If you'd told me that one of my favourite holidays would last just a few days, I'm not sure I'd have believed you. But after taking a short cruise, I came away wondering why I'd previously assumed a proper holiday needed a whole fortnight's worth of annual leave.
A two-night cruise can also compare surprisingly well with a long weekend in the UK. Once you've added up a hotel, meals, drinks, entertainment and parking, the supposedly modest city break can become rather less modest.
Most of us still picture cruising as a week or two in the Mediterranean or Caribbean, but plenty of sailings last just two to four nights. That makes them useful when you want to go away without committing much time, money or planning to the enterprise.
Compare it with a conventional weekend away. There's the hotel to book, restaurants to find, parking to arrange and usually a fair amount of time spent getting from one thing to another. On a cruise, your room comes with you, meals and entertainment are close at hand and you can wake up somewhere new without packing a second time.
That ease was probably what surprised me most. Once onboard, there isn't much admin left to do. You can have a long breakfast, read on deck, go to the spa, see a show or head ashore. Or, perfectly legitimately, do very little at all.
There's something particularly satisfying about leaving work on a Friday and waking up in another country the next morning.
You don't necessarily need an airport either. Cruise lines including MSC Cruises, Royal Caribbean and Cunard offer short sailings from Southampton, while Ambassador Cruise Line operates mini cruises from Tilbury. Depending on the itinerary, a few days away might include Bruges, Honfleur, Cherbourg or even a trip towards Paris from Le Havre.
They're also unusually easy holidays to organise with friends. Anyone who has attempted to arrange a group weekend knows how quickly a cheerful WhatsApp chat can deteriorate into 46 messages about hotel locations and whether somebody is "easy about food".
On a ship, much of that has already been dealt with. People can spend the day together or wander off and do their own thing, then regroup over dinner, live music, a theatre show or, should circumstances deteriorate sufficiently, a silent disco.
One of my favourite days came while we were docked in IJmuiden, the gateway to Amsterdam. I'd visited the city before, so while many passengers went ashore, I stayed onboard.
With most of the ship suddenly much quieter, I spent the day moving between the hot tub, coffee and a comfortable chair overlooking the water. There was nowhere I needed to be and, importantly, nobody suggesting I ought to make better use of the day.
It ended up being one of the highlights of the trip. Sometimes the pleasure of cruising is precisely that you don't have to maximise every hour.
And despite the short duration, the cruise never felt rushed. Within a couple of hours of boarding, work had become pleasantly irrelevant. A few days later I stepped ashore feeling as though I'd had a proper break rather than merely spent a weekend somewhere else.
We tend to treat two weeks as the default unit of a "real" holiday, but I'm increasingly unconvinced. Sometimes a few days, good food, good company and a change of scenery are enough.
I didn't expect a short cruise to win me over quite as much as it did. Now the main problem is that they've made the ordinary long weekend look rather inefficient.
Planning your own short cruise?
Ambassador Cruise Line offers a range of two-, three- and four-night sailings from Tilbury, including itineraries to destinations such as Bruges, Honfleur and Hamburg, making them an easy option for a long weekend or festive break.