Cruise
Diary
The Preamble
This
is something that at the same time I am completely unfamiliar with
yet completely familiar with. I know that's a strange thing to say,
but to know why I said that, you have to know me. Having lived almost
half of my life out of a suitcase, driving from one
casino/bar/resort/what have you to the next, I understand the nature
of things here, what's going on. A cruise liner like the MV
Grand Princess is very much a
resort afloat with all that entails – restaurants, pools, hot tubs,
cabarets, theaters and (of course) a casino. What's strange to me is
the perspective. Up to this point I've always been the employee,
albeit in the tertiary way that only an entertainer is. The free
agency of an entertainer is liberating in some aspects, but in others
– specifically job security – it can be frighteningly
constraining. Now I'm a paying passenger, along with my wife Joy.
Being on the receiving end of the service is something I find almost
a little disconcerting. In so many words, I've never been the one
that's been looked after.
But
here I am, along with about three thousand other passengers and over
a thousand crew aboard the Grand Princess
for the next ten days, puttering down the Pacific Coast to the ports
of Puerto Vallarta, Manzanillo, Mazatlan and Cabo San Lucas before
returning to San Francisco. I'll do my best to write down the whats
and hows and whys over the next ten-plus days, as well as how I'm
feeling and acting in response to events and surroundings.
Day One – Traveling
From Seattle To San Francisco, Boarding, Departing San Francisco
This
day started earlier than either of us really planned. The day before,
Joy and I drove down from Port Angeles to the southern suburbs of
Seattle with her best friend Delane. She'll take our car back to Port
Angeles after dropping us off at a place called the SeaTac Inn and
“borrow” it while we're away. I'm not entirely sure I can trust
her ability behind the wheel, because we have a running argument
about how efficient her old Taurus wagon is, which by extension means
I don't trust her driving. She claims it takes her half a tank of gas
to get from Port Townsend and back, while I once drove it from Port
Angeles to Seattle via Tacoma, then filled it up on the return leg in
Tacoma on only six gallons of gas (slightly more than half a tank)
with a resulting fuel economy of 31mpg – more than double her
estimated fuel economy. I think I know who wins this argument, but
Dee is a stubborn old mule.
The
SeaTac Inn is pleasant enough to suit our needs, though the
mattresses were far too firm for my liking. It's not at all
unpleasant, but they could invest in memory-foam mattress toppers and
do wonders for their reviews. We tried to get to sleep at about nine
or ten that evening and wake up at about three in the morning for a
three-thirty shuttle, but we woke up at midnight and simply couldn't
get back to sleep for anything in the world. We took the first flight
out of SeaTac at six in the morning, and touched down in San
Francisco a few minutes before eight.
We
were surprised to find Princess employees waiting for us as we left
the baggage claim, and they helped us into a shuttle bus after
suggesting we get some breakfast first. We were deposited at the
Herman Cruise Terminal a little before eleven, and brought aboard
ship a little after noon. We were surprised at this, because we
thought that we wouldn't board until two. I think that this was the
first glimpse of just how much Princess would spoil us.
We
knew that the average cruise ship cabin isn't very big. Even plunking
down the extra cash for an Extended Balcony cabin – nearly $1,300
per person, whereas inside cabins were going for rates in the five
hundreds – had us thinking that we'd still have a pretty small
cabin. But the surprise was on us when we opened the cabin door for
the first time and found something pretty comparable to any motel
room we'd inhabited over my years on the road. This was because this
was more than just a regular EB cabin, it was actually a Disabled EB
cabin. This means additional room for a wheelchair to maneuver about
the cabin, ramps to the bathroom and on both sides of the balcony's
sliding glass door. By cruise-ship standards, our cabin is pretty
fucking spacious. By cruise-ship standards, the bathroom is pretty
fucking enormous. And the balcony is pretty fucking glorious.
