When I tell my professional-class friends that I like to go on cruises they react, every single time, as if I have confessed to a shocking secret vice. And, in a way, I have.
Cruising is considered highly uncool in certain bohemian-intellectual circles — and you know who you are. But I feel that ruling out something really fun from your life because you are afraid that it’s uncool is actually really uncool — the cool thing is to do what you want.
I am on a mission: I think cruising should be rehabilitated. It should join the resurging list of retro-cool experiences and products that include motels, caravans, tortoiseshell glasses, Jell-O and sheath skirts.
I grew up middle class, not upper middle class, so I am often amazed to find that there is a rigid unspoken upper-middle-class code, and that people who can choose anything are often scared of choosing things that others will think are d?class?.
You must have hardwood floors, never wall-to-wall carpeting; you can’t admit to liking jet skis or motorboats; you have to sail. Cassis is allowed; Bailey’s Irish Cream is verboten.
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Travel with elements of puritanical difficulty is chic in this social class; but cruising — with its implications of total leisure, of no-effort-on-your-part regression — is regarded as irredeemably vulgar. The taste police of the upper middle classes, with their stiff-upper-lip intellectual heritage, have guaranteed that our holidays must include plenty of plain old hard work.
But I am in revolt. Aren’t we stressed enough already? Why must we rule out languor and abundance in favour of rigorous hikes up the Pyrenees or detailed research of our own — so much like the mental labour we do every day — to put together the perfect “undiscovered” itinerary?
I confess: I am drawn to the very regression and luxurious passivity that is so unacceptable among my fellow X-classers: sun, deckchairs, ocean — buffet. Bring it on.
Defiantly, I went on three different cruises. I went with my children on a middle-level family- orientated cruise line, Carnival, from LA to points south on the Mexican West Coast — Baja, Mazatl?n and Puerto Vallarta. I went with a lover on NCL’s Norwegian Gem from New York to the eastern Caribbean — docking in the Bahamas. I went again with the kids last summer on Cunard’s luxurious Queen Mary 2, from Brooklyn to Southampton. Ha! I had fun on every one of them.
How did something so enjoyable lose its lustre? At the turn of the 20th century, the elite of the US and the UK travelled regularly on the great Cunard ships; Edith Wharton describes how each crossing was a microcosm of wealth, liaisons and scandal. Henry James writes of a transatlantic milieu in which wealthy American debutantes formed shipboard romances with European second sons.
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The Cunard liners were the Concordes of the day and Lady Cunard herself was a fashion and cultural icon. Leaders of society (think of the passenger list of the Titanic) jostled for seats at the captain’s table; in the first decades of the 20th century Hollywood royalty joined Europe’s on the crossing; the disembarkation on both sides of the Atlantic was covered by newspapers on the front pages, and, later, by newsreels. A cup of bouillon in a deckchair on the upper level of a Cunard ship was a metaphor for moneyed and elegant travel.
So what happened? Postwar mass tourism (and mass Americans) happened. At the end of the Second World War, the dollar was strong against European currencies; former GIs who had had tastes of London and Paris sought to return to Europe with their new wives, as tourists this time. This downscale demand created new categories of transatlantic travel by ship that were cheaper — and tackier.
In the 1960s the “cruise” became a symbol of aspiration for second-generation American immigrants. The sons and daughters of “old Europe” — Philip Roth’s parents’ generation — were now comfortably enough off to purchase package dreams of vacation luxury.
That was the decade that perfected the notion of cruising not as a form of transport but as a form of relaxation — to a blissful nowhere; to “ports of call” in the Caribbean or the Mexican Riviera. And that was the decade that did in the reputation of the cruise. (The pop-culture hit TV show of the 1970s, Love Boat, did not help.)
But enough of the past. Some of today’s shipowners seem aware of the more negative associations and are starting to offer new experiences geared to new audiences.
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Which should you choose? Let’s start with NCL from New York. This is the perfect cruise for you to take a spouse or lover on. (On this line you do get a feeling of mass-produced experience — and our fellow passengers were the equivalents of the immigrants of the 1950s; first-generation Russians and Koreans, ready to party.) This is an exercise in fabulous Las Vegas-style sensual excess, where you hope that no one you know is watching.
There was the night of the chocolate extravanganza, for instance, with the entire multisectioned restaurant loaded with sweets. Three thousand people of diverse backgrounds — all together on a sugar high — almost levitated the ship.
There was the disco where you could dance till 3am and lounge on giant beds while watching Britney Spears videos that you didn’t even know existed; the late-night bowling alley, the back-to-the-womb spa with hot tubs on multiple levels.
