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FlowRider: Leaving Barcelona with a Splash
Within minutes of leaving Barcelona, I started learning why so many people enjoy cruising. These new cruise ships go to great lengths to make sure that the onboard entertainment rivals attractions on shore. Along with putt-putt golf, an ice rink, and all the predictable activities, our ship had a new hit: the “FlowRider.”
If you can’t see the video below, watch it on YouTube.
Is Cruising Really Travel?
OK, I admit it. I’m on a cruise. Among European travelers, more and more people are cruising…and I want to know what it’s all about. My learning curve will be steep, as I’ve gone cruising in the Caribbean but never in the Mediterranean — and I’m giving our new Mediterranean Cruise Ports guidebook a shakedown cruise of its own. This new guidebook (a collection of existing chapters from our other guidebooks brilliantly reconfigured for the cruise traveler by Cameron Hewitt and others on my staff) is hot off the press, and is selling very well.
Today’s blog entry is the first in a two-week series on cruising. I’m not trying to sell the typical cruise traveler on independent travel. My hope is to equip independent types who are taking cruises with the information necessary to enjoy the best of both worlds — the economy, ease, and glorious hedonism of cruising with the joy and challenge of dipping into the cultural wonders of Europe on your own. It’s an attempt to travel “through the back door” — as much as is possible when you make land with 3700 shipmates (along with several other, similarly big shiploads).
Sailing away from our port of embarkation, I joined my fellow cruisers on deck to wave goodbye to Barcelona. As we gracefully floated by the Disney ship docked at the next berth, its passengers waved happily to us. Insinuating that we were envious of not being on a Magic Kingdom cruise ourselves, the ship’s thunderous horn gloated to the tune of “When You Wish Upon a Star.”
Meanwhile, on this trip I’m sailing with Royal Caribbean on the good ship “Liberty of the Seas”. Already I can feel some “ship pride” setting in. I love this boat. We’re sailing with 3700 passengers and a crew of 2000 (although the ship holds 4000 passengers, we’re sold out as some single passengers paid to use a double cabin).
I make a point to thoroughly move in, as I’ll be here for a week. With a tight compartment, it’s important to be organized. I’ve never packed so much before: deck wear, nicer evening wear, and more-rugged travel clothing to use on land. I even brought four pairs of shoes…if you count my flip-flops.
Attending the “Destinations Review” program in the huge theater, I expected a big crowd. This was the chance to survey the shore excursions that’ll be sold throughout the week, but only 30 people showed up. People are here to do what cruisers do: eat, lay around, shop, gamble, and sightsee…not in any particular order.
Back in my room, I sorted through the mix of papers that I picked up: special offers, schedules, events, and educational opportunities. One page asks “Thinking about Botox?” Another offers a “free teeth-whitening consultation.” One reason is clear about why cruising can be so inexpensive: they make more money off you once you’re on board.
By the time I’ve surveyed the deck scene, shot a few baskets, played ping-pong, checked out the gym, and watched a couple of guys surfing on the raging “FlowRider” surf simulator, we’re far out on a glistening sea. As the sun sets, I stand atop this floating city of fun playing putt-putt golf. Scanning the horizon futilely for Mallorca, I’m wondering how I’ll do: will I enjoy the people, the food, the congestion as we spill into port, evenings at sea, and the days on land? During the next week, I’ll enjoy days in Provence (Toulon), the French Riviera (Villefranche), Florence (Livorno), Naples, Rome (Civitaveccia), and then a day at sea to return to Barcelona. Then I’ll catch a fancier cruise line (Celebrity) and sail the eastern Mediterranean for a second week.
Anchors up and stay tuned. Europe through the Back Door is going to sea. Stay tuned for an upcoming post where I try out our new cruise book on actual shore excursions.
20 New Files Beef Up the Rick Steves Audio Europe App
I gave my first travel classes in 1976 and made a big mistake right from the start. I charged. (Of course, back then I didn’t have anything to sell my students so I had to.) By 1980 I realized that the best business plan was to provide extremely practical and well-designed information for free, and offer tours and guidebooks for sale if students wanted more.
Thirty years later, that’s still our formula: provide lots of helpful free content like classes, TV, and radio (we make our television and radio programs available to stations at no cost), and then — as unobnoxiously as possible — we let people know that if they want to give us some money, we have tours and guidebooks well worth considering.
