer of the world,” explains Michele, “and now we can go back and spend more time in the places we loved, but we are definitely into cruising.”
So here’s a question for you, the reader:
There are more (and less expensive) world cruises on major cruise lines all the time. But would you be interested in spending four months on a cruise ship?
I’d like to hear from anybody who has even thought about it at portsandbows@ gmail.com. VISIT PORTSANDBOWS.COM FOR DAILY UPDATES ON THE LATEST CRUISE NEWS, BEST DEALS AND BEHIND-THE-SCENES STORIES FROM THE INDUSTRY. YOU CAN ALSO SIGN UP FOR AN EMAIL NEWSLETTER ON THE SITE FOR EVEN MORE CRUISE INFORMATION. PHIL REIMER MAY BE CONTACTED DIRECTLY AT PORTS
ANDBOWS@GMAIL.COM.