Relax the body, exercise mind on cruises

IN the days when cruise ships were used primarily for transportation and did not stop at a port a day, people spent time catching up on their reading and engaging in conversations with fellow passengers. Periodically, a scholar traveling aboard or a celebrity author would be asked to deliver a talk.

Today three cruise lines maintain that atmosphere and a consistent policy of emphasizing learning and culture. A fourth -- World Explorer Cruises of San Francisco, operator of the Universe Explorer to Alaska -- has suspended its scientist-accompanied sailings for the summer of 2003, but promises to return in 2004 with its reasonably priced two-week sailings.

Among the surviving “learn boats,� the most scholarly is Minerva II, the 680-passenger ship of Swan Hellenic Cruises of Britain. For 50 years, Swan Hellenic has been sailing the seas of antiquity, mainly to Greece, Turkey, Egypt and North Africa, and it will continue to offer those itineraries through 2003. Staffed with Oxford dons, Cambridge professors, curators of London’s Victoria & Albert Museum and noted historian-clerics of the Anglican church, Swan’s cruises relegate other ship lines to the nursery. Its on-board lecturers conduct a sort of graduate school on a ship that has the largest library afloat.

Swan Hellenic’s two-week cruises normally begin at $300 per person, per day, but that includes the cost of round-trip air transportation from London to the port of embarkation in or near the Mediterranean. It includes gratuities to staff and all full-day shore excursions (with lunch). Deducting those extras from $300 results in charges closer to $150 to $200 a day.

For the first time, Swan will be moving its flagship to the Americas for the winter of 2003-04 (starting mid-December, continuing until late April), commencing or ending some of its itineraries in New York or New Orleans and others in the Caribbean or Central America. And because it will no longer be providing airfare from London, its starting rate has been reduced to an average of $250 a day, again with tipping prohibited and again including full-day shore excursions. That’s what you’ll pay on such sample itineraries as the sailing of Dec. 20 (15 days from Barbados to New Orleans, from $3,086), and continuing every two weeks until a final 15-day cruise from March 27 to April 10, 2004 ($4,180), up the Atlantic Seaboard from the Bahamas and Port Everglades, Fla., to New York City. You can reserve or get further information at (877) 219-4239 or www.swanhellenic.com.

Ships making transatlantic crossings -- meaning the ships of the Cunard Line -- are the second source of sailings with an intellectual bent. For the remainder of 2003, transatlantic crossings of the QE2 will include numerous lectures by authors and others, and discussion periods during which passengers exchange views. And starting April 16, 2004, the new and eagerly awaited Queen Mary 2 (at 150,000 tons, the largest passenger ship ever built) will commence its six-day voyages across the ocean. Its Cunard ConneXions activities will include such mind teasers as foreign-language courses, acting classes with British Shakespearean actors and lectures in history and archeology. Figure on as little as $250 per person, per day for the Queen Mary 2 (which includes a free transatlantic flight back), and get further information from (800) 5-CUNARD (528-6273).

And then there are the two ships -- the Regatta and the Insignia -- of the new Oceania Cruises, created by a former vice president of now-defunct Renaissance Cruises; the line starts service in European waters July 5, using two former Renaissance ships. Carrying only 680 passengers apiece, those liners catered to serious people, and the new line promises a special focus on on-board discussions led by specialists in topics ranging from oceanography to literature. Best of all are Oceania’s moderate prices of $200 a day, per person, for balconied view cabins and $150 for inside staterooms.

Call (800) 531-5658 for catalogs, or call a travel agent.