When one of my favorite cousins — who decided to become a doctor in her early 40s — wrote and said she and her poet/bon vivant husband, both from Los Angeles, would be in Charleston, S.C., for a day and would I consider visiting, I said, “Mais oui! Of course!”

They would be arriving from Key West, Fla., and before that, points in Colombia, the Panama Canal, Costa Rica and Mexico.

My cousins are of the cruise ship culture.

“You can’t miss it,” said Sheila on my cell as I drove into Charleston on a misty, humid Tuesday. “It’s just down from the Old Market.”

How hard could that be?

“Can’t miss it,” the taxicab driver said at the service station, grinning slightly as if he had views to share about the “culture” but was keeping them to himself. “It’s 12 stories tall.”

“Right by the Custom House,” a police officer on Broad Street said.

“I know the rest,” I said. “I can’t miss it.”

I missed it. Every time.

Turns out I had another image in mind. I was looking for a boat. I was expecting a vessel, a ship, maybe even a very, very big ship.

Not a shopping center, a condominium complex, a commercial center, a strip mall, a block of concrete. (And this — the Crystal Symphony — is a midsize boat with only 900 passengers, not 1,500 or 2,000. Here, there was only one boat docked, not three or four.)

“I waved at you from our room when you were walking down the entryway with Michael,” my cousin said. “Didn’t you see me?”

Didn’t I see her? She was a speck, a dot, a smidgen on this white behemoth of a structure sitting absolutely still as if it were a permanent fixture on the horizon. I saw the water, sort of. I saw the beast. I did not see anyone waving at me.

I showed my passport (though previously vetted), emptied my pockets, left my driver’s license with the uniformed guard and entered another world. I’ve never been on a cruise ship before. I’ve never been anywhere with a karaoke bar, a well-stocked library, a bridge room, a computer room, a whirlpool, a sauna, a golf driving net, a cigar bar, a sommelier, a movie theater or a Las Vegas-style showroom under one roof. It’s a small city.

The library looked impressive.

“How many books have you read?” I asked.

Five for Sheila, three for Michael.

On our way to a restaurant that’s open all day, we passed many fine, upscale stores. By agreement with the port city, none are open when the ship is docked. Once it sets sail (well, that’s the terminology, but I doubt there are any actual sails), the shops open for business.

“Are you hungry? Want some coffee?” Michael said.

We headed to the buffet table of lox, croissants, fruit, bagels — and that was just the cold stuff. In minutes, a beautiful latte was delivered to the table.

When we finished, we got up for a spin around the ship. There was no bill. There’s never a bill.

The menus on the ship’s restaurants do not include prices. No one needs to carry money on a cruise ship. There’s no money exchange.

It’s all “handled” ahead of time. More food? More wine or beer (not the really good stuff; that costs extra)? Bring it on.

“A friend of mine likes to say after he got back from a cruise he went out to a restaurant and when he was finished he got up without paying,” Michael said. “The same friend said he had to remind his wife to put her napkin on her lap. Usually it’s the waiter who tends to such things.”

Or a butler, if you want to pay for it.

Later that day we left the ship — the efficiency of waiters cleaning the carpet, setting up for lunch, the conviviality of other guests — and headed to Charleston for lunch (though who could be hungry?) It was low tide, the sky a teal blue, the pluff mud a shiny, squishy gray.

I stopped to consider the sweet, pungent yet rotten-egg odor of the marsh and I wanted to take my shoes off and feel the mud in my toes.

I took a deep breath. My shoulders dropped three inches.

Then I thought about Savannah as a port for cruise ships. I thought about more horse-drawn carriages crossing Liberty Street, more tour buses ambling around the tender infrastructure of River Street, more multiple bicycle thingeys clogging up Bull Street, and my shoulders went up three inches.

When we parted, we hugged and kvelled (Yiddish for being happy and proud) and said how great it was to be with family, especially since we’re so spread apart.

“But if we do meet again on a cruise ship,” I told them, “Please, dear God, don’t let it be in Savannah.”

Jane Fishman’s columns appear weekly in Accent. Contact her at gofish5@earthlink.net or call 912-484-3045.

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