Last week, Royal Caribbean announced that its newest ship Project Genesis, to be delivered in 2009, will feature a replica of New York's Central Park.

And I thought: Uh oh! I mean, you know how cruise lines all try to outdo each other.

Here are some other announcements we may soon be hearing:

Holland America's new ship, the Neverdam, will feature a replica of the Grand Canyon. Sure, other ships give you rock climbing, we give you mule riding.

Disney Cruise Line's new ship, the Apotheosis, will come complete with a to-scale model of the Amazonian rain forest.

And Carnival's new ship, the Satisfaction, will give passengers the thrill of trekking through a 10,000 acre facsimile of the Australian Outback.

Happy Earth Day, everyone!

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I was very moved watching her sail away yesterday.

Because I took her to France when I was 23, she has always been for me the embodiment of youthful adventure, yearning, enterprise, hope.

As I talked to people on the beach yesterday, I would sometimes mention that I had sailed her in '75. "Congratulations," one woman said, as if she knew the whole story.

In France I learned a new language and, as sometimes happens, acquired a new identity. I also penetrated a culture, working on a 500-year-old farm in Alsace. (Months later I would make a joke of a job application at the Trenton Times - "Why did you leave your last employment?" "I was tired of stepping in cow pies." - which would so amuse the editor he would hire me as a feature writer.)

Because the voyage to France had been so memorable, I booked passage home on a Russian ship that sailed out of England. (In those years, two Russian ships and a Polish ship joined the QE2 in trans-Atlantic crossings.) Arriving in London a few days early, I met a Polish woman working in my hotel and, four years later, I was a married man in Warsaw, teaching English, learning another language, gathering material for my first book.

Most of what I value most dearly in my career and my personal life can be linked to the QE2. So yes, yesterday I was a little misty-eyed.

Photo by Michael Laughlin, Sun-Sentinel

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The QE2, on farewell tour, leaves Sydney on Feb. 25
AP photo

Having debuted in 1969, she is the last of the ocean liners with elegant lines. And, sadly, she's headed to Dubai to become a floating hotel.

She's scheduled to arrive at 7 am and depart at 5 pm. (Though I know from experience that the Cunard ships are notoriously late leavers.) A good place to wait for her departure is the Point of the Americas beach. You can stand on the jetty and shout "Bon voyage!" just like Murray in A Thousand Clowns.

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Mark April 10 on your calendars, for that is the day that the great Cunard liner will make her last appearance at Port Everglades. (At the age of 40, she is off to Dubai to become a floating hotel, a la Queen Mary in Long Beach.)

The QE2 has a graceful line the newer ships lack, and I'm expecting there to be a small group of admirers gathered on the Point of the Americas beach that evening to watch her sail off to a sedentary life at the edge of the desert.

In any case, I'll be there. She took me to France in 1975 and gave me an everlasting love of ships. Among their many charms is the fact that, unlike with planes, you can revisit the one that changed your life. Though now I'll have to go to Dubai.

Photo: Lisa Maree Williams, Getty Images

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