The weather is getting warmer as we go further south and east. We’re in the southeastern part of the Mediterranean, and tomorrow we’ll get to Port Said, where we’ll wait for clearance through the Suez Canal.
Thus far, the coffee bars and lounges have been completely full of people, but today they were relatively empty because everyone is out on deck enjoying the warmer weather. But let’s be clear: when I say “warmer,” I mean that the high was 72 degrees. I’m still wearing sweaters and drinking hot tea at every opportunity, but the British folks are all in their shorts, getting some sun on their blinding white knees.
The other nice thing is that, after the turbulence of the Bay of Biscay, the water has been completely calm and lovely. Standing on the deck and looking at the water feels almost the same as standing on the shore of a river and watching the water flow past. I can’t feel any motion on the ship at all – but I guarantee you that at the next port, I’m going to get off the boat and be all unsteady on land.
Day 19:
Today, we did our pirate drill. Yesterday, I went by the library and asked if they had old newspapers, because I wanted to fold myself up a nice pirate hat for the drill. They didn’t. For the drill, everyone with an outside-facing cabin had to go into the corridor and wait while the stewards counted us. Since we knew the drill was going to be at 10am, I took the wise precaution of making sure my phone was fully charged and I had a hot cup of tea so I could sit in the corridor, sipping my tea and playing a stupid game. Everyone in the corridor speculated about the likelihood of even seeing a pirate ship, and I think it’s unlikely. Why go after a bunch of over-80s when they could go after any of the skillion of container ships laden with consumer goods?
Later, I ran into a woman I knew and asked her how the drill went for her. She has an inside stateroom, and she said that she just got to hang out in her room. She expressed regret that on this trip, we will not have a complement of hunky NATO guards like they had the last time she’d done this run. Now I feel cheated.
Day 20:
Today we were transiting the Suez Canal. The Pirate opened the door to our balcony, made a face, and shut it again. That part of the canal is apparently where cabbage goes to die.
Transiting the Panama Canal takes about 6 hours, and there are lots of ships going both ways, since a lot of it is very wide. Suez, on the other hand, is extremely narrow. Ships travel in a single long line going each way (there are two separate channels) with no locks to change the water level. Transit time through Suez is 12 hours.
As the day progressed, most people were out on the decks checking out the canal banks. When I travel, I always map the landscape to similar landscapes back home. A lot of the Suez Canal looks like Bakersfield. Or maybe Riverside. Hanging off the side of the railing was a warning to stay at least 50 feet from the ship. It struck me as funny, because about 50’ from our ship, the water was so shallow that any ship trying to pull around us would have to have wheels.
Because we traveled in a long line of other ships, we could see the ones in front and behind. It turns out that the ship behind us was the largest container ship in the world, with 19.5 thousand containers aboard. It looked like a Borg cube.
Today, we landed in Heraklion, the capital of Crete (which is part of Greece). We had booked a tour of Knossos, the site of Minoan ruins. It was one of the port adventures the Pirate chose, because he’s a history-loving nerd – one of his many, many admirable qualities. Here’s the biggest surprise: Heraklion is a decent-sized, spread-out city, and the ruins of Minos are only 15 minutes by bus from the cruise terminal.
Cool dog on a roof
The ruins are huge, and are the basis for the legend of the labyrinth. It was the seat of both government and religion, so it had apartments, storage rooms, classrooms, toilets (which always came in pairs – as the guide described it “one for when you only have to spend a short time, and one for when you have to spend a long time”). The whole complex was enormous, multi-purpose, and had been destroyed by earthquakes and rebuilt more than once. The main religious symbol of the time was a double-headed axe – it’s incised on the stone all over the place. The word “labyrinth” means “house of the double-headed axe,” but the intricacy of the palace complex meant that it became synonymous with “maze.”
Here’s the best thing we learned. There were no valuables, skeletons, weapons, etc. found in the ruins, even though they had been destroyed by earthquake. One would expect that people taken by surprise by a huge earthquake would have been crushed in houses built largely of stone.
But the Minoans kept pets. You know how a lot of people say that dogs and cats act differently before an earthquake? I don’t know about that (ours certainly don’t), but the Minoans kept snakes. They were apparently all over the palace, because people fed them and coddled and spoiled them. When the snakes disappeared, though, people knew an earthquake was coming and were able to get themselves and their valuables to safety. As a result, the snake motif is all over the island!
