It was a program identical to that of the great majority of such resorts, and it made me boil. It had nothing for the mind. Unless you were a would-be athlete, or anxious to hone your skills at a particular sport, it left you bored and bereft. We all tell ourselves that all we want on our next tropical vacation is to vegetate in the sun. Rest and relaxation, we discover, aren't enough.
Physical exercise lasts for an hour or two a day.
In the skimpy racks of the village stores, we look for a decent book, and end up reading second-rate mystery novels on a succession of days. Compare these problems of certain land-based tropical vacations with the opportunities aboard several of the better cruiseships. Some of them hire vacationing professors to lecture on the flora and fauna of the ports they're about to visit. Some show films on relevant topics of geography and history. Two large ones maintain computer rooms for practicing with new software.