Want to Escape Politics? This New Cruise Sails Away for Four Years

If politics has you stressed, escaping might feel like the best way to deal. A new cruise trip takes that idea to a whole new level. Villa Vie Residences just released a “Skip Forward” package, which will take travelers on a four-year trip to ports around the world.

This escape won’t come cheap though: The package starts at around $40,000 per year. Guests will live in a cabin aboard the ship and then spend two to five days in port for their very long vacation. Need some time away but perhaps not an entire presidential term? The cruise line also offers a one-year “Escape from Reality” package or a two-year “Mid-Term Selection” option. The whole thing kicks off with a few months in the Caribbean before heading to South America for Carnival in Rio and some Panama Canal crossings. Sounds pretty nice, TBH!

Taking a vacation is a potentially healing way to cope with anxiety. Putting yourself in a new environment can help you get out of cycles of critical thought because it forces your brain to process the newness around it.

“At the micro-psychological level, when your brain has too much input and is overloaded, it naturally goes on vacation,” developmental psychologist Jennifer Tanner, PhD previously told Well+Good about how vacations help you cope with stress. “It’s a defense mechanism, but another way of looking at it is as a coping mechanism.”

Of course, if the stressor in your life is something global or outside of your control, like politics, escaping can only do so much. But changing your physical environment can shift your point of view, helping you develop new ways to relate to those stressors.

“Travel changes the lens from micro to macro,” Tanner says. “When you leave your problems at home, you have a chance to get some distance from them, and you can manipulate something that’s farther away from you better than something that’s close. You can say to yourself, “What if it were like this, or like that?”

With that perspective, hey, maybe the “Escape from Reality” package is all you really need!