Day Two – At Sea, En
Route To Puerto Vallarta
We
rested, mostly. I think that I slept ten hours. We moved our clocks
forward overnight to Mountain Time (UTC+7:00) and will move them
forward again another hour to Central Time (UTC+6:00) after Thursday
night. The food here varies pretty dramatically, from high-end fare
in places like the Crown Room and Sabatini's to a serviceable buffet
and various themed mini-restaurants on several decks throughout the
ship. We've developed an affection towards the Michaelangelo Dining
Room, and have begun to meet new people and proposed to dine with
them on a regular basis. During the day, we were more-or-less
cornered in one of the hot tubs by a really Jeebus-y couple from
Stockton. Joy handled herself admirably in what was a pretty polite
religious debate. All I got for my troubles was a sunburn across my
shoulders.
We
saw our first show tonight, a comedy show featuring a stand-up by the
name of Steve “Ain't” White. As the nickname suggests, Steve
ain't white. I'd never heard of him before, but he claimed to have
quite a rep. I think he struggled somewhat with his show, unable to
really get his show into gear for any extended length of time without
having to deal with some doddering oldster wandering to their seat or
some drunken heckler. Joy thought he was hilarious to the point of a
coughing fit, and when he learned that we were from Washington he
opined that her coughing was due to her excessive pot smoking.
If
he only knew. We still bought his CD, and finished the night watching
The Martian on a giant
LCD screen overlooking one of the ship's swimming pools. Here's my
three-sentence review of The Martian:
Matt
Damon is left for dead on Mars and struggles valiantly to escape the
shadow of Ben Affleck. Which as we know is impossible, because Ben
Affleck is Batman. Nobody can escape Batman.
Day Three – At Sea
We
bought some trinkets today. Well, not really trinkets. The ship's
stores put on sales – if that's what you want to call them – in
the dining rooms during their off-hours. Joy bought a floppy hat and
a neck purse, which are both pretty useful things to have for our
upcoming shore excursion in Puerto Vallarta. The
shawl/wrap/pashmina/whatever she bought, probably less so. And how
did we pay for this? With our room keys, of all things.
It's
pretty ingenious, actually. Princess has a system where charges and
credits to our shipboard account can be added directly by scanning
our “cruise cards”, which double as our room keys. Part of our
total expenditure for the trip included placing $500 on our shipboard
account in advance – if only that had collected any sort of
interest in the two months between booking the cruise and actually
boarding the ship. The ship does not take cash or any other sort of
payments while at sea, and we'd actually paid for extra packages to
cover gratuities while on board, we still tipped cash for excellent
service. Another perk we paid for was an unlimited non-alcoholic
beverage package, which gave us both large Coca-Cola-branded tumblers
that can be refilled at any bar at any time with any non-alcoholic
beverage save for tea from the upscale tea lounge/library on the
Promenade Deck (Deck 7).
Tonight
was the first formal dinner of the trip. The ship enforces (albeit in
a rather relaxed manner) what they call a “smart casual” dress
code for the main dining rooms and the more upscale restaurants that
aren't a part of the standard dining package, which for me means
open-necked shirts and well-kept jeans or slacks. “Formal” is a
pretty alien concept to me, because my first formal-dress occasion
was my wedding. I'd never gone to a formal dance in school, something
that still irks me to this day. But that was then and this is now, so
it's time to put on the smooth suit I bought at the Van Heusen outlet
store in Bend back before Christmas. An $800 suit for $180 – not
too shabby if I may say so myself. My sunburned shoulders didn't
really appreciate it, but I looked good enough in the mirror. We
dined with a nice couple from the Spokane suburbs that we'd met the
night before, and they joined us for karaoke at the Explorers'
Lounge. They have a cruise-length karaoke contest going on, and given
the poor level of talent last night, I figured that I'd walk away
with the show. I thought I'd done pretty well, but the night's
winners were a woman who couldn't carry a tune in a bathtub but
looked good doing it, and a doddering oldster singing a tuneless love
song to his even more ancient girlfriend. No doubt that he got a
strong sympathy vote. Perhaps I should have chosen a less obscure
song. Perhaps I'll go back later to compete again. I don't think my
ego was bruised that badly, but no contest is truly fair –
especially when there aren't any impartial judges.
