The Traveling Wife Cruising Around the World: Lucy Williams (excerpt)

The Traveling Wife Cruising Around the World is more than just a catchy tagline for Lucy Williams. It literally is a way of life by virtue of the fact that Lucy—a former cruise ship employee—is the spouse of a cruise ship officer. In her thirties, and having visited nearly 80 countries, Lucy’s story would fit well in Chapter 13, Cruising’s Young and Restless about several amazing millenials and cruising. However, the circumstances behind her intriguingly titled story and attendant blog, The Traveling Wife Cruising Around the World, are interesting in their own right. And, Lucy Williams’ story is well-suited for The Joy of Cruising’s section, The Influencers, given The Traveling Wife Cruising Around the World blog is all about cruising tips and helping cruisers make the best choices, her extensive presence and following on social media, and Lucy’s comprehensive website, Lucy Williams Global, www.lucywilliamsglobal.com, with its continuously updating graphic of a world map pinpointing Lucy’s current location.

After working onboard cruise ships for a year, Lucy met her future husband, Paolo, one of the ship’s officers. They managed to get assigned to the same ship for a while. Paolo then proposed to Lucy. “I met Paolo in the summer of 2007 onboard and we got married in England in 2012.” For a few years after getting married Lucy continued as part of the shop management team. “I stopped working onboard as the company would no longer put my husband and me on the same ship, so I chose to leave my position and just travel with my husband.” So, Lucy began traveling as the “traveling wife,” as the term is used onboard, and ultimately branded her blog with “the traveling wife” phrase. I was curious about the term “traveling wife”....

....Paolo is the Food & Beverage Director for a well known American cruise line, and Lucy travels with him while he is working onboard. Lucy finds life onboard as a traveling wife to be very different as she is not a crew member, but does not quite feel like a passenger. “It is like you are an in-between,” she says. “I did not set out to marry an officer and stop working; it just happened. I did want to continue working onboard, but it wasn’t meant to be. So, I treat travelling onboard as my home life; it is not a vacation. If I treated it like a vacation, I would be the size of a house as I travel for three to four months at a time!”

Lucy and Paolo dine and socialize with the ship captain and other senior officers and their traveling wives when “on duty.” I asked her to talk about the majority of time when she is not on duty—what is life like? “I live in crew quarters. My husband’s cabin is very nice. It is a suite that has a bedroom, dressing area, bathroom and day room. I can’t complain! The other passengers are obsessed with where I live and eat and it usually is the first thing they ask me when they find out I am married to an officer. I eat all around the ship like a regular passenger or in the officer’s mess, depending on whether I am dining with my husband or doing my own thing in the daytime.” I asked Lucy, what do you do when Paolo is working and you do not need to accompany him? She told me....

....After a year of cruising as a traveling wife, Lucy felt she needed something to keep her mind active; Lucy and her husband were going on a world cruise and she thought there was no better time to start a travel blog. In January 2017, The Travelling Wife Cruising Around the World was born. The blog focuses principally on cruise ports, cruising tips, packing tips and guides, and travel in general when not on a cruise ship. Lucy has a unique perspective from which to author such a blog given her work onboard as a crew member nearly ten years and another couple of years as a cruise passenger as a “traveling wife.” In addition, she spends time in her native country of England and in her husband’s country of Italy, so she is never short on travel stories....

I was intrigued about Lucy’s world cruise. Several of the individuals I spoke to for The Joy of Cruising have a long-term goal of a world cruise. And, those who have gone on a world cruise would like to do so again. When I discuss world cruises with friends who are casual cruisers, I get a mixed reaction. When I mention the length and number of sea days, I get reactions of either incredulity (“oh, that’s too much time on the ocean”) or awe (“wow, I wish I could get the time off from work to do one of those.”) Lucy told me, “In 2017 my husband was assigned to a ship that was going to do a world cruise. The world cruise is one of the best cruises to go on as you see so much in 111 days. We went to 36 ports, 25 countries and six continents and spent 73 days at sea. I had worked a world cruise before, but it was a different route so I got to see a lot of new places for the first time. My favorite parts of the world cruise....
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Read the complete story The Traveling Wife Cruising Around the World, and her 60 cruises totaling approximately 600 days and over 80 countries—since 2015! Chapter 7, The Joy of Cruising. Order now....