hmmm..... is this a way to sneak people into a country with out a passport???? Then there's customs. A little-touted beauty of cruising is never having to go through customs. You surrender your passport to the cruise ship, and just glide in and out of countries with your ship-issued, bar-coded ID card. Original Article Reluctant ship passenger undergoes a sea change Anne Chalfant Knight Ridder Newspapers Jan. 22, 2006 12:00 AM This once was my list of why I would never cruise: 1. I would hate sitting at a dinner table with strangers. 2. I would get claustrophobia stuck on the same boat for 10 days. 3. Hey! I'm an independent, self-sufficient traveler. Don't mollycoddle me. Ahem. Three cruises later, how do I now love cruising? Let me count the ways. Let's see, I love unpacking my bag once and not repacking it for a week or more. I love being able to put all my energy into exploring a new city, and skipping the planes, trains, automobiles. Oh, and again the suitcase - no schlepping. Then there's customs. A little-touted beauty of cruising is never having to go through customs. You surrender your passport to the cruise ship, and just glide in and out of countries with your ship-issued, bar-coded ID card. Woo-hoo! As for claustrophobia, not a problem on the bigger cruise ships, designed with large, central open atriums with a library, bar, espresso stops and more hoopla, depending on the ship. Staterooms are hardly a squeeze these days, either. As for dinner with strangers, sometimes I put on my happy face and meet and greet. But I also like other dining options: casual buffet around the pool, room service at no extra cost. As for that independent-traveler bit, what a lot of rot. Being a great explorer is exhausting. If you really want time to poke around in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia, plus other Baltic ports, take a cruise. You can pack more geography into one week than the maze of planes, trains and automobiles could cover in two. It's true that a cruise doesn't give you true immersion in a culture. It's more like a Whitman's Sampler of countries. See something you like, return someday for a bigger bite. And some cruise lines have clout. I love the fact that the Hermitage opened two hours early for my Radisson Seven Seas ship. And the Guggenheim gave the same cruise line an equal nod, opening for the ship's passengers on a closed Monday. Oh, am I getting to the mollycoddled part already? Frankly, life is short. If I can have quiet time with some of the world's greatest art, and be greeted with a glass of Champagne when I reboard my ship, it turns out I really don't mind the feeling of royal blood running through my veins after all.