I’ve been on a few other cruises, so I was not surprised when I received a welcome package from Silversea. But this was over the top.

The theme of this cruise is “The Tale of Tales”, in other words – writing. They have guest authors scheduled throughout the cruise. The author for the first leg is Pico Iyer, a travel writer who gave a TED talk in 2014.

“The Art of Stillness” (hard back) is his short book about enjoying the time when you escape from complications. The other book is a 300+ page on-demand print book that essentially output the entire Silversea 2019 world cruise web page, but with my name and cabin number printed at various places. The IT and engineer in me is not happy with that – seems a waste of paper. But for what this cruise costs, this certainly sets the expectations.