Well the sailors say: ‘Brandy, you’re a fine girl. What a good wife you would be. But my life, my lover my lady is the sea’
I always joke that I never should have started traveling, because once you start traveling you don’t know how to stop. When I was in show business my life was tied to curtains, now my life is tied to tides…I don’t always know which is more demanding. Neither mistress is easy, and both are jealous.
I remember the first time I was bitten with the travel bug. Most people assume it was on my first ship, but it wasn’t. It was long before that. I was living in England, and I was visiting Bath for the weekend. It was a hard earned weekend away, and my first weekend off in a long time. I was staying at a hostel, and was almost the only one there since it was the off season. Living out of a carry-on that I’d packed for the weekend with a few dollars to my name for food and lodging over the course of the weekend. I was walking towards the covered bridge, listening to Step in Time from the Broadway version of Mary Poppins, and I was suddenly seized with this overwhelming urge to jump on the next train and see where it went.
Would anyone really care if I didn’t go back to college on Monday?
It was so strong that it was almost frightening. It’s like a whole vista of possibilities opened up in front of me in that single moment.
Obviously I went back to college, I finished my degree, I got on a plane and I went home. The next time I would ride a train would be in Italy, when I nearly got left behind in Rome.
But I think in that moment, when everything could have been different, I caught just a glimpse of the woman I was going to become…
And I liked her…