It's Seatrade week in Miami Beach, and last night I drove down for a dinner given by one of the cruise lines at the W hotel.
Valet parking was $15 so I headed into the lot across the street and paid the meter.
Inside I was seated next to the CEO. Perhaps they thought that, as a freelancer who rarely writes about cruising, I wouldn't pester him with questions all night. Or perhaps they had read my travel predictions for 2010 - "Oasis of the Seas will lose its status as the largest cruise ship in the world with the launch of Biggest Loser of the Seas" - and the CEO was planning to stomp on my toes under the table.
That didn't happen. The thing about writing these days is that so many people are doing it that in the end hardly anything gets read. But I did ask him questions, before working up to my big one: Don't you think a cruise would be enhanced by a travel writing course?
He expressed his opinion that people will take a course on anything if it's taught by an expert. He mentioned knot tying. I argued that travel writing is a particularly good fit for a cruise ship, because passengers can put into use at the next port the lessons learned of observation and interaction. He agreed but didn't ask for my card.
The dinner ended about 10:30. I took a quick spin around the pool and then headed out past the people waiting for the valet and into the parking lot, where the CEO was getting into a car two spaces from my own.
