One Hundred Ten Days

About this time each winter I get a little restless. The days are getting longer but it's still so cold that I dress in layers of wool and turtlenecks with my breath hovering in the air in front of me. When I walk out to my car in the darkness the snow crunches and groans and my fingers feel stiff with the chill.

And while I'm surrounded by four more months of snowy darkness I start to dream about places I could be . . .

Do you have things that you want to do before you die? Near the top of my list it says "travel around the world" but I'm a lot more specific than that. When I should be folding laundry or vacuuming crumbs from the floor I sometimes stop to sneak a peak at a cruise that I promise you someday I will take.

The trip I want is a complete circumnavigation of the globe. Doesn't that just sound wonderful? Sailing around the entire earth in one voyage like some modern Magellan--but with a lot more comfort. The M.S. Amsterdam leaves Ft. Lauderdale on January 5, 2011 before crossing the Atlantic for Spain where it will sail through the Straits of Gibraltar then through the Mediterranean, stopping at Seville, Rome, Naples, Athens and Ephesus.

After a stop in Cairo and Aqaba (to see Petra) it will sail through the Red Sea and around to Dubai, over to Mombai and on to Singapore. From there it's Hong Kong and Manila then on to Cairns and Sydney, farther south to Tasmania and over to New Zealand where it will bounce along the southern Indian Ocean and up into Polynesia and Bora-Bora.

The ship will traverse the Atlantic to Easter Island then up along the western coast of South America past Peru, Equador and through the Panama Canal into the Caribbean, stopping at Grand Cayman before returning to Ft. Lauderdale one hundred and ten days later.

I can't describe amount of longing I have to be on that ship. Yes I know that one hundred and ten days is over three and a half months but that's the point. What would it be like to walk up the gangplank and leave winter and icy roads and dirty cars all behind and just see the world? To be able to visit places with names so fat and luxurious they roll around in your mouth like a ripe strawberry?

Cartagena . . . Rarotonga . . . Papeete. Twenty-six different countries. Just saying the word "Papeete" gives me chills of romance and the idea of waking up one morning, walking out of my room and finding myself staring at Gaugin's beaches and palm trees is enough to make me sigh. Someday that boat will leave with me on it.

Six continents, all in complete comfort and with a grace and elegance that you can't find with any other form of travel. I want to be on a ship and feel myself rock to sleep each night or wake up each morning to see the ocean going past with dolphins and flying fish playing in the wake as I follow Sir Francis Drake and James Cook.

I would need some steamer trunks. Big ones, covered with leather and fancy tacks and fitted with brass corners like the trunks Tom Hanks uses in Joe v. the Volcano. Definitely. Though I'd update and include this trunk here which includes a portable office because I would be blogging every mile of the way, making you all wish you had a cabin too.

So for three and a half months at sea what do you think you'd pay? Take a guess. Here's the amazing part--I could buy a ticket on the M.S. Amsterdam for $17,000. Think about it--you'd have airfare to Florida and some taxes to pay but you could see the world and live like a king for nearly four months, eating so much they'd have to roll you down the gangplank when it was over, all for under $20,000. When you compare it to those overpriced Disney cruises where you spend $7,000 for nine days it blows them away.

So my point is, it's not an unrealistic idea to say that someday I'll be there. Of course it won't be while my kids are living at home but at some point in my life Andrew and I will have tickets and steamer trunks ready to go and then you won't hear from us for four months. Bon voyage.

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