What kind of cruise ship is this, anyway?
It’s Swan Hellenic’s Minerva, and her loyal passengers wouldn’t have it any other way.
Compared with most cruise ships, British-owned Minerva is a midget. When my wife and I were aboard for a Baltic Sea cruise in August, she carried 365 passengers, her maximum. (In contrast, Royal Caribbean’s Freedom of the Seas can accommodate 6,000).
Another key difference is the guided shore excursions — typically a couple at each stop — are included in the price. On our cruise, these ranged from a visit to Kronborg, the Danish castle in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, to a walking tour that included the cells of a former Stasi (security police) prison in Rostock, in what was once East Germany.
The longest stop was in St. Petersburg, Russia, where Minerva stayed two nights and parts of three days, considerably more than ships from big-name lines.
Finding fresh attractions takes some doing because most of Minerva’s passengers are older and well-travelled. So a few optional excursions are also arranged. Among those offered to us were a private ballet performance at St. Petersburg’s Hermitage Theatre and a coach tour of Berlin.
Swan Hellenic’s type of cruise is definitely not for everyone, but we loved it.
A guided walking tour might prove disappointing — a couple of ours did — and the weather might turn nasty — the heavens opened up during a stroll through the gardens at Peter the Great’s summer palace near St. Petersburg — but we could always rely on shipboard life.
This included:
— Daily talks from four on-board lecturers, some of whom taught at top British universities.
— A library with thousands of books and magazines, and where, shortly after the cruise started, one couple put out a jigsaw puzzle and explained it was meant to be solved by any and all.
— Tastefully furnished lounges with attentive servers and reasonably priced drinks. A pianist and clarinetist held forth in one, a lovely young harpist in the other.
— Well-prepared meals, plus morning and evening coffee and afternoon tea with desserts.
— Evening activities that included classical concerts by a woodwind trio and quiz night, another Swan Hellenic favourite in which passengers formed teams and duked it out for a bottle of bubbly.
— Weekly “gala’’ receptions and dinners, with complimentary wine, where the daily program read “Gentlemen are invited to wear black tie’’ and many did, accompanied by wives in long gowns.
But perhaps most of all, it meant meeting so many friendly and interesting people. Virtually all were Brits, but many had friends or family in Canada and most had travelled here and had a fondness for this country.
One repeat customer described the voyages as “middle England afloat.’’
“No, a slice of middle England,’’ said a first-timer who had found it “a bit clannish.’’
That’s probably because it’s common to be asked early on how many Swan Hellenic cruises you’ve done. This isn’t a bit of British one-upmanship — it’s just that most of your new companions will have done many.
My only complaint is that Canadians must book through Swan’s Fort Lauderdale, Fla., agent and pay in U.S. dollars, a disadvantage with the British pound so low.
Minerva’s itineraries cover most of the globe, from Antarctica to Greenland, from around the British Isles to the Orient, and none is shorter than two weeks.
What’s ahead? Minerva returns this coming winter to India and will also be visiting the Persian Gulf states and the Far East before making spring sailings in the Mideast and Europe. For details, visitswanhellenic.com.
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