Living in New York City, water often feels like something observed rather than experienced. I catch glimpses of it from beneath the Manhattan, Brooklyn and Williamsburg bridges, framed by concrete, traffic and an ever-moving skyline. In the city that never sleeps, neither, it seems, do we.
Perhaps that is why the ocean has always been my safe space. There’s something about standing at its edge, or better yet, surrendering to its vastness, that reminds me to exhale. I needed that exhale badly when I flew west in April for the MerMaiden excursion of Virgin Voyages’ celebratory West Coast debut of The Brilliant Lady. After trading the Big Apple’s honking gridlock for a night at Fairmont Breakers Long Beach and a sun-soaked afternoon in Venice Beach, I boarded the ship in Los Angeles for five nights along the Pacific. My Sea Terrace cabin gave me something increasingly rare in everyday life: space to simply be.
At night, I sat alone on my terrace, listening to waves break softly against the hull beneath a clear, star-filled sky. No horns. No sirens. No notifications demanding my attention. Just darkness, salt air and an endless expanse of black water. The rhythmic movement of the sea became its own meditation, and for the first time in longer than I could admit, my mind actually went quiet.
That sense of restoration flowed through the voyage. My first morning at sea began at 6:30 with Virgin Voyages’ new sunrise silent disco at the Aquatic Club. Wearing wireless headphones, we moved through breathwork and then eased into a euphoric dance session as the sun slowly climbed over the Pacific, turning the water gold. Wellness can sometimes feel solitary; this felt communal and joyful. It was a reminder that movement, music, sunlight and sea air can be their own kind of medicine.
Later, I retreated to Redemption Spa, the ship’s mermaid-inspired sanctuary, for an afternoon of restoration. I spent three blissful hours moving through The Thermal Suite’s steam room, sauna, mud room, quartz beds, hydrotherapy pools and cold plunge. I capped it off with the Reclamation Body Treatment:125 minutes of exfoliation, a mineral-rich seaweed mask and a massage so deeply relaxing I drifted off to sleep.
Even the in-between moments became rituals: sunrise yoga high above the water; cocktails on deck as the horizon turned shades of amber and rose; dinner surrounded by the sophisticated, coastal glamour of The Wake, with the sea just beyond.
The ports offered different encounters with the water: Santa Barbara’s Riviera-like coastline, margaritas near the shore in San Diego and, in Ensenada, the thunderous spectacle of La Bufadora, where the ocean forces itself through coastal rock and erupts dramatically toward the sky. But it was returning to the ship each evening that reinforced what I had come searching for: stillness.
On our final night, I joined a stargazing session at The Dock. Beneath the open sky, we listened to celestial stories and searched for constellations while the dark Pacific stretched beyond us. For once, there was nothing I needed to accomplish.
Five nights at sea reminded me that restoration does not always require doing more. Sometimes it asks us to do less; to move with the rhythm of the water, breathe deeply, look toward the horizon and allow ourselves to become quiet enough to hear the waves. For this New Yorker, that may be the most potent dose of Vitamin Sea of all.