There’s a book I love: Johannes Cabal and The Fear Institute. It takes place in the Dream Lands popularized by Cthulhu mythos authors. There’s a scene where Cabal and his entourage are in a pub trying to find a ship that will take them to a certain island. They meet the owners of the Black Galley, one of whom promised them every luxury, while the other one employed the only four human words he knew: “We has deck quoits!”
When looking at the brochures for this trip, deck quoits was prominent among the onboard entertainment options. On this ship, it’s like a cross between horseshoes and shuffleboard. Like horseshoes, it involves tossing a round object at a target (in this case, a series of concentric circles). Like shuffleboard, your score is all about how many you can get in various parts of the circles. There are some hilarious risks, like your quoit (it’s just a circle of rope about a hand span in diameter) rolling across the deck and disappearing down the stairs to the next deck. Or striking a passerby. Or knocking your own quoit out of a high-scoring ring with another quoit. While I still have hopes that I will come home the undisputed deck quoits champion of the greater Bonny Doon area, I think I still have a way to go.
Day 14:
A couple of days ago, there was a guy in the bar who, in the middle of a lovely piece by the string trio, whistled loudly and yelled for a waiter, evidently upset that his second bottle of wine hadn’t been promptly forthcoming. His wife looked mortified, and the man then loudly defended himself, saying that he wasn’t sorry because there was no other way to get the attention of the waitstaff (because the notion of getting up off your comfy chair and approaching one of the two waiters near the bar is out of the question, right?) and that he wasn’t the one in the wrong.
Not very long afterward, he was just as vociferously apologizing to everyone and loudly telling the string trio how much he liked them. Sadly, it was too late. His wife looked furious, and everyone in the bar was staring daggers at him.
Who knows what happened between him and his wife once they got back to their room, but although I’ve seen him a couple of times since, and she has not been with him. I have the feeling he’s going to be apologizing and sucking up to the servers and performers for as long as he remains on the ship. It’s the very first instance of unsavory behavior I’ve seen from any of the passengers.
Day 15:
Another day at sea. Boredom is beginning to set in.
To stave off boredom, I joined an improv class, taught by a crew member who has been a drama coach for several inprov groups who regularly perform at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. It was great fun because it gave me a chance to be silly and move around without feeling self-conscious or getting weird looks. I mean, I do it regularly anyway, but I do get weird looks.
The Pirate and I also joined the Guest Choir. We missed the first couple of rehearsals, but we knew all the songs, so it wasn’t hard. The choir will perform just before we get to Dubai, which is the end of the current leg of this trip.
This evening was the masquerade gala, and we dressed up and donned our fancy masks for the captain’s cocktail party, a tradition for World Cruises. We joined another couple at a table and got to talking about our upcoming shore excursion to Luxor and the Valley of the Kings. The busloads of passengers will have an armed escort, and we have a list of dos and don’ts that’s a little daunting. I wasn’t sure whether I was more concerned about that, or about the 3 ½ hour bus ride each way.
But that news paled in comparison to the captain’s telling us that, once we get through the Suez canal, we’re going to “race through the Red Sea,” because thereare pirates. The ship will be dark at night, and we’ll be going full-tilt. To lighten the mood, he told us we won’t have any armed guards on board, because they’ll be giving all passengers bags of potatoes to throw at anyone trying to board the ship.
I’m completely comforted.
Day 16:
There are a few skills one needs to cultivate if one is going to be at sea on a large ship for an extended period. First, the ability to communicate clearly. The second day we were on the ship, we had split up in the morning and agreed to meet at the buffet. The problem is that it’s the main dining room for breakfast and lunch. It has one entrance on each side of the ship, and stretches for about a quarter of its length. I had gotten there early and snagged a table, then spent half an hour looking around and waiting for the Pirate to show up. He had also shown up early, and after waiting outside one entrance for a while, went looking for me. But in a crowd of 300-400 other passengers having lunch, he missed me. We’ve had four or five similar incidents, and every time, we both just chalk it up to “we need to be much more specific in future.”
