Oh, the Places You'll Go! Adam Platt boarded what may be the world's most luxurious passenger ship in Venice, bound for Athens by way of Dubrovnik, Corfu, and Delphi. Oh, the sights he would see! If only he could escape the tender trap that is the SeaDream I, where the truffles are always in season and the passengers take their travel lying down

"Sunglass wash, sir?" asked Stefan, bending from the waist in a jaunty and practiced manner. Stefan was a pool attendant on my ship, the SeaDream I, and during my short time on board he'd already introduced me to a variety of unexpected pleasures. He'd mixed my Berry Surprise (mashed blackberries, rum, a touch of Cointreau) during that first sunset cocktail hour as we steamed away from Venice, and also an anesthetizing concoction of bourbon, lemons, and sugar called a Lynchburg Lemonade to celebrate our arrival in Corfu. He'd spritzed the top of my head with cooling spray from a silver canister ("just cold water and a drop of Chinese oil, sir—very refreshing"), and then summoned one of the ship's eight highly credentialed spa attendants from Southeast Asia to administer a brief neck massage as I lolled around the ship's emerald-colored saltwater swimming pool with the other semi-comatose passengers.

But amid this sea of strenuous and unremitting pampering ("We love to pamper," one SeaDream crew member told me. "Pampering is what we do"), the sunglass wash was the crowning touch. Among SeaDreamers, I'd noticed, sunglasses are an essential accoutrement, the psychic equivalent of a cowboy's ten-gallon hat or a samurai's hand-forged sword. I'd lost my originals somewhere along the Dalmatian Coast, and had purchased a pair of fake, goggle-style Roberto Cavallis for six euros in Corfu. I told Stefan that they were knockoffs and not worth cleaning, but he insisted. He produced a little bottle of Windex-like liquid, squirted the lenses, wiped them down with a towel, and handed them back. I blinked up at the clouds, then out at the seascape spooling gently by. Suddenly all the world had a pristine, radiant Hollywood glow. Stefan grinned a happy grin. "You see," he said, "even cheap sunglasses should be clean."

I'd been all around the Continent during my days as an inveterate travel bum, but this was not the kind of European travel I was accustomed to. There were ninety-five of us on board the ship, sailing from Venice to Athens, with several carefully choreographed stops in between. We were scheduled to be at sea for seven days, stopping in six ports, beginning with the Croatian island of Hvar and the ancient walled city of Dubrovnik, before moving on to Corfu and Delphi and concluding with a leisurely tour of the ancient Homeric islands of Mykonos and Santorini.

Drifting over the blue, blue sea, the journey would take half as long as if I'd attempted the same route by car and ferry. There would be no restless nights in seedy motor lodges, no puzzling over grease-stained road maps, no haggling with recalcitrant waiters in overpriced, flyblown restaurants. There were no tickets to arrange, no baggage to wrangle, and instead of my having to buttonhole guides at each destination, they would be arranged for me in advance. There were no electronically cooled ice rinks aboard this particular cruise ship, no Walmart-sized casinos, no Chuck E. Cheese-worthy buffets. Indeed, on the two SeaDream ships (referred to by diehard SeaDreamers as One and Two), the word cruising is more or less taboo. The company's literature rarely mentions the word, except in the most backhanded way. "It's yachting, not cruising," is the SeaDream motto.