And
now, a few words about doddering oldsters. When we first boarded the
ship, I was quite convinced that I would be the youngest person on
board. And while that was eventually proven false, I'm still far
younger than the average passenger. That average passenger is much,
much older than me – we're talking retirement age and up – and
the vast majority of passengers are white, though there is a sizable
group of Chinese-American passengers on board. Very few
African-American passengers – most of them being a single extended
family traveling together – and a mere handful of Latino
passengers. There are a few younger adult passengers, even a couple
of straight-up dude-bro types. I've only encountered a couple of
teenagers, and maybe a half-dozen infants and children traveling with
their parents. Let's just say that an obnoxious metalhead like me
tends to stand out in this crowd, albeit more because of my lack of
gray hair more than anything else. The crew is a polyglot bunch –
the Captain and much of the Senior Staff is Italian, though there are
officers from South Africa, Croatia and India as well as other
places. The only thing the Service Staff have in common is a
reasonable command of English, and while the largest contingent are
from The Philippines, they're a mix of people from every corner of
the globe – other than the U.S. and Western Europe. While I have
been told that there are eleven Americans working for the ship, I
have yet to see anyone from the “first world” in a Princess
uniform outside the occasional glimpse of a member of the Senior
Staff. Not that I have any problems with that. As long as they do
their jobs well, they could come from Mars for all I care.
One
more thing. Given that the average age of the passengers is.... well,
old, why on earth does the ship have a discotheque? Who would
go? I know that we probably won't go. Being a DJ on a cruise ship
must be a pretty boring job most of the time.
Day Four – At Sea
Breakfast
in bed for Joy for the second day in a row. We've moved our clocks
forward twice since leaving San Francisco, and we'll remain on
Central/Mexico City time for the next several days. Being at sea,
with nothing to break the tedium outside, I've noticed a few things.
Watching sports is pretty interesting. Princess' cable-TV package
includes a few movie channels, several news channels, and the
Caribbean feeds of ESPN and ESPN2, the latter of which is basically
the US feed of ESPN. But having the Caribbean feeds gives me access
to sports and competitions I might not otherwise see without paying
through the nose for online pay-per-view streaming. This weekend's
action includes Six Nations rugby, and had we have chosen a later
date for the cruise I could have watched the ICC World T20 Cricket
Championships. Cricket is not everyone's cup of tea, but I've grown
to appreciate the direct ancestor of baseball over the last few
years.
Joy's
not doing very well right now. She didn't take her meds for three
days in a row, and only got back to them yesterday, taking doses in
the morning and before going to bed last night. After breakfast she
went back to sleep and doesn't want to get out of bed, so for the
most part I'll be left to my own devices. I can deal with that.
Today
the ship passes Cabo San Lucas by only a few miles on its way to
Puerto Vallarta. It's kind of odd to me, but it's not my business to
tell them when and where to hit port or not. We'll be in Puerto
Vallarta in the morning. Hopefully Joy will be ready to go for that.
We'll be on a guided tour for most of the day, then left to do a
little shopping and dining along the waterfront. Since we're talking
about a tourist zone, I doubt that I'll have to use what little
Spanish I remember from high school. It's really shitty, one of many
bad memories I have from those days.
I
need to get some air.
Day Five – Puerto
Vallarta
It's
a pretty fair-sized city – at least from my perspective, maybe
about the size Tacoma, or maybe the Reno-Sparks area. There was a
little mix-up at first, as the staff charged with letting passengers
disembark from the ship kept sending us from one end of the ship to
the other as though one hand didn't know what the other was doing.
But eventually we made it off the ship and to the row of tour buses
parked just beyond the terminal's fences.
