This Cruise is a Mediterranean Dream Odyssey
It has been said, at least since Hippocrates, that the cure for everything is salt-water-sweat and tears to be sure, but chiefly the sea. Yet while beach time has always seemed to me a sine qua non of a life well lived, sailing-the purest way of engaging the sea-has not. I have crossed the Atlantic by ship twice and cruised, one-way, from Naples to Alexandria. But that was sailing as transportation, not as adventure. Which is why, seeking to correct this, I booked myself (plus daughter) on a seven-night Mediterranean cruise last August, from Monte Carlo to Barcelona on the Silver Muse, a Silversea ship. (Note that for similar departures late this summer you need to book far ahead, as in now.)
We would be sailing by night and calling at six ports (or cities near them) by day: Florence; Rome; Olbia, Sardinia; Calvi, Corsica; Cannes; and Sète. Which, in addition to the salubriousness of all that sea and salt, promised an unusually high (in fact, daily) dose of what for me is another major mood elevator: the anticipatory frisson of arriving someplace new.
It’s dark already when we depart Monte Carlo, the blackness of sky and water separated by the city’s band of bright lights. They vanish astonishingly fast, and we are truly at sea, in that potent, ancient way-only the moonlit wake on the smooth black water and, just visible over the railing, a thin line of churning white foam against the hull, marking the ship’s progress.
We spend every evening mesmerized this way by dusk and departure (I dared not expect such a feeling on a commercial cruise with 596 passengers) and every morning by their reverse: the coming of the light and the approach to land, which we observe either from the picture window in the gym or from the running track above the pool deck (the sweat part of the cure).
The shore excursions leave something to be desired if you’re used to individualized guiding (it’s best to go for the private car and guide option). But this being the Med, there are indelible high points: the Leonardos and Botticellis in the Uffizi in Florence, miraculously without glass or a phalanx of tourists before them; the façade of the Palazzo Farnese in Rome, which I study during a long streetside lunch and whose window pediments, central portal, and deep projecting cornice, designed by Michelangelo, strike me, with their highs, lows, and rhythms, as music set in stone. (Or is that just my Aperol spritz talking?)
On Sardinia it’s the mysterious stone structures of the Bronze Age Nuragic people that tantalize (what a cocktail of cultures was every bit of land around this Mare Nostrum-truly our sea). In rugged Corsica, birthplace of Napoleon, it’s the 13th--century Genoese fortress town on a promontory overlooking the port and beach of Calvi.
On Cap d’Antibes, to which we Ubered from the port in Cannes, it’s the blue-and-white fantasy of the chic, multicultural Riviera beach club La Plage Keller, its well-appareled denizens chattering in a multiplicity of languages. In Sète, France’s under-the-radar little Venice, where we kayak along canals, it’s a little bistro where we eat moules marinières with a baguette to soak up the juices while pondering how good even an ordinary meal in France can be for the soul.
For all that, I’m most surprised by the restorative effects of the onboard pleasures. I love not needing to pack and unpack while traveling to four countries. Ditto the staff-guest ratio of 411 to 596; we have a butler (the kind and gentle Mark Baral, from the Philippines, who helps us organize our days), and my daughter is driven to remark one day at breakfast at the Terrazza restaurant, “Do you realize that seven waiters have attended us?” There are 26 different “food concepts” on board, including eight restaurants (plus all-day in-room dining), and the total, “whatever you like, Madame” all-inclusiveness is seriously addictive. “Do you want a top-up of your wine?” I’m asked during dinner at the Silver Note. “I want to see you happy, so I need to keep topping you up.” If only real life worked like this.
Our suite is one of the so-called Silver Suites, of which the Silver Muse has 34 and which, I’m told, is a favored class of accommodation among repeat cruisers. No wonder. Ours is number 935, and it includes an extravagance of comforts in what is technically just a living room and bedroom: two large flat-screen TVs; a two-sink bathroom with a shower and a large Jacuzzi bathtub; a proper dressing room; two dining tables, one indoors and one on a room-size teak veranda also equipped with two chaises longues. We keep the two sliding glass doors open every night, the better to hear the whooshing of the water as we sail, and to inhale as much of that salty sea air as possible.
I’m feeling properly topped up as we dock in Barcelona. But as I take one last look around our quarters-those open doors, the sheer white curtains billowing in the breeze, and the blue Mediterranean beyond-I come close, I confess, to shedding salty tears.
Note: My exact itinerary is not available this year, but three similar ones are, some of them with stops (how divine is this?) in Marseille, St.-Tropez, and Portofino. From $4,320 per person (double occupancy), silversea.com
This story appears in the March 2019 issue of Town & Country. Subscribe Now
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