One also needs to get comfortable being assertive with servers. When I say “assertive,” I don’t mean abusive. The places on the ship that serve coffee and tea are also places that people gather just to hang out, so the wait staff are looking out for people hailing them rather than approaching each table and asking if they need something. It took me 3-4 days to realize that if I just sat at a table looking thirsty, nothing happened. The trick is to make direct eye contact with the server, then give a slight nod. Getting the servers to remember what I want, because I order the same thing every time, apparently takes much longer.
The last is smiling while making inane small talk with people on the elevators, sharing a table at the coffee bar, in the hot tub, or at dinner. “Are you here for the whole world voyage?” “Did you go into port today?” “Have you seen any of the lectures?” or the old stand-by “I love your shoes!” all work wonders. The only place you can reliably be alone is in your own stateroom, and right now it’s just too cold to sit out on the balcony and work.
We docked in Lisbon today. The Pirate and I have been to Lisbon before, so this time we decided not to go on any of the tours offered by the cruise line. Instead, we got one of those red bus tours available at pretty much every large city in the world. This time, we got to see parts of the city we hadn’t seen before, including the tile decorations that Lisbon is famous for. This is an underpass on a major street.
There’s an election coming up, so there are billboards for all the candidates, all of which have the candidate’s face about 12 feet tall, and then smaller pictures of the other candidates off in a corner with red Xs through them. I personally predict that the guy pictured here will not win, because who’s going to vote for a man who can’t even commit to whether or not he wants a beard?
The tour talked about every large building we passed – who built it, when, and why. Lisbon has museums for everything: not just art and history, but cars, electricity, stories, and beer. This museum has a claim to fame that I was sad I couldn’t check into.
I was surprised that we passed a building that was 3 blocks long on each side, and the guide said NOTHING. Turns out, it’s a prison, conveniently located right in town! But I know nothing else about it, because they’re keeping it a secret. Like, the worst-kept secret EVER.
Lisbon also has plenty of these round-topped trees. I am 90% sure that this is what happens when you let broccoli grow uncontrolled.
And lastly, here we are at the uphill end of Edward VII Park. Way in the distance, you can see the water where our ship is docked, and the Pirate and I had a lovely time walking the couple of miles back to our ship.
Another day at sea. We’re in the Bay of Biscay, which is apparently notorious for stormy seas. We’ve had gale-force winds, and swells of nearly 20 feet. Just before we landed in Southampton, I was looking out my window one morning and saw a fishing boat. At that point, naïve traveler that I was way back then, I thought the sea was rough. From my vantage point, it looked as though the fishing boat would be entirely submerged, then pop up again. I watched in horror, waiting for the inevitable time when they would disappear and not pop back up, but it didn’t come. I had to take myself aside and tell myself that these fishermen knew what they were doing – they’d likely done this before. Like, zillions of times. And even if it was their very first time out, and none of them knew anything about piloting a boat, what was I going to do? Jump in and pull them out of the water, boat and all? The revelation today is that the day that happened was relatively calm compared to what we have now.
Here’s a cultural difference I wasn’t prepared for: in America, if you go to a buffet, most of the meat dishes will be beef. Maybe some chicken, but mostly beef. Here, it’s all pork. I counted yesterday, and of the entire lunch buffet, there were a round dozen pork dishes, four chicken dishes, and four fish dishes. No beef at all. At breakfast there are pork sausages, both American and English bacon, black pudding made from pork blood, and often ham.
The Pirate thinks it’s because in America, we have lots of open land for grazing cattle. Pigs don’t need wide-open spaces (although I’m sure they would appreciate them). The problem is that ever since I saw the movie Snatch, all I can think about is the bad guy saying “They can eat a 200-pound man in about 8 minutes. So, beware of any man who owns a pig farm.”
We did see a fascinating lecture by Fatima Bhutto about the rise of non-Western pop culture. I loved hearing about how other countries (she covered India, Turkey, and Korea) are becoming larger exporters of pop culture than America. I’m tired of seeing movies either about my own culture, or about what people from my culture believe life is like for people not from my culture.
Day 11:
Today is Friday the 13th. Surprisingly, I’ve heard nothing about it. But just because that doesn’t seem to be a thing with this lot doesn’t mean they’re not superstitious or imaginative in the way that makes people freak out.