The
tour we took was a pretty straightforward tour of the city – the
main square, the seawall they call the Malecón,
the old Catholic church of Our Lady of Guadeloupe, a drive along the
coastal highway a few miles out of town, a few opportunities to shop
for jewelry (this cruise seems obsessed with jewelry) and other
trinkets. I was able to steer Joy away from buying some pricey opal
rings, but neither of us could pass up the sandals she bought. So
what if we got hosed on the price, paying fifty bucks? At least the
money went to the people who actually made them, as in the people
standing right in front of us. I'll take that any day over buying
another shitty shirt made in China.
We
finished the tour with a stop at a beachfront restaurant that seemed
to not last nearly long enough to enjoy a plate of fajitas with
chips, salsa and guacamole – all of which were pretty fucking good.
In retrospect, I feel really shitty right now because in the hustle
to pay the tab before the bus left without me – the whole meal cost
336 pesos, which at the current 17:1 exchange rate is about twenty
bucks, I spaced out and forgot to add a tip. I think seeing the
“$336” - yes, Mexico uses the dollar sign for their currency –
gave me a case of sticker shock. The tour guide Jesús
and his driver Nacho (a common nickname, usually for Ignácio) did a
fine job of schlepping us yanquis
back and forth, pointing out the sights, helping Joy in and out of
her wheelchair. I hope they got a good chunk of the sixty bucks we
paid Princess for the tour.
I
felt a moment of sadness as a family of hawkers came into the
restaurant (whose name I completely forgot) and set about to sell
their wares to us, their daughter selling packs of gum, like right
out of the George Lopez bits I heard on the comedy channels on my
satellite radio. I wasn't too sad about it though, because in the
forty minutes we were there they wound up making some pretty good
money off of the doddering oldsters that dominated our tour group
(along with everything else on the boat, but you've already heard me
whine about that). The square that the restaurant sat on the edge of
was holding an arts-and-crafts fair, and we both wish that Jesús and
Nacho would've let us linger a bit longer there, because I'd seen
some pretty cool stuff there, if only briefly. We thought about
buying some 222's (that's acetaminophen with codeine) at a pharmacy
at the terminal, but the fact that they wanted fifty bucks for a
bottle of thirty tablets was a deal-breaker. So much for things being
cheaper in Mexico.
We
thought about going back aboard the boat to drop off our things and
make another trip outside, but Joy's will was flagging, so we made a
beeline for the hot tubs, and now we're watching Guardians
of the Galaxy and
Inside Out in
our cabin. What the fuck is it with Pixar movies? Cute as all get
out, but they have such depth to them, to the point where it's almost
impossible to not cry once during one of their movies. At least they
didn't show Up
– half the passengers would've committed suicide after watching the
beginning of that movie.
I'll
be getting her up here in a bit to take her to a magic show, followed
by dinner. And their karaoke contest has a second round coming up.
Maybe I'll take another swing at it. I know
that I'm a better singer than most anyone on this boat not being paid
to perform. If the imbeciles vote for some other dementia case or
talentless cougar over me, I'll just shut the fuck up and walk the
fuck away. Yeah, I'm being a little egotistical about something I
shouldn't be, but I was a professional singer and drummer for twenty
years – I have legitimate talent. Squalling like a branded calf is
not the same.
I
should take a moment to talk about how much we're getting spoiled by
the staff here. Last night, we tried out one of their high-end
restaurants, the Crown
Room
steakhouse. Instead of paying for the individual menu items, we each
paid a “cover charge” of $25. Sounds steep, right? You don't know
how deep the rabbit hole goes, Alice. First we ordered lobster cake
appetizers that could easily be entrees if they decided to put more
than one on a plate. I got a very nice salad next, while Joy got a
french onion soup that was easily one of the best I've ever tasted. I
ordered a sixteen-ounce Kansas City Strip steak, while Joy ordered a
fourteen-ounce ribeye, both cooked to a tender medium-rare –
seriously, anyone who orders a steak any other way is delusional, and
anyone who orders one well-done is a complete fucking moron. Donald
Trump likes his steak well-done, for example. Need I say more?
