Hi, this is Women Who Travel, a podcast from Condé Nast Traveler that digs deep into the realities of traveling as a woman today and celebrates why we'll never stay home.

I'm Lale Arikoglu, and with me, as always, is Meredith Carey.

Hello.

And today we're joined by two, well, one current traveler editor,

one now former traveler editor, Andrea Whittle and Lauren DeCarlo, who are here to tell us all about

cruises. And I also want to like preface this with the fact that none of us really know that much

about cruises. I mean, it's like this weird scenario where I feel like this is like the opposite of last week.

Like I was on a fact-finding mission last week to figure out how I can move abroad.

You're on a fact-finding mission this week to decide whether or not you ever want to go on a cruise.

I mean, I've already made my decision.

Which is a hard pass, right? I have a lot of concerns, but we can go into it.

And then my only cruising experience was my entire semester of college that I spent on a cruise ship,

doing a semester at sea and visiting 18 countries in 4 months.

But that also wasn't like your regular cruise experience.

No, and that's exactly like it was like 200 college students spending 13 days crossing the Atlantic Ocean. It was not like a normal cruise ship by any.

Right. You were on the ultimate booze cruise. Yeah, except you weren't really allowed to drink alcohol. So it was like a real bummer.

In theory, great idea. More concerned, I think, about the 19 year olds falling off the ship.

But can I just say, I wouldn't say we don't know anything about cruises.

That is true.

What I would say is more accurate is what you think you know about cruises is not what it actually

and you don't know until you actually go.

And then you have a completely different, I think,

...