An excellent opportunity for carefree relaxation is a cruise. A liner is a club hotel, only floating. Or rather, a whole city of hotels - with its own theaters, restaurants, sports grounds, swimming pools, shops, fitness clubs. And little children's towns inside this big city!
Cruises can be river and sea. River cruises, as a rule, are limited by the riverbed. For example, you sail along the Danube from country to country, from city to city, and see everything along the way. Sea cruises are limited only by the imagination of the cruise company, since the world ocean, as is known, has no borders.
A cruise is a special kind of leisure, not comparable to land life. It comes in two types and differs by the size of the ship. On a small liner, passengers spend time together, become friends and return to shore as one big family. Such relationships especially often develop on domestic river or sea cruises. It happens that the next year passengers set off on a journey together again, only along a different route.
A big ship is like a big resort or even a whole city. There are people around - but by no means a group of friends, just passersby, usually more than a thousand people. There is so much on a big ship that in a week you can only manage to poke your nose into every corner: restaurants, casinos, shops, bars, discos, parties, a theater with performances, a spa with massages, baths and saunas, exercise machines, treadmills, spa pools, loungers, lobbies and music halls, evenings for "Those Over Twenty" and matinees for "Those Under Five", aerobics, tennis courts and cards. On a big ship you can spend time with your family, or you can send the children to a children's club to luxuriate in a beauty salon or sit in a bar. In short, the possibilities are unlimited.
The crew of a medium-sized sea cruise liner consists of 600-700 people who serve 2,500 passengers. On five-star liners, there is one crew member for every 2.5 passengers. A whole team of professional actors, musicians, dancers and singers entertains an army of cruisers around the clock. Among other things, they entertain children too, organizing sports competitions, games, performances, contests and everything else that is expected.
Among other things, a cruise is a paradise for gourmets. On board, dozens of restaurants offer a new cuisine every day and publish menus in three volumes in five languages. All meals are included in the price: you can go for breakfast, lunch or dinner to an à la carte restaurant, or to a café with a buffet, or after the restaurant you can drop by a café, then have a snack at a pizzeria, and when it becomes hard to move, order food to your cabin. Restaurants definitely have a children's menu. And besides that, there is round-the-clock ice cream and mountains of pastries.
Any cruise that takes children on board is perfect for a family vacation. But the best cruise line, created specifically for this, belongs to the Disney World company. It has only two ships: Disney Magic and Disney Wonder. These are real ocean liners with their own theaters, cinemas, pools and restaurants. They are arranged in such a way that, if desired, parents can always see their children having fun on deck. In the magical restaurants of the ship, the walls change color by themselves; the menu is intended for passengers of different ages. Mickey Mouses and Goofys, Snow Whites and Bambi fawns walk along the decks. The cinema shows Disney cartoons, the theater puts on performances and Broadway shows. The liners have interest clubs: for toddlers, teenagers, parents and grandparents.
The liners sail from Port Canaveral across the Caribbean Sea. Four-day and five-day cruises are trips around the Bahamas with stops in Nassau and on Disney World's own island, Castaway Cay. The week-long cruise goes through the islands of Key West, Grand Cayman, Cozumel, Saint Martin and Saint Thomas, with a long stop at the same Castaway Cay.
During cruises, you can go on an excursion, bike around tropical islands, dive and swim in fantastic Caribbean lagoons. Next year, Disney Line plans to expand its geography: Disney Magic will travel across the Atlantic and Gibraltar to Barcelona, and from there set off on Mediterranean journeys. The transatlantic voyage will last 2 weeks, and the Mediterranean cruises are designed for 10 and 11 nights.
PROS: the opportunity to see several countries at once without moving from hotel to hotel. Excellent food, fun entertainment, interesting life.
CONS: a cruise vacation is more expensive than an ordinary land-based one, because you have to pay separately for the flight.
Cruises, like hotels, come in many different varieties. When choosing a cruise company, you need to take into account its characteristics. For example, the ships of Celebrity Cruises are famous for the best French cuisine restaurants and beauty salons - with all sorts of exclusive preparations, capsules, solariums and other little things. Carnival Cruise Lines calls its liners "entertainment ships". It focuses on those who go on a journey to have fun. Costa Cruises offers cruises in the Italian style: maître d's singing opera arias, cheerful waiters, round-the-clock pizza, a sea of Chianti. Royal Caribbean bets on unique liners - huge, stuffed with all sorts of things (including ice rinks, football fields and rock-climbing walls). These are cruises with American scale and the American way of life.
To be continued