And
then they added the lobster. I saw four-ounce lobster tails on the
menu and was perfectly fine with not ordering them, and I remember
saying that I was fine without the lobster tails. But they brought
them anyway. Four of them. Remember the scene from Jaws
where
Sheriff Brody is shoveling chum into the water and the shark pops up,
and he says “I think we're gonna need a bigger boat?” That's what
I was thinking at that precise moment. At the end of the day, we got
a meal that would've cost us well north of $100 - $150 for fifty
bucks. I can live with that.
Another
one place has become a regular haunt for us, the Leaves
tea house and library. This another place where you have to pay for
drinks, though a pot of tea for two to three bucks is hardly a back
breaker, especially when they throw in the dessert tarts and cakes
that come with the tea. Meanwhile, we can borrow books from their
smallish but largely complete library to peruse at our leisure. The
only down sides to Leaves
are
that while the library is always available, the tea service is only
open when the ship is at sea instead of hopping from port to port,
and that there are more books by professional wrestlers (a Mick Foley
novel and Dave Bautista's autobiography) in the library than there
are by Frank Herbert. Not good.
Day
Six – Manzanillo
From
what I can see from our table at the terrace behind the Horizon Court
Buffet, all the way at the aft end of the ship, Manzanillo is a port
city. There's a massive container port directly in front of me
(behind the ship) that's from my perspective seems to be easily on a
par with the Port of Seattle. The container port has its own specific
inlet of the harbor while the rest of the shoreline is studded with
vacation condos. Grand Princess is berthed on the south shore
of the harbor, well away from the container port and its traffic. The
south shore of the harbor is little more than a series of hills,
though I can see a massive set of smokestacks between a gap in the
hills. I can see houses climbing up the sides of these hills, and I
can imagine living in one of those houses quite easily. If only.
This
is the only way we'll see Manzanillo. Joy is worn out from yesterday,
and just getting to breakfast – even with me pushing her wheelchair
– cost her what little energy she had to spare this morning. She'll
stay in bed for the remainder of the day, though a tequila tasting in
the Explorer's Lounge this afternoon has her interest piqued. That
won't take place until after the ship has left for its third port of
call, Mazatlan. It's over three hundred miles back up the coast from
Manzanillo, so the ship is leaving port at four in order to make it
to Mazatlan in the morning. I think that I'm okay with skipping
Mazatlan as well. Cabo San Lucas is where we both want to get off the
ship and explore. We've had a running joke that maybe we'll find
Sammy Hagar passed out underneath the bar at Cabo Wabo.....
One
of the things you find out about cruises that the brochures don't
tell you is the chance encounters with people that you probably don't
know, but have so much in common with that it's almost eerie. During
dinner tonight at the DaVinci Dining Room – we were sent there
because the Michelangelo was packed solid – we were paired off with
a couple that had moved from the Seattle suburbs to Reno, and at
least one of them had grown up in the Puyallup area. We'd learned
that some beloved local shops in Reno had gone out of business, their
building bulldozed. We found that John Ascuaga's Nugget – sold to
new owners by the Ascuaga family only two years ago – had been sold
to another new ownership group, which is never a good sign.
This couple were on their forty-fifth (!) cruise, and gave us sage
advice for cruises to Alaska, which we may consider in the next year
or so. And they were on the whole quite a charming couple. I would
only hope that the others we've dined and spoken with would think of
us so kindly. But between her visible tattoos and her neo-paganism,
that might be something of a turnoff for the average passenger on the
Grand Princess.
I
find myself thinking a lot about getting back to Seattle after the
cruise is over. Of course having to deal with the security bullshit
will be.... well, bullshit. Trying our best to get Alaska Airlines to
move our flight up from 8:30pm to something a little more humane than
spending nearly ten hours waiting at SFO for our flight home. And
that flight home will be crowded as fuck. On the flight to San
Francisco, we were so packed in cheek-to-jowl I swear that the poor
woman next to me must have felt like I was molesting her every time I
so much as moved. I kept my phone out of my pocket for the entire
flight because I thought she would slap me if I even considered
putting it back in my pocket. But we'll have two nights in Seattle,
and we both want to go do something downtown that night if at all
possible. I'll have to give my old buddy Ed Durgan a call and see
what he and his wife are doing that night....
