6 Months Down, 0 to Go

First and foremost, thank you to everyone who joined us on our world cruise. Your readership, curiosity, comments and encouragement meant the world to us and brought us a little bit of home every time we saw them. You are what makes Partout happen.

Alas, all good things must end. With 180 days, 40 countries, 5 continents (yes, we are counting Antarctica even though we didn’t step on it) and innumerable UNESCO sites of some kind or other behind us, we are back on land. You can still find Insignia on CruiseMapper, but your intrepid reporters are no longer aboard.

In about a month, we will send you a report on our adventures in re-entry. Meanwhile, as we did at each previous month mark, we are sharing five observations and three surprises. For once, Doris gave Louis free rein to pick the photos he likes best to illustrate the month report. Okay, she did pick her favorites from his favorites but, hey! Every ship needs a captain. Doris is always happy to serve!

5 Observations

1 – Starbucks is the new McDonald’s (or will be soon).

Starbucks fans: Great news!

There are more Starbucks stores outside the USA than inside it. You can order your iced vanilla latte with sugar-free syrup at any one of 5,400 stores in China, 1,200 stores in Japan, 500 stores in Brazil or 1 store in Senegal. We believe these internet numbers because we saw hundreds of Starbucks stores around the world. At the rate the java king is expanding, Starbucks could overtake McDonald’s as the biggest retailer of US food on the globe within a few years.

This definitely makes the world feel a bit over-Americanized, but your Partout pair is writing from a glass house when it comes to brand-name food in foreign cities. We ate KFC on the road. More than once.

2 – Modern cities look a lot alike.

Approaching cities from the ocean is like nothing we have ever done before. First, land ho: the terrain takes shape in the distance as mountains or desert or endless beaches. Next, the shape and nature of the bay or estuary or shore reveal themselves with their mangroves or stilt houses and shore birds and dolphins. Finally, close up, a skyline blooms.

It sounds kind of magical put that way, and it is, but the skylines of most cities we steamed into typically turned out to be the least magical part of the experience. In a majority of the 94 ports where we called, the horizon was dominated by look-alike, concrete-box high-rises, typically painted white and mostly indistinguishable from the concrete-box high-rises in the previous city or the next one.

There are exceptions, of course. There are cities like Rio de Janeiro and Cape Town and Muscat with spectacular natural settings, or like Dubai with jaw-dropping architecture. But concrete boxes are economical and practical, and they dominate cityscapes, especially in emerging economies. We are fans of progress but couldn’t help being struck that it is sure is homogenizing urban settings.

3 – Homelessness and untreated mental illness were un-American.

We have struggled to remember how many homeless or visibly mentally ill people we saw in the six months after we left San Francisco. Excluding San Francisco itself (where several thousand people live on the streets, a significant portion of them psychotic), we think we saw maybe … 25, give or take a handful? Even at double that number, it was a micro-fraction of how many we see on any 10-minute walk from our condo in San Diego.

To be sure, we were not canvassing foreign neighborhoods looking for marginalized populations. On the other hand, we were often in the parts of cities where these folks congregate in the US – in downtown areas and parks, near public buildings and transit centers. We also were asking locals a lot of blunt questions like, “Where are your homeless people?” “Where are your people with severe mental disorders?”

In a few densely populated places, particularly India, locals told us large homeless populations exist elsewhere than where we were afoot. More commonly, though, people just said, “Families take care of their own,” sometimes adding there are hospitals or other facilities for those too disordered to be at home.

We were always relieved when people didn’t ask how the United States handles these populations.

4 – Beauty transcends.

Of the 40 countries where we made landfall, precisely three (the US, Canada and Japan) are considered “developed.” The rest are still to a greater or lesser degree wrestling with poverty, hunger, disease, limited opportunity, political or other repression and the desperation these conditions breed. Our destinations were always interesting; they were not always pretty or comfortable.

For all of that, we were struck daily by the endless beauty in the world. Breathtaking nature, tender families, dazzling handcrafts, aspirational public art, giggling children, inspiring lives, stunning sunsets (and sunrises, in Doris’s case), enduring hope and, always, a vast blue-gray ocean rolling on the other side of a ship railing.

Beauty doesn’t cancel out awful headlines reflecting awful realities, but it supplies balance.

5 – We are not cruisers.

By now, faithful followers know we pretty much loved every minute of our world cruise. The itinerary lived up to our dreams, the 600-passenger ship was the just-right size for us, and the passengers and crew included more interesting people than we had time to get to know. We never got tired of the food, our clothes, each other or even the 215-square-foot stateroom. There was probably not a day we did not look at one another at least once and say, “This is the trip of a lifetime, and we are so lucky to do it.”

At the same time, we met people on the ship who have been on more than 100 cruises, people who have made a half-dozen world cruises or more, people who would be embarking on another cruise within a week of disembarking from ours – people for whom cruising is more lifestyle than transportation.

We don’t see that in our future. When we look back, the destinations we relished most were the ones where we spent the most time on land. Our overnight in Hoi An, Vietnam. Our three-day stay in Kyoto. Our bullet-train sprint the length of Taiwan to eke out 24 extra hours in Taipei. Any city where the ship overnighted, allowing us to experience them the way we would on a land-based trip: Buenos Aires, Cape Town, Ho Chi Minh City, Tokyo and others.

At the end of the day, we are travelers. We are happy to add cruising to our travel bag, but we like our lifestyle best on terra firma.

3 Surprises

1. We have booked another cruise.

WE KNOW! WE KNOW! We just said, “We are not cruisers.” But we also said, “We are travelers,” and it turns out we are suckers for itineraries we cannot duplicate on land. That’s how we felt when we heard about Oceania’s circumnavigation of Australia itinerary with a side trip to Bali.

Australia is the only continent inhabited by more than penguins that can be fully circumnavigated. It is also the only continent where most of its landmark destinations are on the coast. And the cruise doesn’t sail until the end of 2024 – more than a year from now.

How could we resist? We couldn’t! We even inveigled a pair of friends to join us (you know who you are!).

2. Mon dieu!

Between French-speaking Quebecois, a few Francophone Swiss, a couple stray Frenchmen and some Anglophones who had lived in French-speaking countries, Louis spoke more French while circling the globe than he has spoken since living in France 25 years ago. He spoke French morning, noon and night.

Louis was not just on a world cruise. Louis was in heaven.

3. The sea legs never gave out.

Sorry if we are repeating ourselves, but there is almost nothing more surprising at the end of 180 days at sea than announcing Doris did not experience one nanosecond of nausea, even on the day in the 25-foot waves of the Aleutian Islands. For a woman who has walked out of movie theaters seasick during scenes set at sea, this was a wood head. (And if you get that reference, we know who you are!)

Another Question Answered

Carolyn asked, “How has this changed your relationship? You’ve had a lot of togetherness.”

(Louis seizes the helm.) We did superbly. It was a test to spend six months in one room, and we did great. We’re still together. And talking!

(Doris wrestles back the helm.) As you can see, Partout would be a lot shorter if Louis wrote it. However, maybe Louis right. In the end, the togetherness didn’t change anything and, if it was a test, we passed. With flying colors.

Where’s Snowy?

Besides visiting a luggage store on Day 180 of the cruise to buy an extra suitcase to get everything home?

Coming Not So Soon!

Adventures in Re-Entry