True to the spirit of our business philosophy, our popular new app, Rick Steves Audio Europe (available on both iPhone and Android platforms) is also free. And each quarter we’re adding more and more content for our travelers. Just this week we uploaded 20 new files, beefing it up to a total of 200 fascinating interviews with travel experts and 30 self-guided audio tours — all organized in country-specific playlists so our travelers can zero right in on what will be of most help to them.
I love the topics featured by our expert guests in this latest update: We enjoy an afternoon tea in London, attend a traditional Turkish wedding, follow the path of Martin Luther’s historic pilgrimage to Rome, and learn what it’s like to raise kids in a small Italian village. We visit historic Civil War sites with Ken Burns, get armchair travel recommendations from “rock star librarian” Nancy Pearl, and learn about the history of everyday life from humorist Bill Bryson. And we talk with my son Andy about student travel in Europe, and how it’s changed a lot since I was a student bumming around Europe a few decades ago.
If you don’t already have our free Rick Steves Audio Europe app, give it a try — it’s better than ever. I hope you can download it today. As we measure profit in trips impacted (rather than dollars earned), that would be really helpful for our bottom line.
Thanks and happy travels!
Rick
The Rhine River — Raging with History
Maybe I’ll spend my old age just gazing out windows from evocative perches in my favorite European villages. While researching the Rhine River Valley recently for the new edition of our Germany guidebook, I enjoyed a corner room with a mesmerizing Rhine view. I’d wake up and find myself captivated by the river scene — and then realize I was less dressed than was appropriate for that conservative little burg.
Putting on a shirt and continuing to enjoy the scene, it occurred to me that I was enthralled by more than the pretty view. It was the rhythm of the mighty Rhine — so bustling with shipping and history — combined with the environment: black slate cut from plains above; terraced vineyards zigzagging up hills — forlorn in the modern economy but still absorbing sun and stocking grapes with sugar; husks of ruined castles, standing as monuments to class warfare, greed, and war; and stoic spires of stone churches slicing vertically through townscapes. The quiet, deep-grey power of the river flows as steadily as time itself, a dance floor where ferries, barges, and sightseeing boats do their lumbering do-si-do past fabled and treacherous rocks.
It was here that the ancient Romans decided to call it an empire and draw the line that defined their vast holdings — a line that separated barbarians from the civilized world, just as it separates Protestants and Catholics today. It was here, on New Year’s Eve in 1813, that Prussian General Field Marshall Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher, a local hero, used an innovative pontoon bridge to cross the Rhine and flank Napoleon’s forces (on their way back from a disastrous Russian campaign). And it was also along this stretch of river that US General Omar Bradley’s troops found a bridge still standing (at Remagen) to push past the natural barrier the Rhine has always provided Germany against invaders, and ultimately take the war into Hitler’s heartland.
A monument below my hotel window remembering Germany’s dead from various wars still has an unused panel. My hunch is that it’ll never be used. Germany, mighty today without the help of its military, has a profound distaste for wars. Like so many nations, it rose by the sword…and then fell.
Pondering sweeping armies and the rise and fall of great powers (along with my own country’s place in the march of history), I think of all the nations in Western Civilization that at one time rose to be dominant powers, then settled back down — either because of military defeat, economic malaise, or both — and realize life goes on just fine without all that responsibility. Think about it: Rome, Spain (under Charles V), Austria (under the Habsburgs), France (under Napoleon), Germany (under Hitler), Victorian Britain (upon which “the sun never set”), as well as Portugal, Sweden, Poland, the Netherlands, and, I’m sure, many others.
Then, with the political and economic frustration at a rolling boil back home in the USA — which just a decade or so ago was celebrating its status as “the world’s only superpower” — an interesting thought hit me. Had we known that “the Arab Spring” was just around the corner and managed to be patient (as we were to let the USSR rise and fall without a hot war), Saddam Hussein would have been swept away by his own people. The Iraqis surely would have done to their dictator what the Egyptians did to Mubarak and the Libyans did to Gaddafi. The USA would be a couple trillion dollars better off, and Iraq — rather than becoming a client state of the United States — may have created a homegrown democracy on its own terms.