Day
Seven – Mazatlan
Another
day on the boat, another chance for the crew to spoil us. Neither of
us planned on getting off the boat to explore Mazatlan in the first
place. Breakfast in our cabin, a little sun on the Lido Deck (Deck
14) before a couple of cheeseburgers from the Trident Grill. As the
sun went down over the horizon and ship left port, we watched a James
Taylor concert on the giant video screen above the pool on the Lido
Deck. From there we watched vocal impressionist Tony Pace sing his
way through several decades worth of music in the Princess Theater.
We capped the night off with another of the ship's high-end
restaurants, Sabatini's. Their Italian cuisine was simply awesome,
and another server left with a large tip for his exquisite service
and good humor.
I'm
cutting this entry short because we have to get up early in the
morning to get ready to debark for Cabo San Lucas.
Day
Eight – Cabo San Lucas
I
think that we left earlier than absolutely necessary. We were off the
boat a little after eight in the morning, well before most of the
shops had opened. But the hawkers were out in their full fury, and
between them and the tourist shops we spent well north of a hundred
dollars on jewelry and clothing. Mostly silver bracelets, which we'll
give to the kids and granddaughter, and a couple of caftans for Joy.
I only wanted a hat, and that's exactly what I got. I'd also wanted
to get lunch at Cabo Wabo, but it wasn't open yet, and even then it
looked kinda run down. The heat began to get to us about then, and we
made our way back to the tender dock after maybe an hour and a half
on the ground.
However,
things didn't necessarily get any better. Exhaust fumes from the
tender on the return trip got to Joy, and I was able to get her back
to our cabin before she got too sick. She's been asleep pretty much
ever since. That's the sad truth about traveling with her – her
limited energy limits everything we do. Everything.
We
got our debarkation advisories delivered to us while we were away.
We'll have to have our suitcases packed and tagged before 8pm
Thursday night so Princess can collect them and get them ready for
sending them ashore, and we'll need to be out of our cabins for good
by eight the following morning. They included some tourist
information about San Francisco, but we won't have much time for any
sightseeing unless we can find an alternate means of getting our
stuff to the airport. Which does actually bother me a bit, but not
that much.
We
got to see our first production show on board tonight, a Motown
review called Motor City. It was a good enough show, but I was
more interested in the band. This was the same house band that had
played the night before for the vocal impressionist, but now they
were rolling through classic Motown tunes with tons of energy. And
naturally, I found the drummer to be focus of my interest. Dude was
killing it. The dancers were okay, though I scarcely paid them any
attention. At one point in time I apparently had a dancer in my close
vicinity, and Joy asked me if I liked what I saw, and I told her I
simply didn't notice her because I was completely focused on the
band. The show's two male singers were okay, though my old bosses
Mike Hill and Arthur Hayden would've wiped the floor with them as
both singers and dancers. I'm quite sure that if Mike were sitting
there with Joy and I watching the show, he would've enjoyed it, but
he would've given me a few “child, please” looks as the male
singers took a few liberties with lines to avoid singing notes they
couldn't hit. The other passengers may or may not have noticed, but I
did, and I'm sure Mike would as well. The two female singers had no
such problems with vocal ranges or capacity. I did notice that they
were actually stronger singers than their male counterparts –
either that, or the guys' microphones weren't dialed in right by the
lounge's sound tech.
Now
if only the sound crew could have done something about the
ventriloquist we'd seen a few hours before. Joy had told me that
“hey, not everyone can be Jeff Dunham”, and I told her that she
was right. Watching this guy's act was like watching him converse
with a psychotherapist that existed only in his head yet had somehow
leaked out into the real world. I tuned him out after about the first
ten minutes of his act, when he trundled out a dummy tied to a
child's lawn chair – who knew that we'd get an impromptu
demonstration of the Japanese rope-bondage art known as shibari
along with the act?
