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Arthur Frommer Online
Arthur Frommer Online
Arthur Frommer OnlineComments, opinion and advice from the founder of Frommer's Travel Guides
Arthur Frommer Online
Arthur Frommer Online

Jun 25, 2007

Though it’s a year and more away, a brand-new intellectual cruise line will be fully-booked real fast; act now

It's coming -- a moderately-priced cruiseship catering to the most intellectually-serious of all English-speaking people. And although the inaugural sailing won't take place for a year, it's important that you place a tentative booking now, because the initial departures will be sold out within hours after the first detailed announcement expected some months from now.

The ship is from the operator of brainy land tours and the subject of a post from several weeks ago. He's Martin Randall, of London, England, whose Martin Randall Travel Ltd. operates moderately priced cultural tours all over the world that feature outstanding guest lecturers. In a feisty press release, Randall has announced that starting in fall of 2008, he will operate his own intellectual cruises of the Mediterranean in a 250-passenger vessel that he is in the process of acquiring

The cruises will be "unashamedly high brow," Randall boasts, "aimed at educated, cultivated and intellectually curious travelers." As with his current Martin Randall land tours, these seagoing cruises will be a "dumbing-down-free zone

In a bold attack on the present cruise industry, Randall promises that his new cruises will be "defined by negatives: no casino, no disco, no piped music, a minimum of announcements, and little regimentation."

If all that seems like cruise heaven, you might place your name on an immediate waiting list. Although specific dates and itineraries haven't yet been announced, almost any Martin Randall cruise is bound to be a unique -- and heavily booked --opportunity. Go to www.martinrandall.com, or write to Martin Randall Travel Ltd. at Voysey House, Barley Mow Passage, London, United Kingdom W4 4GF, or even phone 011-44-20-8742-3355. Given Randall's increasingly successful record in tour operating, these brainy cruises will be sold out in a week.

To repeat: there's hope for the survival of moderately priced cruises of profound intellectual character. There's a possibility that culture-seeking Americans will not be relegated to those thousand-dollar-a-day yachts that U.S. alumni organizations and museums staff with professor-lecturers and offer to the plutocrats among us.

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