Enjoy the business class lounge of an Airbus A380-800 by Emirates Airline. Photo / Getty Images
Back in Byron and Shelley’s day, the Grand Tour was quite a trip. Rich young aristocrats would pack up the household silver and linen, assorted servants, a tutor, and head off to Europe for several months. Or years, if Papa would be so generous.
Today we’re going to relive the Grand Tour in today’s style and currency, though we might skip Shelley’s yachting holiday in Italy and Byron’s military derring-do in Greece, because neither of those ended particularly well.
Our first – or first-class - decision. Fly or take the slow boat to Europe?
Arcadia, one of P&O Cruises’ two adults-only ships, sails from Auckland on February 14 (yep, Valentine’s Day) for a 58-night voyage to London. The 2016-passenger liner “offers everything you need for bodily relaxation while feeding your mind with theatre, art and film.
“As a child-free ship, you can be guaranteed a quiet and contemplative trip… Relax in your spacious suite, dine in Marco Pierre White’s Ocean Grill, revel starry-eyed in the Globe Theatre or admire 3000 works in the Art Gallery.”
You’ll be over galleries and museums after the next few weeks. Suite? $34,097pp, one-way.
If you’re not open to spending that long on a ship at the moment, there are alternatives. Airline choices are still somewhat limited but the most convenient option seems Emirates’ 27-hour long-haul to Paris via Dubai, especially now the A380 is back in our skies.
First Class round-trip is listed at $15,515pp if you’re paying full whack. For that, chauffeur transport to the airport, fast-track through Customs, lounge access – and a flight.
The 14 First Class seats become suites when a sliding door is closed (wall panels in the middle rows), 2m lie-flat beds, touchpad-controlled entertainment, mini-bar, on-demand meals, lounge bar and two “shower spas” – spacious, scrupulously cleaned bathrooms.
Next, r’n’r in the City of Light. We’re staying at the Ritz but we won’t be using the hotel’s chauffeur to take us to our river cruise. Nor a river ship.
For us, an executive coach to La Nouvelle Etoile, a superbly furnished hotel barge that accommodates eight passengers in four suites. Traditional elegance – air-conditioned and teak-lined dining room, piano bar, sundeck; mod cons - internet access, exercise room, bikes.
We’re taking the Champagne Cruise – what else? - six nights from Paris, $14,000pp, which buys chateaux visits, Brie de Meaux cheese tastings, Moet & Chandon private wine sipping, wartime site visits, side-trips to Reims and Epernay, the champagne capital.
We’ll eat four-course dinners on Wedgwood porcelain using Christofle silver with appropriate wine and cheese matches from a Michelin-level chef. This ship is premier cru all the way, and they’ll take us back to Paris.
We feel we should dip our toes into the Med. Considering the air miles we’re racked up already, we should be responsible travellers and take a fast train south but anyone can hitch a ride on one of those.
This is only a fantasy, remember, so we’ll book our own jet for two from Le Bourget, next door to the everyday folks’ Charles de Gaulle airport, and Europe’s busiest private aviation hub.
A light jet with the cabin and crew set up for two will whisk us to Athens in just under four hours for $30,350. Hey, that includes a 300 per cent carbon offset.
We’ve chosen Silversea’s 11-day voyage from Athens (okay, Piraeus to appease the pedants) to Fusina (close but not quite Venice. We know how the locals feel about cruise ships).
Why this ship, this trip? Silversea is a small-ship, luxury line where the destination is regarded as important as the onboard experience. It’s aboard the refurbished Silver Spirit, which claims one of the industry’s highest space-to-guest ratios – the ship carries only 608 adults; and the line delivers more than most in onshore offerings, particularly with its S.A.L.T. food, wine and cultural programmes.
This odyssey takes in 20 ports across five countries, the eastern Med’s greatest hits: Athens, Crete, Izmir, Istanbul, Mykonos, Santorini, Kotor in Montenegro, Split and Dubrovnik. Tick, tick and another tick off the bucket list. Might take a side-trip to go ballooning in Cappadocia. Does that require carbon offsets?
We’d really like to score the Owner’s Suite, a 120sq m one- or two-bedroom apartment with veranda, living room, kitchen, dining area, whirlpool bath, butler… but the website says there’s a waitlist. For the next couple of tiers of suites too. We may have to settle for No.4, the Silver Suite. It’d be $22,250pp if we were flying from Australia.
Since we’re here, we might as well check out the other end of the lake. We thought about chartering a superyacht – there seem to be an awful lot of those tied up in the harbours around Europe at the moment, but apparently there are one or two legal hitches or half-hitches.
So, a super yacht instead. Our eyes lighted upon Sea Cloud. See how the mainsail sets: it’s a “a glorious and gracious luxury sailing yacht, a four-masted bark, custom-built in 1931 by the business magnate E.F. Hutton for his wife the heiress, Marjorie Merriweather Post”, and we rather like the cut of its jib.
Allowing 58 passengers, “her sleek, snow-white hull elegantly curves from stem to stern and her masts stretch high into the sky. The ship’s decks offer the grandeur of rich mahogany, teak and gleaming brass and the magnificent golden eagle figurehead seems poised to fly across the waters. There is no ship afloat that can compare for grace, fine service and the sheer joy of sailing.”
Bother again. Sea Cloud’s itinerary doesn’t quite chime with ours so we will take an only slightly less charming sister ship to chase the breezes to Valletta, in Malta. TBH, I’d rather pitch up on its neighbour island. I have family there and can’t resist the idea of visiting somewhere called Gozo.
By this time we really should be thinking about getting back to Aotearoa and making sure the Auckland Airport shares, the holiday home at Omaha and the alpacas are all okay. Oh yes, the grandchildren too.
We can hire a helicopter – haven’t used one of those yet – to the nearest reasonably sized town, just over two hours away, a snip at $9850, although I’ve just seen the fine print, and there’s a “luxury tax”.
No worries. If anyone deserved to end their fantasy holiday in Taormina, Sicily, Ground Zero for The White Lotus, it would be the mythical us.
Except we aren’t quite done. Somehow we have to get back to Paris and the flight home.
There’s always one tricky bit on a trip like this, be it fantasy or reality. We may have to swallow our pretension and take a – gasp! – scheduled ferry to Monaco.
Embarrassment won’t last long, however. Our chauffeur is waiting at the Captainerie – it sounds so much classier than “the wharf” – with the motor running in the… ahem, top-of-the-line Tesla.
Lush as they may have been, we forewent the Mercedes options. After all, it’s only nine hours’ drive back to Paris, the mini-bar is unlocked and loaded, we can pause for a langue luncheon in Lyon, and it’s only another $11,387 on the Visa.
And one does have to watch one’s carbon footprint. Even in First Class, it will be a lengthy flight home.
Israel briefly closed its airspace following US attacks on Iranian nuclear sites.