Day
Nine – At Sea, En Route to San Francisco
Today
was a good day – there's really no other way to describe it. The
Leaves tea lounge and
library reopened, giving us ample time to relax and read while
sipping mint tea. Thank the spirits and totems that I have the Kindle
app on my phone. With its Kindle Unlimited service – think of a
streaming service like Rhapsody and so on, only with books instead of
music – I'd started a free trial just before boarding and
downloaded several books in a variety of categories to read at my
leisure. Dad let me borrow a few books as well – Ready
Player One was too depressing to
get past about thirty pages, and I haven't gotten to the book about
the rowing squad from the 1936 Berlin Olympics – so I was pretty
much set. Joy found a few novels that she read for hours on end. I do
like reading, but I swear that I've read more in the last
week-and-change than I have in the last few months leading up to the
cruise.
We
got the chance to talk to Tony Pace in the Piazza, the vocal
impressionist we'd seen a few nights before. He's a pretty good guy,
and I think that he appreciated the chance to talk shop with a fellow
professional musician instead of just making idle chit-chat with
another tourist. We told him we'd catch his act again tomorrow night,
and I'd make damn sure to yell “FREEBIRD!” at the most
appropriate moment. That or maybe “ZEPPELIN!” or “BOWIE!”
We
had our second Formal Dinner tonight, and I wore a silk jacket that
had once been my grandfather's over my white dress shirt and black
slacks while Joy wore a long tangerine-colored dress. We dined with
our friends Jay and Joan (!) from Deer Park, and I swear to god that
I've never eaten this well before, though I noticed something kinda
funny. With the exception of that memorable
I-think-we're-gonna-need-a-bigger-boat night at the Crown Grill,
we've eaten a lot less than I was expecting to. The meals have
actually been smaller in terms of portion size, which naturally
allows for more courses. Appetizers every night, salads every night
(though the Dining Room's interpretation of blue-cheese dressing
leaves a little to be desired in my opinion – too much blue and not
enough cheese), and don't forget dessert. Even their buffet was
better than we were expecting, with surprisingly good Indian food
available just about every night we were there, though their
breakfasts were at best so-so. Most days we've had breakfast in our
cabin. Nothing extravagant, breakfast muffin sandwiches and bananas
with coffee and orange juice, and Joy has a bowl of cereal on top of
that. Lunch is usually just a cheeseburger and fries from the Trident
Grill chased with a Coke. When we're at sea, we usually follow up
lunch with long sessions in the library sipping that lovely tea, a
bite of cake or tart here and there while reading or playing Monopoly
– Joy usually wins. We're at the point where we don't really want
to get off the boat now, but at the same time I'm really looking
forward to getting home and getting back to work – by the time I
get back on the job, I'll have been off work for nearly three weeks.
Time to get back on the horse. Time to summon the forces and get the
band ready for a gig next Friday, then dive into writing new music
for MCFD II: The Wrath of Crysys.....
Day
Ten – At Sea
Time
to say goodbyes to our favorite crew members, our fellow passengers.
Time to leave tips for our steward, a patient Eastern European
(Ukrainian, IIRC) named Tsvetomir, and Oni, an Indian we first met at
Leaves and eventually saw waiting tables in lounges throughout
the ship. The dining rooms were packed to capacity, and we were wise
to make reservations well in advance. There was a final show in the
theater, the impressionist and ventriloquist doing brief shows. There
was a show featuring the talents of various crew members, but we
chose to skip it to get an early night's rest.
Coming
home from Cabo San Lucas, the seas were a little rough, six-foot
rollers almost all the way back to San Francisco. But the ship
handled the swells quite easily, and I found it remarkably easy to
sleep in, as though Poseidon himself was rocking me to sleep. I knew
I was going to need that sleep. I sure as hell will miss this ship.
Day
Eleven – San Francisco, Then Flying To Seattle
I
woke up a little before seven in the morning to find Grand
Princess already tied to the
dock at the terminal in San Francisco. We were ready to go, but they
weren't ready to let us go just yet, so while we were out of our
cabin by seven-thirty, we had some time to kill and availed ourselves
to a last trip through the buffet for breakfast. We finally
disembarked some time around nine in the morning, and by ten-thirty
the shuttle bus deposited us at SFO.
