Cruise Around the World in Retirement

There’s no doubt that a cruise around the world has a certain appeal to almost everyone.  It’s a once in a lifetime dream come true.  It’s something we’ve actually looked into but there were two big reasons we backed away from the opportunity.  The first was the amount of time that it took to do it and, even worse, most of the cruises we looked at had you being away from for Christmas, which is something we have never wanted to do.  The second reason was the money.  The price tag was very high and that was just for the cruise.  We all know that any vacation has added costs that can really add up.  The cruises that we saw cost as much as our last two cars so it was more money than we wanted to spend even though we both want to see as much of the world as we can while we are still healthy enough to do it.  A cruise around the world didn’t seem to be a possibility for us.

But we’re not ones to give up easily.  Maybe a single cruise was not a good fit for us, but what about spreading out by taking multiple cruises each year?  That has now become our strategy and although we can’t spend 120 or even 180 days at a time at sea, we can take a couple of ten-day, or two week cruises each year.  My wife and I made a list of where we wanted to go in the world when we were getting close to retirement.  It was fun to look at the globe and some maps to identify the places we really wanted to see.  As you can imagine we ended up with a long list.  We had almost a hundred “must see” places and then another hundred of places that held an attraction for one or both of us.  Some were rather easy to take care of because they were close by.  Lake Placid had been something I had wanted to see since the Miracle on Ice in 1980 and our trip to this little Adirondack village was a nice surprise.  We were still living on Long Island, so it gave us another reason to see the property we had purchased in the town of Athens, about forty miles south of New York’s state capital of Albany.  We had tried to make as complete of a list as possible and we have made additions to it from time to time.

We took out our master list and started to check the ones that would be most accessible by a cruise ship and realized that, if we broke up our “cruise around the world” into smaller trips, it could actually include river cruises and that had been something we wanted to do as well.  River cruises are a perfect way to see Europe and we incorporated this method of travel into our Master Itinerary.  We’re six years into this project and our cruise around the world has actually morphed into over a dozen ocean and river cruises with each of them qualify for the “trip of a lifetime” award.  We are incredibly fortunate to have experienced as much as we have.  From our Master List we’ve been able to get to over forty of them by car within our own country and have enjoyed every minute of that as well.  Travel has been an incredible learning experience, and I am truly blessed with a travel partner who has put up with me for over fifty years.  And, while we haven’t technically taken a cruise around the world, we have taken that idea and turned it into something that works for us.

There's More Than One Way to Cruise Around the World

The main point here is to make a start on seeing this wonderful world that we live in.  If a cruise around the world is within your means, then by all means do it.  Don’t be afraid to ask the question “if we don’t do it now, when are we going to do it?”  It’s a gift to reach this age in life but the reality is that we less days on this planet than we did yesterday and no one knows the number of days we have in front of us.  I don’t mean to depress you.  I’m actually trying to motivate you.  I remember sitting in a classroom looking at pictures of the Parthenon and the Coliseum and wondering if I could get to see those places in person.  Could I ever see Lincoln’s home in Springfield or walk the streets of Jerusalem?  Would I ever get to see the Pyramids of Egypt or the canals of Venice?  Would my experience of Niagara Falls or the Grand Canyon just be from pictures and would the Mississippi River just be a blue line on the map?  These were things I thought about and, although it may not have the same appeal for you, getting to those places has been more exciting and satisfying than I ever thought possible.  I may not ever cruise around the world but that doesn't mean that I’m not going to see as much of it as I can.  This is awonderful world to explore.  My suggestion is to get started today and Enjoy Retired Life!

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