October 9, 2006
Freedom of the Seas cruise expereince: educational?
Jaime Caswell, a high school senior, does an excellent job telling us about her vacation experience on Freedom of the Seas. She calls traveling with family an educational experience but that scares me a little. While you might learn a little something on your cruise, it's not in the same league (at least in terms of education experiences go) as vacations where you actually encounter other cultures. So while cruising with your family is great, is it really educational?
Other cruise related articles:
We had some good comments on this post about cruising with NCL. This is just one of many posts I wrote on Freedom of the Seas. This blog entry links to a bunch of cruise articles. This Carnival cruise problems post set off a record number of commenters.
Posted by James Trotta at October 9, 2006 2:23 AM | TrackBack
My most memorable educational cruises were to SA Valpariso to Buenos Aires via the Magellan Strait but only because I was prepared to recognize what I hoped to see. Another crossed the Atlantic to England (London was very Mary Poppins), France and the Nertherlands, all smaller than I expected.
My major was Spanish American History, so I thought of ships as ferry boats, rather than an end in themselves. It was grand to see places I read about, and often I felt I was in my own little world apart. Not many cruisers prepare, and miss the opportunity to learn as they enjoy.
Cruising? Educational? Absolutely. Minimally, it gives any traveler a sense of how others live and prosper(or not). This schoolgirl learned a great deal about the places she visited. She also learned that traveling and seeing things first hand is essential to really understanding a place. Maybe a port of call is not an indepth experience; however, it does tell you that there is more to world health, politics and standards of living than she'll learn from a book.
Posted by: Kim at October 9, 2006 10:56 PM