Not a Cruise Line Kind of Girl

Training update: Broke the 8500 step threshold today. 8544 to be exact. And am I tired! These 2.5 mile walks are hard - or more precisely, sitting at a computer and doing very little for the last year and a half have made getting moving again hard. Food has been good, healthy and in moderation. So yay me. But I am looking forward to the day when the 2.5 mile walk feels a bit too easy and I decide to up it. A glutton for punishment, I suppose!

Travel update:I was looking at a cruise line site today. River cruising. It sounds lovely, doesn't it? A river cruise. A romantic voyage down the Danube or the Volga or the Rhone. I love to look at the deck plans and the pictures. The people always look like they are having a great time. It is usually a couple of indeterminate middle age sitting at a table, on deck chairs, in a small cabin with a large window or balcony. In the case of balconies, one is always outside looking shoreward while the other reads a book in a chair or pours coffee.

It looks idyllic. And it sounds like a great idea. Unpack once, but see a dozen cities in a week or two. Have a traveling hotel room, have a traveling dining room. Have shore excursions with the nice, English speaking crew. I'm not being mean about this. It sounds nice. I know a number of people who would love to do this. Maybe someday I will find myself on one of these cruises.

But for now? For the forseeable future? I'm not a cruise line kind of girl. It is just another way to do the seven planets in five days trip. It is a way to see the major sites of major cities without ever having to talk to a local, ever have to worry about getting lost, ever have to think about anything. And I understand the appeal, but it feels like cheating.

It cheats me out of the experiences I like most. The getting lost on side streets, the discovering of hidden gems of places, the chance to talk to the people at the next table and find out where they had dinner last night, the chance to talk to the waiter who is thrilled to talk to someone from somewhere else. It cheats me out of the chance to get to know the couple who run the place I go to get my morning coffee, to make friends with the cat who lives in the gift shop across from it. It cheats me out of great conversations in laundromats, on trains, over lunch.

I think of the people I have met - the young man who told me about how his family was rescued by an American soldier, the globe trotting ladies whose husbands hate to travel so they see the world while the boys stay home and watch sports, the Chinese college students who were traveling for the first time ever outside their country, the man who decided he couldn't rent me a scooter because there were too many Italians on the road and he didn't think it was safe for me. Even the guy at the security checkpoint in the Split Airport who took my corkscrew - 'was souvenir, now is trash.'

There wouldn't have been pomegranates, still warm from the sun of my landlady's garden. There wouldn't have been the chance to learn about Belgian beers and the different glasses they come in on a slow afternoon in Bruges.  There probably wouldn't have been a chance to see the annual ordination of priests at Notre Dame that I stumbled upon, or the chat with the Scottish farmer.

I'm sure there are their own opportunities on a cruise ship. One day I may decide to see for myself. But for now, I'm not a cruise line kind of girl. And I'm okay with that.