Huge enclosed lounges on the upper deck let you snuggle with a partner at sunset. Our cabin, with its porthole right down by the waves, was cosy and magical. There is something seductive and special about seeing the Atlantic Ocean, in all its moods, outside your bedroom window.
For less poetic moments, there is the swimming pool with the reggae band nearby doing Bob Marley covers.
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So there you are, finally, gone totally native into Cruiseworld, dancing poolside in a muumuu, singing the lyrics to No Woman No Cry, mai tai in hand, while surrounded by tables heaped with piles of hamburger and chips, as if you are having a feverish dream of a world with no limits and no consequences. You don’t want your kids to see you like that. Hence, the Carnival Line.
The Carnival cruise was far more wholesome. It is perfect for a family holiday in which the kids’ fun is more important. Our fellow passengers were solidly middle class, enjoying their prosperity. The taste was comfortable and neither tacky nor truly elegant.
The food was tasty, and the children loved the waterslide on an upper deck, the multiple swimming pools filled with seawater and even the kids’ club with its many ingenious activities.
It is relaxing for parents (especially single parents) to be able to lie about on deckchairs knowing that the kids are safe and having fun. Families dressed somewhat formally for dinner and posed for photos — the vibe was clean, pleasant and well organised, if unremarkable.
The downside? Day trips to Puerto Vallarta and Baja were bleak exercises in herd tourism. However, a hike into the Mexican mountains to a magical retreat where kids could swing from ropes and let themselves fall into deep jungle pools was worth every bit of the herding.
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The Carnival line has learnt a secret about contemporary extended families — we get on each others’ nerves after a while in close quarters or in a hotel.
After many Christmasses in which my children and I, my brother and his kids, and our sainted parents, have lived through too many strong (if adorable) personalities in too small a space, we have just returned from another Carnival cruise, this time over the festive season.
As it turned out, our multigenerational adventure around the Caribbean and Central America was a great success in terms of how the vast space and options we had allowed us to be together to enjoy the meals but still have separate hang-out time. However, we were downright exasperated by the hidden extras.
But for actual relaxation, and true elegance? Baby, give me the Queen Mary 2.
Cunard’s mission seems to have been to bring back the great age of Whartonian travel, and to the extent that it can be done in an age of BlackBerrys and faxes, it has succeeded. The understated interior of the ship is finished in pale golden woods, with a strong architectural allusion to the Deco era.
The definitions of “luxury” and “service” are different than those on the other two lines: deep pleasure and an almost Edwardian notion of “sensibility” — gratifying and rare — rather than ostentation. On the Norwegian Gem and the Carnival line you are surrounded by hardworking and, at times, exhausted staff who bring you whatever you want — which can make you feel part of a globalised tourism mill.
On the Queen Mary 2 you are surrounded by staff who appear to take pride in what they are doing and who exude an extraordinary level of old-fashioned courtesy, not servility. It is a wonder to behold.
What distinguishes the experience is what those who planned it were clever enough to leave out — the worst of the modern era. They provide you with quiet moments from an earlier time.
You can engage with your kids or your partner in old-fashioned pastimes: you can watch the waves from tables at sea level where you can play chess and Scrabble; you can write home on your engraved stationery; you can rest by the seawater pool. There is a teen club with innocent fun: treasure hunts as cover for “hanging out” with an attractive transatlantic group of peers.
You can go to the gym, but you’d be a fool.You can have cream teas in a plush, quiet lounge with a dozen perfect tiny sandwiches and fresh scones, as in your dreams of a life in the colonies, but without the colonisers’ guilt. On board the ship is a precommodified mood in which the feelings of the passengers — and, it seems, everyone on deck — actually matter.
And what did we do together as a family? We read. We talked to each other. We rested. We slept. We woke and looked at the ocean. We sort of fell in love with each other again. Can you imagine?
Of the passengers, I met many who had waited a long time to have the experience — retired teachers, a retired dockworker and his wife, middle and working-class couples, as well as lawyers and bankers. The mood was not one of snobbery but of gentle camaraderie.
Other cruise lines treat the ocean as background. The Cunard Line is the only one that shows a respect for the presence of the ocean itself. You cross the Atlantic and feel the mighty waters, the borderless sea — the immensity of what you thought you knew so limitedly before. This is travel at its best: that is to say, the chance to see your loved ones in new settings, and to watch the world together in a new light.
Need to know
Getting on board NCL (0845 2018900, ncl.co.uk) offers a one-week cruise only from New York to the Bahamas from £499pp.
Carnival (0845 3510556, carnivalcruise.co.uk) has one-week cruises from LA to Mexico from £389pp.
Cruise Thomas Cook 0800 9166070, cruisethomascook.com) offers New York to Southampton on Queen Mary 2 from £1,049pp, including flight from UK.