Down the corridor from us is an air vent that has some kind of leak. There’s a constant sound of howling wind that occasionally turns into banshee wails. The other day, a woman was passing us in the corridor just as I was observing to my husband that the room we were just passing was haunted. The woman said “pardon?” And I said “I think that room is haunted.” She made some uncomfortable kind of noise and hurried off. My husband berated me for scaring her, but given the fact that this person is older than I am, I don’t feel particularly bad about it. What would be cool, though, is suddenly hearing a rumor going around about The Ghost of 12006.
Then again, I wouldn’t be surprised if the ship was haunted. At around 11pm, the captain came over the loudspeaker saying “Medical team, report to the Golden Lion” (the onboard pub). Five minutes later, the order was repeated. Someone had collapsed in the bar, and apparently, they couldn’t be revived. While that sounds (and is) horrifying and tragic, it shouldn’t be surprising, considering that the average age on this cruise appears to be approximately 147. So…not unreasonable to think that the poor people who have died while in this ship are spending their entire afterlife on one lovely cruise after another.
“What happened to Day 8?” I hear you cry. Nothing. Nothing happened to Day 8 because nothing happened on Day 8. Let’s move on!
We made port in Southampton, and while the passengers from the last cruise left (good-bye to all those hacking coughers!) and the passengers for this next leg came on, we boarded a bus for Stonehenge.
On the way, we took a little detour through the New Forest, where “new,” in typical British style, means that it was planted 600 years ago. So much of the wooded areas reminded me powerfully of home, and I felt my first real wave of homesickness that didn’t involve my family.
As we crossed the Avon river, I learned that there are lots of rivers in England called Avon. Here’s why: Foreigner: Hello! We’ve come to colonize your land! What’s the name of this river? Native: I can’t understand a word you’re saying. Speak Celtic, for crying out loud! Foreigner (speaking their own language more loudly and slowly with large hand gestures): THIS RIVER HERE…WHAT DO YOU CALL IT? Native (with a dismissive look): It’s a river? Foreigner: Then in recognition of your culture which I will do my best to obliterate along with much of your population, I will call it “River”! “Avon” is the Celtic word for “river.”
On to Stonehenge! The first time I saw the Mona Lisa, I was let down because it’s only about the size of a sheet of notebook paper. I prepared myself for Stonehenge to be similarly disappointing.
In the visitor’s center, I learned that “henge” doesn’t refer to the stones, but to the circle of ditch surrounding the stones. There are lots of other henges (Woodhenge is nearby), but all they have in common is that ditch. Next, I learned that the average height of the people who built is was just over four feet, which explains much about my mother and grandmother.
This is a bed made of something like woven willow branches. It’s every bit as uncomfortable as it looks.
We then went out to Stonehenge itself. It’s exactly as advertised, except for one thing: while the stones are every bit as tall as they look, they are much closer together than I was imagining. I thought there would be room for thirty or forty people within the remaining circle of stones, but it appears that there is room for more like 5-8.
My husband and me in a photo that just looks like we’re standing in front of a poster.
Stonehenge is on a hill in the middle of a vast plain, which means that the wind there can rip your hair off. It also rains a lot, leading to this particular bin.
The last thing I learned is that crows in England are incredibly vain, and also not well-off financially. Take this specimen. You can see, as it grooms itself, that its white roots are showing. Deduction tells us both that this crow dyes its feathers, and that it hasn’t done so recently, but desires to keep up appearances.
A truly shocking number of people (including us) had their backs to Stonehenge, one of the most famous monuments in the world, in order to take pictures of this bird.
Once back on board (where we discovered that, with the new crop of passengers, the average age of the population had shot up by 20 years), we were treated to the Imperial Military Band which, despite its pompous name and the fact that it was exclusively men, gave a very impressive concert. A lovely end to a lovely day.
Like everyone else, I spend a lot of time staring out the windows at the ocean (or “the sea,” as everyone here calls it, despite the fact that it is the north Atlantic, which is absolutely an ocean, as I learned in 3rd grade geography). There is a phenomenon I’ve noticed on every cruise I’ve been on: as I stare out at the water, my eye is always caught by movement just outside my direct line of sight. Thinking it might be a whale or some dolphins or a mermaid or some aliens or at least a large sea bird, I swivel my eyes, only to realize it’s a wave. And while staring at this disappointing wave, I again see some exciting motion just to the side and turn to see…another disappointing wave. Repeat until I have a crashing headache and need a cup of tea.
