When I retired 16 years ago, my spouse and I had never been on a cruise. Uh, correction! With service in the US Navy during World War II and Korea, I had been on many cruises. Of course, they involved hard scut work and other people shooting at or diving suicide airplanes in the direction of my ship. So, the Navy experiences weren't always relaxing and pleasant. However, we decided to celebrate my retirement in 1991 from 25 years of corporate slavery with a cruise. After much griping from me, my wife finally convinced me to join some friends on a one-week cruise from LA down the coast of Baja, Mexico.

Surprise, surprise! I actually enjoyed myself, grumbling that it was OK as long as I didn't have to scrub decks or stand a dog watch. Or have anyone deliberately try to kill me. Then, ever since, we've cruised more than a dozen times. Each one was more delightful than the last, and we sailed to and from such wonderful places as Hawaii, the Panama Canal, Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Norway, Sweden, England, Ireland, France, Spain, Russia, Italy and several more places my ancient brain can't quite recall at this moment. And we're certainly planning to do it again, if we're healthy, this year and the next and the next.

Despite some bad news about cruises that always managed to pop up just before we sailed, we never experienced seasickness, food poisoning, fires, native uprisings on shore, viruses nor all the other plagues the news media blow up to disaster proportions. Maybe we were lucky, or maybe we just knew how to avoid the worst of them. We have absolutely no reservations about recommending cruises to the newly-retired ... and for every other landlubber who wants to get away from it all.

Learn more about this author, Ted Sherman.
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