Have you ever been on a cruise? WARNING: If you have, and you love cruising, please skip the next few blogs as I may say a few things that might offend you. In fact, you can count on it.
Oh where oh where do I start? Okay, let’s start with the embarkation process. Prince Charming and I drop our car off in some faraway lot ($45) and line up with our paperwork (they are VERY worried that you have your paperwork IN YOUR HANDS and READY!!) in the looooong line to “embark”. As we are waiting in this long line (actually moving fairly quickly) we started to look around a bit. It was then that we realized that we didn’t really belong in the same weight class as many of the other embarkers. In fact, it seemed more like we had somehow stumbled into a casting call for the next “Biggest Loser” show. It was then that I started to wonder whether they made an adjustment to the total weight allowance for the ship. Oh, the things that you think about in a cruise line's line :)
I wish that I had taken a picture of the stairs and wallpaper in the main stairways, in fact, of the ship in general. It was the second really, really scary thing. The whole décor felt like something out of an off, off-the-strip cheap Vegas casino. Garish and a little bit seedy everywhere we turned. Think cheap Vegas kitsch but not in a good, cool, retro way. The picture below (I got this from Google images) doesn't do it all justice but may give you a little hint. The only cool part of it was that the decks were labeled “The Lido Deck” and “The Promenade Deck” and we had a “Cruise Director” and our maitre d’ had a cool accent and sounded kind of slimy (as you would imagine your cruise boat maitre d’ to sound – I think). Our own "Love Boat"!
In all fairness, our stateroom was a little better than we expected. And, Dewa, our cabin purser (steward?) was quite nice and seemed always available (I think that his job is to stand in the hall just in case someone needs something). He might also be in charge of making the towel animals that adorned our turned-down bed each night (A How to Make Towel Animals class was offered for a small fee … you could also buy a book ... I wasn't really tempted).
At 6pm we made our way to dinner (Wind Song dining room) and met Miyassa our waiter. Miyassa was from Indonesia and I don’t think that he actually understood English. He nodded a lot and liked it when you pointed to the menu item. Maybe it is just that he didn’t understand MY English. I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Although the menu was varied and plentiful the food quality was kind of a cross between Luby’s meets iHop meets McDonalds. Whatever we had that night (all nights) was completely unmemorable.
A combination of Dramamine (Gravol for the Canadians), culture shock, and crap dinner sent us running for our stateroom and the official end of Day One at sea. The saga continues tomorrow!
Have a great one!
Ella
Project 365 - February 12th
This photo was just another clue that we were in for a "Fun" few days at sea. You mean that we were on a "Moving Ship"? Whoa! Who would have guessed? Glad we had this warning! Heavens knows what would have happened if they hadn't told us!
Glad to hear you're back and I will never ever say I told you so about cruise ships.
ReplyDeleteHow was the band though?