My constant view
Today, though, there were actual whales. Unlike the whales I’ve seen off the coast of Mexico, these don’t surface, blow kisses (in the form of an enormous spray of water and whale snot), wave their tails in a flirting manner, and then slowly dive, making sure each of their vertebrae gets a good sunning in the process. These whales surfaced, exhaled, and went right back into the depths, where I can only assume it’s a lot less chilly than it is up top.
I spent the morning walking around every deck of the ship, trying to orient myself. It was educational, and I now feel (slightly) more confident as I go from one place to another. About half of the 13 decks of the ship are devoted mostly or entirely to staterooms, and while making my way from one end of the ship to the other, I discovered a whole world of people who wanted to walk laps, but didn’t care for the arctic weather outside, and so do circuits of the floors of staterooms. And because of the pitching and yawing of the ship, they veer from one side of the corridor to the other like they’re on a roller coaster. Which is kind of true. As I was making my way down one passage, one of these ladies said “We’re on a mission, aren’t we?” And now I’m really hoping there’s some kind of exciting spy ring operating on this ship. Wouldn’t that be cool?
Day 5
We’re just over halfway across the north Atlantic. A thousand miles away from us, there is what the captain keeps referring to as “a complex weather system,” and even though it’s nowhere near us, it’s causing turbulence in the ocean that we’re feeling here as an increase in the kind of waves that make the ship shudder a little when it hits the bottom of them. It started last night and I admit I lay awake freaking out about it, but then I realized that the captain hadn’t come over the loudspeakers to say anything like “We’re experiencing rough seas, stay in your staterooms.” I looked out the window and the sea didn’t look any more turbulent than it had any other day, so I decided that if the captain wasn’t worried about it, I wouldn’t be. When we woke up this morning, the Pirate said he was very excited about it because it was like sleeping in a gently swaying hammock.
This morning as the ship continued rocking enough to make walking difficult, I was in the gym on an elliptical (mostly because they have handles to hang onto) and had a good laugh watching a man trying to weigh himself. I’m sure that his weight was something like 142…168….137…..180….150…..
At dinner, we finally met the people who have the table next to us. They’re from the Isle of Wight, which is right across the water from Southampton, where we’ll be docking – they’re practically home! Apparently, they go on cruises all the time (they listed five they’re taking this year alone, not counting this one). I said hello to the couple three tables over, whom we met in the elevator once when I had gotten us lost (again), and to whom I said “I could get lost inside this elevator!” I saw our neighbor a few cabins down and we laughed about how first impressions can be misleading (he’d met some folks at a singles’ get-together and the one he thought would be nice and kind and understanding turned out to be an intolerant cow, and the one who seemed surly and taciturn turned out to be a lovely person). I’m sad, because all these people are leaving the ship in Southampton, and I’ll have to make new friends all over again. It’s like being a kid who moves around a lot and ends up at a new school every year. Only I can drink.
Day 6
Today was a day of learning. We went to the 10:00 church service, which is billed as the “traditional maritime service.” Our choices were that, or the Catholic service held at 8:00, and I just wasn’t up to facing God at 8:00am. The 10:00 service was conducted by the captain, and the sermon was about the clergy on board the Titanic, both of whom died because they stayed behind to minister to the spiritual needs of those who didn’t make it into a lifeboat. A few things I didn’t know about the Titanic:
The crew had been warned seven separate times by ships going the other way about the dangerous ice ahead, and didn’t just ignore the warnings, they told at least one of the other ships to “shut up.”
The Titanic had been billed as “unsinkable,” so many passengers refused to board the lifeboats when they were originally told the ship was sinking because they didn’t believe it.
Many lifeboats were lowered with less than half their capacity, and by the time the holdouts accepted the fact that the ship was sinking (once the bow had gone under), it was too late – the lifeboats were gone.
It took the Titanic two hours to sink, which would have been plenty of time to get everyone to the lifeboats, had they only gone.
After the church service, we went to a lecture on the rivalry between airliners and ocean liners, and how advances in each spurred advances in the other as people wanted to travel across the ocean both quickly and comfortably. I would like to say I learned a lot in that lecture, but the lecturer was awful – there was no narrative line to his lecture, and it was interspersed with things like slides of his childhood home and elementary school (okay, so I did learn where this guy went to elementary school).
