Travels with Hannah: Explora Cruise Pursues Excellence for All Ages

“Wow, this is good,” my son, Nathaniel, says. These are his first notes regarding the Explora II, the 922-passenger luxury liner that launched in September of last year that we have boarded in Miami — and that we will sail aboard for seven nights, until we reach our final destination, in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

He’s referring to a plate of homemade fusilli, draped in the ship’s “rustic tomato sauce,” prepared in the Emporium Marketplace, one of the ship’s six main restaurants (or 11 dining experiences), and the closest to a buffet concept, though it’s actually anything but, since food is prepared a la minute. At the pasta station, in fact, where my kids will go on to spend quite a bit of time between ports-of-call in Anguilla, Dominica, Guadalupe and St. Martin, a display of handmade pastas — they rotate daily, but there are always multiples on display, including ravioli, tagliatelle, pappardelle, and, yes, fusilli — offer guests the benefit of both artisanal food and that thing that cruisers love, which is, of course, choice.

Did I mention the pizzas? Even I can’t pass up the salty, chewy crusts in the boulangerie. Neapolitan-style pies are constantly coming from the oven, piping hot. Margherita. Yellow tomato. Mortadella and mushroom. I’m not too proud to admit that I dip into the Emporium Marketplace nightly for a raw bar apéro hour and allow my kids the same privilege: a slice or two as a snack before dinner at one of the more formal dining venues aboard: the nautical-themed Med Yacht Club; the French-inspired Fil Rouge; or the pan-Asian Sakura, where ersatz cherry blossoms “grow” from the ceiling.

Yes, cruises are about abundance, but this cruise, in particular, is about the pursuit of excellence in its offerings. What impresses me is that my children feel included in the dining, no matter where we go. At Marble & Co. Grill, the on-ship European steakhouse concept, they happily order sauce-less steaks (rare), alongside bowls of fries. Beignets, for dessert, ordinarily served with boozy sauces, come to them with vanilla caramel. While my husband and I eat scallop carpaccio and foie gras au torchon and veal Wellington at Fil Rouge, my kids happily slurp chicken consommé — a soup to rival mine, they say — and calamarata in a red sauce they deem among the best they’ve ever had. The Shirley Temples? Top-notch, they tell me, and I trust their judgment.

Explora II and her sister ship, Explora I, run all year round. In summer, the ship makes stops in Europe and the Arabian Peninsula. We’ve managed our own warm-weather trip, through four islands I’ve never before visited. After two days at sea, we take a tender to shore in Anguilla, where we drive through a small, flat island toward natural arches, carved in limestone from the rushing Caribbean Sea. Later, we visit Josveek Huligar at Anguilla Sands & Salts, a boutique store that opened in 2017, but that recently began producing small-batch chocolates (the cacao is imported from the Dominican Republic, but all flavorings come from products grown on the tiny island).

Tours, called “destination experiences,” are available through the ship. Each evening, we attend Port Talks, the provenance of marine biologist Max van Aalst, who hails from Curaçao. We learn about the history of each island before we pull up to its shores, about its best attractions, its agriculture, its people. On a rainy day in Dominica, before our afternoon whale-watching experience — the island attracts pods of sperm whales all year long — we hire a taxi to take us to Titou Gorge, a series of rock formations that visitors can swim through and that yields, at the end, a waterfall inside of a hidden cavern.

On our whale watch, we spot no whales, but, zodiac cruising through flat, gray water, we ride alongside blue flying fish, a marine species I have never encountered. The next morning, we pull up to Guadeloupe, a lush island that feels European. The signs are in French. The major industry, we’re told, is agricultural; people grow bananas and sugarcane, and we see farmland as we drive into the island’s interior, bound for Cascade aux Ecrevisses, a waterfall known for its crayfish. There, my sons scramble over rocks and climb into the water, swimming toward the rushing waterfall as only small boys can.

Our final island destination is St. Martin, an island with two distinct sides: Dutch and French. We take a tender in and, from there, transfer to a nearby marina where we board a catamaran that takes us to a coral reef, underwater wreck, and sculpture garden. In the afternoon, we sail to Long Bay, the stretch of pale white sand occupied by Belmond’s La Samanna resort. Beneath the boat, we spot a sulking, 5-foot barracuda named, our captain tells us, Barry. Barracuda are territorial. They tend to find a spot and stay there. Barry, along with his carnivore tarpon friends, has been swimming these waters for ages.

From St. Martin, we sail to Puerto Rico. Part of the joy of our adventure has been this ship, with its unobstructed views and luxuries at every turn: shopping, dining, space for lounging, space — even in our glorious Grand Penthouse-level suite — for sitting and soaking up the view. On our final morning, our boys watch as we enter the final harbor of the journey, converted, I now know, from land lovers to boys of the sea. When will we be coming back, they want to know. That part is still left for us to discover.