When we began planning our ultimate voyage, we imagined that we would have a pretty good idea by May 1 which ship we were going to pick for our 2026 World Cruise.
But in the spring of 2025 — less than nine months before we are to set off on our great adventure — too many balls were still up in the air.
Silversea — with its more attractive routing from Florida to Singapore — had emerged as an early favorite. But we thought Crystal’s itinerary from Singapore onward far more interesting.
We found ourselves unable to settle on one or the other.
Increasingly, we found ourselves thinking: Why do we have to pick one or another? Why not a two-ship World Cruise? Perhaps we could sail part of the way on Silver Dawn, and then move over to Crystal Serenity.
Starting to get anxious about nailing something down, we decided in late April to simplify matters. The easiest way to do that was to eliminate from consideration Oceania’s Vista.
For starters, we really didn’t want to spend the first two months of 2026 sailing once again around South America.
And while itinerary, as we mentioned earlier, was our most important consideration, my wife and I are foodies — and we were not enthused about the notion of dining in Oceania’s restaurants day after day for six solid months.
Even though Oceania has long boasted that it has “The Finest Cuisine at Sea,” only the cruise line’s die-hard loyalists believe that. Based on our own recent experiences, we thought the food on any of the other three luxury ships was likely to be better.
So we scratched Vista from our list.
We also tentatively decided to put further consideration of Seven Seas Mariner on the back burner.
We really did not want to take the long way from Asia to Europe around the tip of Africa IF the route up through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal was going to be available.
So that left us still trying to decide whether to take the full 2026 World Cruise on Silver Dawn, the full 2026 World Cruise on Crystal Serenity, or try a combination of the two.
The lingering problem, though, was none of these options would get us all the way back to Florida.
Silver Dawn planned to conclude its World Cruise on May 27 in Lisbon. And assuming Crystal Serenity was able to come up through the Suez Canal with passengers, it envisaged winding up its World Cruise on May 26 in Rome.
How would we get home from either Lisbon or Rome? Lisbon to Miami is more than a nine hour flight, and Rome to Miami over 11 hours. Either way, we were not up for that much flying.
Was there a cruise option from Europe to Port Everglades — where our World Cruise would begin — or to nearby Miami?
That brought us back to the Seven Seas Mariner. Finishing up its own World Cruise that we had dismissed earlier because we didn’t want to sail around Africa, Seven Seas Mariner was due in Lisbon June 1, 2026 en route back to Miami.
Best of all, Seven Seas Mariner had some nice suites available for the final segment of its World Cruise.
So as April gave way to May, we began thinking of doing something really crazy. Instead of combining pieces of two World Cruises, why not cherry-pick the best of Three Luxury World Cruises and build our own do-it-yourself World Cruise.
We would sail from Fort Lauderdale to Singapore on Silver Dawn, from Singapore to Rome on Crystal Serenity, and after a short hop by air from Rome to Lisbon, triumphantly end our DIY World Cruise by sailing from Lisbon back to our home in Florida on Seven Seas Mariner!
We could hardly believe it. We were going to circumnavigate the globe on three of the world’s most luxurious cruise ships as part of the Silversea, Crystal and Regent 2026 World Cruises. Amazing.
And if it seemed this might be as complicated as Phileas Fogg’s trip Around the World in 80 days, we thought it ironic that our travels were going to take exactly 160 days.
We decided to call it our Double Verne.