I hope you and your family have a very Merry Christmas and/or Happy Holidays. (And if you celebrate Hanukkah, I hope it was happy.)
We’re all happy to celebrate, in whatever weird form this year brings. At least we’re alive to celebrate.
On Monday, Dec.21st, I’m hosting a special Festive Monday. I’ll be hosting my friends at Shangri La Toronto for a special treat with festive cocktails. Register Shangri La
On Tuesday, Dec.22nd, I’ll host Quark Expeditions for my regular Travel Tuesday to talk about their Arctic and Antarctic trips. Join us. Register Quark Expeditions Dec.22nd
We’ve been talking expedition cruising this month. Last week, I’d hosted Hurtigruten Expeditions – and – this week Quark Expeditions. I’ll have to get Lindblad Expeditions back with us again in the new year. But there’s no doubt that expedition cruising is going to take off in post-pandemic travel.
Expedition cruising was already popular pre-pandemic – a focus on adventure, but soft adventure. Nothing hard adventure where you have to have special skills and equipment, but soft adventure where it’s open to almost everyone. If you can walk unassisted, and can into and out of a bathtub, you’re usually good to go for an expedition cruise.
But expedition cruising gets you closer to nature, and has you closer to wildlife. Sure the ships are comfy, and there’s good food – but the emphasis isn’t on the linens and thread count of the sheets. Instead, the emphasis is on nature and animal count.
Expedition ships have fewer people onboard – a plus post-pandemic! And they do not have rock-climbing walls and skating rinks that the huge moving city-type ships have. Instead, they are all about where you are going, rather than the focus on the ship itself as the purpose of the holiday. They are getting you to often exotic destinations like the Arctic and Antarctica, Alaska, and Galapagos. And this pandemic has taught us that it really is time to focus on bucket list trips going forward.
There are naturalists and biologists onboard who share their passion and knowledge about the destinations, the wildlife, the flora and the fauna. Depending on the line, there are usually expert photographers onboard too who can teach you about taking photography and share their skills. And some lines like Lindblad have divers onboard, who go underneath the sea and share their photographs with you.
Here are some recent presentations I’ve hosted with expedition partners.
Lindblad -Galapagos& Alaska- Watch here
Lindblad Expeditions – Iceland Watch
Quark Expeditions – Greenland Watch
Quark Expeditions – Antarctica Watch
Silversea Cruises Watch here
Ask me questions. [email protected]