A longtime cruise enthusiast, Mary Lu Abbott relishes the feeling of freedom when a ship sets sail, the tether to land cut and the open sea promising new adventures. As part of a lengthy career in journalism, she was travel editor for the Houston Chronicle and later editor at Vacation Publications, helping launch several travel- and retirement-related magazines. She covered the growth of the cruise industry, as more and bigger ships came on the horizon, writing for major newspapers across the U.S. She has explored in Zodiacs on small-ship expedition cruising and sailed on the Nile and Mekong rivers, the Strait of Magellan, the fjords of Norway, the Mediterranean and the South China seas. She loves too many destinations to pick a favorite. But she does count Albania and Namibia among the most unusual places visited by ship.