I'd like to know where you got the notion / To spend your whole vacation out on the ocean

It was the first night of my first cruise, and I was sitting in a Vegas-style theater watching eight sequined performers belt out these lyrics to the tune of "Rock the Boat," that inimitable 70s anthem by the Hues Corporation. (Yes, I knew who sang "Rock the Boat" without googling it. Yes, it scares me, too.) I, myself, was wondering where I got that notion. After all, I'm not a cruise kinda guy; I'm still several decades away from my seventies, and I don't find shuffleboard all that interesting.

Still, because the cruise was a thoughtful gift from my inlaws, I was more than willing to give it a shot. And eight days days later, after traveling some 2,800 nautical miles on Holland America's m.s. Amsterdam to Alaska and back, I have to begrudgingly say: I liked it. I really, really liked it. (And yes, this thought also scares me.) The sights in the ports were wonderful (Glacier Bay, Juneau, Sitka, Ketchikan, Victoria, B.C.), as expected. But my time aboard the good ship Amsterdam was rather fun, as well.

Primarily, I ate--an easy thing to do, since food is seemingly available 24 hours a day. I also read--"Song of Susannah," Stephen King's latest Dark Tower entry (a big thumbs up), and "Still Life With Crows" by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child (also enjoyable, but not as fun as "Relic" or "Reliquary"). I swam in a pool under a glass retractible dome, although I only swam about 1/100 of the time my charming young daughter did. And, undeterred by the first night's crude butchering of "Rock the Boat" (if such a thing is possible), I attended some enjoyable nightly shows, including a great magic show by Greg Frewin.

Did I mention I ate a lot?

Not that there weren't drawbacks. Every waking moment aboard the ship, they're pushing you to buy--buy drinks! buy duty-free diamonds! buy works of art!--and it certainly doesn't stop when you get off the ship. Every port has diamond stores, furriers, souvenir stores, and so on, all of them obviously owned and operated by the cruise lines. The ship even has a "Shopping Steward," a guy who ostensibly will tell you the best places to shop.

So, yes, the whole experience might be a bit too artificially manufactured, if you let it be so. But it doesn't have to be. In Juneau, for instance, we walked a few blocks past all the junk shops pushed by the cruise lines, and found a funky little bagel and sandwich place where we had lunch.

All in all, though, I really had no complaints. A cruise, I found, truly was a vacation that lets you get away from the real world for a few days, and that's worth more than a few jewelry shops. And, thanks to the generosity of my in-laws, I discovered a vacation option I probably would never have explored myself.

Maybe I've got a notion to spend another vacation out on the ocean.