And after that, a lecture about the Tudor dynasty from a woman whose book on the subject, “Tudors By the Numbers” is forthcoming in a couple of months. She was a great speaker – knowledgeable and entertaining and really passionate about her subject. A lot of the whole Tudor dynasty saga is familiar to me, and I thought I’d like to read her book, but then I realized that there is so much of world history of which I am utterly ignorant, so I’d rather read that first (if anyone would like to suggest a good English-language history of anyplace that is not North America, Great Britain, or Western Europe, I’d love to hear about it).
Years ago, my husband and I had looked at some cruises offered by National Geographic, whose main attraction was a regular series of lectures on various subjects appropriate to the location. We both said it would be great to go on such a cruise where we could relax and learn new things. Our younger child, then about 12, said that it sounded like her worst nightmare. And here we are.
Day 7
We’ll be hitting Southampton day after tomorrow, so in preparation, all those who are going on were given COVID tests. I guess those people getting off in Southampton can just take COVID with them. Those people testing negative could go on about their day. I have no idea what would happen to anyone who tested positive. Maybe they’d be booted out in England?
Last night, I ended up staying in and resting up. I believe it might be partly due to the fact that, of the seven days we’ve been on the ship, we’ve had a time change on 5 of them. Our days have only 23 hours. We’ll get it back on the way home, of course, but that does me no good now.
Today was very quiet, except for the most hilarious thing that’s happened to me in a very long time. I decided that after a lie-in and a nice breakfast in bed, I would toddle over to the hot tub and have a nice soak. I spent three quarters of an hour in the hot tub chatting with a woman who is also doing the full world cruise. Once I was good and pruney, I got out and walked carefully over to my deck chair. When walking on this ship (especially on wet surfaces), I tend to walk very upright and smoothly, so that if I slip, I can catch myself. Once in my deck chair, I decided I needed an extra towel, so I got up again and made my slow way over to the pile of towels and back to my deck chair. I was sitting comfortably, reading a good book and sipping a glass of water when a man who looked to be my age stopped by and said “Excuse me, but are you a professional model? You have a lovely walk.”
I was gobsmacked. That is the WORST, most trite, tired, cheesy line I’ve ever heard. I don’t think I would have fallen for it even when I was in my very-gullible 20s, but now that I’m in my late 50s, you’d have to work a whole lot harder than that. I merely said “thank you,” and went back to my book. The man shrugged his shoulders and walked off, presumably to try his idiotic line on someone else. Now I’m spinning up scenarios in my mind where this guy has scraped together the cash to take a luxury cruise in the hopes of finding a rich widow to attach himself to. Well, good luck to him. If that’s his plan, he’s going to have to think up a much better line.
Just before we left, I worried that I was going to forget something. One of the things I listed was a full set of professional water colors and an easel. At the time, I was joking – it was an example of something obviously unnecessary that was in my brain for no reason other than the fact that I worry about everything.
Turns out, there’s a daily watercolor class for which you may purchase materials. So it turns out I needn’t have worried.
And we have figured out what I forgot. Despite the fact that I have about a dozen receptacles into which one can put pills of any description, and despite the fact that I spent an entire evening putting my daily meds/vitamins into little packets so I would remember to take them, I utterly neglected to bring any kind of painkiller. This meant that while we were in New York and for the first two days on the ship, I had a whacking headache. See? Told you I’d forget something.
We’ve taken to hanging out in the lounge set aside for those doing the entire world cruise. It’s nice, because one can always find a table, there are conveniently-located outlets, and there is always tea and a variety of snacks. Except “snacks” here means “canapés.”
I had never before in my life eaten a single canapé, and now I find myself faced with them several times a day. Honestly, I’m not impressed. I’m sure that canapés handmade by the host of a dinner party eager to make a good impression on their guests are delicate and delicious. These are mass-produced, industrial canapés, and are therefore…well, let’s just say uninspiring. Although I will never say no to skewers of shrimp.
Today is our first full day at sea, and the drama began even before we left our stateroom. We were in the middle of breakfast when the captain came over the loudspeaker to tell us that there had been a medical emergency, and that someone was being evacuated by helicopter. We could leave our rooms, but we could not go out on the balconies or any of the outdoor areas until we were told otherwise. Almost immediately, we heard the sound of the helicopter.
