How it began

When you take a cruise ... any cruise ... you are immediately and forever on the mailing list of every cruise line that plies the waters of the known world. 

And you will remain there, regardless if you ever take another cruise in your action-packed life.

Not counting a memorable journey through the Greek Isles to Istanbul aboard the very serviceable but small and creaky Stella Solaris, our first cruise was to Alaska on the Seven Seas Navigator. 

It was a fabulous adventure, over-the-top service, whale-watching, glacier hiking, Cordon Blue chefs ... the usual stuff.

We had been home 10, maybe 15 minutes, when the brochures and catalogs started rolling in ... not just from Regent Seven Seas, but from the other suspects as well.

It turned out we liked cruising. We went to the usual Caribbean haunts on one, Mexico and Central America on another.

If there is water to float the boat, there is a cruise. Every week we get glossy propaganda touting cruises to the Caribbean, the South Pole, North Pole, East Coast, Far East, Near East, East Europe, up a river, down a river and across the pond.

Rebecca has had to get extra pages for her passport, Mark has been around the world twice, and we both love to go places. 

In short, we both are fair game for a slick piece of propaganda hawking some place we've never been.
Destinations fall into several categories.

There is the "wouldn't it be great to go to Vienna at Christmas," level. There is the "I'd like to take you to Australia" category. 

And there's the "Oh, my God, honey. Tahiti."

The particular temptress is Paul Gauguin Cruises. The ship is the Paul Gauguin. We figured the best we could do was frame the pictures in the brochures and lie about taking them.

It was last August when Paul Gauguin and our 40th wedding anniversary veered on to a collision course and somebody said "Let's go to Tahiti."

And so we shall.