A learning experience

The wash from the cruise ship Crystal Serenity sends spray splashing up to the Hotel du Cap Eden Roc, where F. Scott Fitzgerald finished The Great Gatsby. That’s the sort of fact that passengers aboard this luxury ship appreciate. Guests on Crystal Serenity have opted to be ‘enriched’, meaning they have eschewed the kind of uncomprehending, mass experience they might get on bigger cruises. They want instead an atmosphere of erudition and culture. They are cruising not just to enjoy, but to learn.

Enrichment is not a matter of sophistication, nationality or class and certainly not one of wealth: one does not need to be rich to be enriched. Indeed the all-inclusive nature of cruising can offer remarkable holiday value. Once the passage fee has been paid, hardly a pound, dinar, rupee or dong needs to be spent. And with many enrichment cruises, the fee pays for onboard lecturers of real quality: people of the calibre of John Julius Norwich, for example, who have the ability to throw open the doors of antiquity.

The day before a ship offering enrichment docks at a site, an onboard specialist lecturer provides guests with a background briefing on the history and significance of the place they are about to visit. Before arriving at Kusadasi in Turkey, for example, an expert on the Roman Empire might describe the history of Ephesus, alerting passengers to the magnificently preserved library — and to the existence of the tunnel running from the library to a brothel. ‘Just popping down to read the latest scrolls, dear,’ was apparently the excuse. A specialist in the travels of St Paul might also illuminate the evangelist’s great struggle to convert the Ephesians.

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In addition to these ‘destination experts’, authors and celebrities are invited to speak on anything from cannibalism to graphology; talks on wine and gastronomy by famous chefs are invariably popular.