Travel 2023: Rediscover Cruising on a Unconventional Voyage to Antarctica

Shinan Govani | April 11th, 2023

Cruise ship in Antarctic waters. Photo: goinyk/Getty Images

Escape and find a purpose! In our February/March 2023 issue of Zoomer magazine, we featured “23 Reasons to Travel in 2023”. In this edition, we focus on destinations to explore cruising. Click on the link at the bottom of the story for more ideas and inspiration for your next trip.

So, you’ve been to all the major capitals, done the requisite safari in Africa and trekked to Australia. What now? To get you out of your travel rut, try an unconventional cruise. There is no more mesmerizing glide than the new Silversea Endeavour, a luxurious expedition ship with a maxed-out 1:1 passenger-to-staff ratio. The Antarctica cruise (six days or more, depending on the voyage) is the trip of a lifetime, in that it takes you to one of the most uninhabited patches of the world, and one that has no passport control (because no one country lays claim to the continent).

How to convey the magic of Antarctica? It is, frankly, hard to explain the scale of it, when you wake up, for instance, to find you have arrived in the Lemaire Channel. A visual bath is one way to describe it. Like stepping into an Ansel Adams photograph is another. Then there is the silence – an astonishingly sublime absence of sound.

It is also a place where penguins have “right of way,” as your guides will tell you, should you decide to set foot on some of the remote points on the way. If you do not, there is always the chance to enjoy your caviar at one of the four restaurants on the ship, while watching house-sized icebergs float by.

By the Way: For those who plan ahead, Emerald Cruises is adding two European river cruises in 2024: The 11-day Rhine Castles and Moselle Vineyard trip from Amsterdam to Zurich, which includes a cruise along Utrecht’s ancient canals, and the Danube Explorer and Highlights of Budapest trip, a 10-day cruise from Munich to Budapest with a stop in Vienna to take in the baroque cityscape.

A version this article appeared in the Feb/Mar 2023 issue with the headline ‘Cruising’, p. 88.

For more ideas and inspiration for your next trip, go here.

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