I feel for whoever got evacuated, especially if they’re just starting out their journey. It turns out, this is not just the first leg of our cruise, it’s also the last leg of a cruise that left Southampton, sailed around the Caribbean, then came up to New York before heading back to Southampton. Our world cruise is, in fact, three separate cruises. Of the approximately 2700 people on board, only three hundred and forty five are doing the entire world cruise. So far, we haven’t met any of them, but from what I’ve heard, we’re the youngest by at least a decade. Not sure what that means, other than we’ll spend a lot of time talking loudly and slowly at World Cruise get-togethers (there are several scheduled), and helping people up from a seated position. Worse things could be true.
Also today, I made a couple of discoveries about our bathroom. The bathrooms on cruise ships are tiny – not a whole lot bigger than the bathroom on an airplane. But this one has, above the toilet paper holder, a sort of glass tray with what looks like finger marks impressed into one side, attached to the wall with a metal bracket. Right next to the door frame, there’s a triangle of metal that I realized has a hole in the side nearest the floor. It took me a bit to realize that these are, respectively, an ashtray and a bottle opener.
There are no other ashtrays or bottle openers in our room, which raises the question: Just what kind of party are they expecting people to have in their bathrooms, and do I have to say “cool” before coming in? We’re not allowed to smoke in our staterooms, but I guess they want to make sure that if people do smoke, they’re getting all they can out of it by hotboxing in the tiny, enclosed space. Sadly, I don’t think we’ll be making use of either of those things, unless I need a handy toiletside tray for holding my earrings, and a nice anchor to tie my balloons to.
It was dumping rain when we left our hotel. Back in 2010 when we took my mother to Scotland for three weeks for her birthday, we stayed a night or two in one city, and then moved on to the next city in our itinerary, eventually making a circuit of the entire country. It seemed that it was always raining on the days we traveled from one city to the next. Since then, I’ve just taken it for granted that if it’s a travel day, it’s raining.
My biggest fear once we got on board was that our luggage wouldn’t be there. I’ve never shipped luggage ahead before, so I had no idea what to expect. When we boarded the ship, the queue for the elevators was ridiculous, so the Pirate and I ducked into one of the zillion lounges for a much-needed cup of tea to wait out the crowd. The Pirate took the stairs up to our stateroom to retrieve our keycards (they’re used for paying for things on board), and the luggage wasn’t there. After a tiny, silent panic attack, we reassured ourselves that luggage was still being brought on board, so it wasn’t hopeless.
Tea drunk, we went up to our stateroom (which, I’m going to be honest, is just a really posh way of saying “closet with a bed in it”) and were joyously re-united with our luggage. Because we’d shipped it two weeks ago, and in that two weeks I’d flown to LA to teach a class, my younger sister came out for a brief pre-holiday visit, my daughter and her husband came out from Connecticut, and then there was all the holiday hoopla, I had honestly forgotten all about a lot of the clothes I had packed. It was like Christmas all over again, looking at a bunch of clothes I’d bought specifically for this trip (OMG! Those great flowered cigarette pants!)
After dinner, we took a little stroll around the ship to familiarize ourselves with it. This is by far the largest ship we’ve ever been on, so there’s a whole lot of stuff we haven’t seen yet. I don’t have a good feel for the layout of things, but I have four months to figure it out. One thing we did see was a giant bas relief with scenes from different parts of the world. The very first figure in one of them is a woman wearing some kind of headdress and a sort of drapey skirt thing. No shirt, no artfully-arranged hair, no leaves – just her bare breasts hanging there in midair. EXCEPT: she had no nipples. Because you can’t tell they’re breasts without nipples, right? There are so many things that could be floating around right below a woman’s shoulders, right? Even weirder, a few feet further down are a bunch of topless men, and they all have nipples. They don’t even have a use for them, but they have them.
Yes, it looks like she’s wearing a shirt, but she’s not. And on the right, that’s not a trick of perspective – he really does have a weirdly prominent head and a posture that suggests he’s parading down a catwalk, showing off his nipples.
I keep feeling like I have to do every activity, fill up every minute. And then I remind myself that I have four months. There’s no hurry.
I Love You But Fuck Off 