Cruising is not for everyone.

If mobs of senior citizens set your nerves on edge … stay away.

If proximity with uninformed opinion annoys you … don’t come.

If the notion of a bare brush with exotic cities and people leaves you frustrated … don’t bother.

If a disconnect from the greater wired world leaves you agitated … stay home.

But if you want a taste of several places you might not otherwise visit, while never catching a train or driving a car or repacking a bag, while incapable of checking the internet every few minutes, or hours … then you might be a cruiser already and not know it.

Granted, cruising the Baltic in the spring/summer is perhaps the most appealing of all possible cruises. I have done two sorts in the Pacific (to Hawaii, to the Mexican Riviera several times) and they pale in comparison.

The Baltic offers the best of two worlds.

–The basic cruise experience, which offers up a moving hotel. In which someone makes up your room twice a day, entertainment of a variety of types is provided free, crime is nearly nonexistent (aside from some oldsters snaking your table) and most meals cost you nothing beyond the pre-paid fee.

Also, ice cream is available, at no charge, 10 hours a day, and you also are able to exercise, shop, gamble, dance and even sing with the help of the staff.

Some fraction of the 2,100 people on this boat came mostly for that, with little or no interest in any of the seven ports of call.

–A quick pass through the leading cities of a part of the world most of us would never otherwise see, an area of significant culture and history that usually is not Nos. 1,  2 or 3 on a “European places to see” list. But ought to be. And all of these cities are right on the water.

–The Baltic is a semi-smooth sea, as often as not. It is a good place for someone prone to motion sickness. Better than the Pacific or the Atlantic, certainly.

The only semi-short (let’s call this 15-days-or-fewer) cruise I could envision being as good as a Baltic cruise would be around the Mediterranean. Lots to see and do there, too.

But the benefit of the Baltic is that its high season comes during the height of summer in the northern hemisphere — when much of the rest of the civilized world is broiling under high temperatures. The Baltic, meanwhile, is likely to be in the 70s.

On this trip, the weather has not cooperated particularly well, with quite a bit of clouds and some rain, but May (especially the first half of May) is a shoulder period. It could be nice. It could be cool and damp, and we had some of that. But we also had sun in Warnemunde, for one of the two days in Petersburg, for all of a glorious Saturday in Stockholm and for part of the day in Copenhagen.

Meanwhile, in the Gulf, the daily 100-degree afternoons are being reeled off, one brutal day after another.

Another key factor in a happy cruise is keeping your on-ship expenses down. You may want to buy a drinks plan that allows you to imbibe basic soft and hard drinks at no charge — and you need to know what is going to cost you extra.

Don’t depend on cruise staff to till you when you’ve tripped the “extra charge” bell.

We bought a package that covers modestly priced wines, many cocktails and all soft drinks and waters. We do not feel as if we have stinted and, meanwhile, we are not racking up charges of $3.50 for fresh-squeezed orange juice or $8 for a low-end glass of wine (or as much as $15, at the high end, etc.

We also have not lost money in the casino, nor have we overpaid for a Thomas Kincade painting or a new, high-end watch, or shelled out for expensive spa treatments.

But we have seen the palaces of the czars, the friendly order that is Helsinki and felt the energy that is Amsterdam and Stockholm. So far, it has been worth the time and money. And we haven’t lifted a piece of luggage in 10 days.