Corfu is also famous for bands of loutish vacationing Englishmen ("an island leaping with chattering tourists," wrote Paul Theroux, during a typically dyspeptic tour of the Mediterranean), although our little whirlwind visit was blessedly tourist-free. Rouva took us to one of the oldest villages on the island (which tended to be built high up, away from marauding pirates), before stopping at the top of the tallest mountain so we could gaze over the Ionian Sea. On the way down, we sampled glasses of kumquat liquor and bought jars of honey at a farm stand before zipping back to the ship in time for tea.

The next morning, the SeaDream I crept toward Delphi, in the Gulf of Corinth, through tall, properly Homeric wine-dark waves. Lying by the pool, I noticed that my thighs and the backs of my hands were turning an unearthly brown, like the husk of an old coconut. Stefan brought me a glass of water with lemon and spritzed my forehead with his vaporizer. The Schleiffs came by, and I noticed that they were beginning to look awfully brown too. Their early optimism about the pleasures of ocean travel had dissipated, however. "It's not for the antsy, this cruise," said Peggy. "Poor Henry, he's feeling it a little bit. He's been to the golf simulator about six times." Henry, a friendly, excitable gentleman who sprinkled his conversation with a steady patter of Henny Youngmanstyle jokes, surveyed the chuffs of cottony clouds in the distance. "It's a little too relaxing," he said. "I feel like I'm in a witness-protection program for slow people."

Later that day, the SeaDreamers climbed aboard two big Mercedes-Benz buses and rumbled up toward the ruins at Delphi. Steve Bell wasn't on the bus, but the Schleiffs were there, along with Daryl Hannah and her entourage, many of them dressed like she was, in flowing caftans and fashionably distressed straw cowboy hats.

High up on Mount Parnassus, the air had a shimmering quality, and the sky was a deep Olympian blue. The SeaDreamers peered dutifully at the treasures in the museum (the fifth-century-b.c. bronze statue Charioteer of Delphi, the Treasury of Siphnos frieze, with its battling giants and delicately carved feet), and then deployed out over the beautiful ruins, which were scattered across the hillside, shaded by walnut trees and stands of pine. Before taking my leave of the group and walking up the road, I watched people snap photos of Daryl Hannah doing loopy pirouettes in an amphitheater. Through an olive grove, past a fig tree, I came upon the Temple of Tholos. One of the most famous shrines in all of Greece, its image is plastered on refrigerator magnets across the land, and yet it was not part of SeaDream's "Mystery and Beauty of Delphi" tour. So I stood alone under the fig tree, taking pictures, experiencing for the first time on this luxuriously choreographed voyage that singular pleasure of travel: the joy of discovery.

That evening, as we transited the Corinth Canal, which connects the Ionian and Aegean seas, the festivities on board the SeaDream I reached a fevered, almost bacchanalian pitch. Characters emerged on deck whom I'd never seen in the course of our voyage: absent-looking men in pastel-colored cocktail jackets; hawk-faced couples from Australia, tanned within an inch of their lives; a gentleman from Norman, Oklahoma, who claimed to have an eighteen-hole course in his own backyard. I dined outside (eggs and caviar, sea bass and truffles, lemon soufflé), then lay on one of the Balinese beds and listened to the sound of crickets as the boat slid through the narrow channel. That night, out in the Aegean, a great north wind came up, but I slept serenely as the boat rocked along. I awoke to the sight of the ancient, sun-blasted island of Mykonos approaching through my curtained window.