And
there we waited.
And
waited.
And
waited.
Did
I mention that we waited? You see, when Joy booked the trip she
figured that we'd have some sightseeing time in San Francisco, and
booked an evening flight back to Seattle. But the sightseeing simply
wasn't going to happen, because there wasn't really an option for it.
So now we were stuck with a ten-hour wait at the airport. We did our
best to find an earlier flight, but were only able to move up three
hours, from an eight PM departure to five PM.
Did
I mention that the flight sucked? That both flights sucked? That
getting through security sucked? That buying a steak sandwich for
twice the price I can get anywhere else sucked? Seriously – FUCK
Ronald Reagan and the trickle-down economics cult for turning the
romance of air travel into something that makes cattle in a trailer
en route to the slaughterhouse seem luxurious by comparison. I'm
actually kinda glad that Joy's health will pretty much preclude us
from taking trips like this again – air travel sucks great big
floppy donkey dick. At least the hotel didn't disappoint, though I
found myself walking from the hotel to the nearest grocery store late
that night to buy TV dinners for the night and instant oatmeal for
the next morning.
Day
Twelve – Seattle
One
big advantage of our hotel is location. All of about two blocks or so
to the Sound Transit LINK Light Rail Terminal, where a measly twelve
dollars bought us day passes between the airport and downtown.
Seriously – why the hell did it take so long for people to agree to
build light rail? Fast, clean, reasonably priced – who loses from
this? As the train headed north, then east from the airport and down the hill
toward Southcenter Mall, I felt kinda like I was watching flying a
small airplane down the narrow valley, or watching video shot from a
drone's camera. We spent the day wandering around the International
District, getting lunch in the food court at Uwajimaya before finding
our way to the Seattle Pinball Museum. Joy wasn't nuts about it at
first - “what do you mean I have to pay fifteen bucks to be here?”
- but after a few minutes she found that she was totally loving it
the experience of playing pinball machines from the most ancient to
the most modern.
It
was a pretty awesome trip, I thought to myself as I lay in bed that
night. My first trip to another country – I know, I've been to
Canada a few times, but Victoria, BC is visible from Port Angeles
damn near everyday – that barely qualifies. And with all due
respect, the MV Coho is no Grand Princess. The ship was
luxurious like I'd never seen before, the crew cheerful and attentive
to a fault. The sights and sounds, new and unique to my eyes and
ears. Just the simple act of walking out to the balcony to see the
ocean slip past us, gazing out to the horizon at sky, land and ocean
felt exotic beyond belief. The trip went off without a single hitch,
allaying all my fears that I'd kept hidden from Joy, fears fed by
lurid internet headlines of illnesses and accidents at sea.
My
only complaint would be that we didn't spend enough time in Puerto
Vallarta. We could have spent more time there, but I didn't trust
what little of the stuffy high school Spanish I remember - “¿Donde
esta el baño, señor?” - to get us anything other than mugged
in an alleyway. I think we both entertained the thought of moving
there, living in some little place in the hills. But the fantasy
didn't last for long. I know better. Joy couldn't really handle being
anywhere other than the Pacific Northwest coast for any real length
of time.
Looking
Back On It
It's
been a few months since we got home. In fact, it's the beginning of
summer now. The cruise seems like it was a lifetime ago. It almost
feels like a dream. And it's a dream we both want to experience
again. We're cautiously optimistic toward the possibility of going on
another cruise – possibly next summer, up to Alaska. We know what
we want, and what we don't want. Unlimited soda, coffee and ice
cream? Oh hell yes. Do we need a balcony cabin again? Not
necessarily. Flowers and fresh fruits delivered to our cabin? We can
pass on that. Do we need to take as long a cruise? No, not really.
And I've never been to Alaska. A big bonus to an Alaska cruise is
that we have friends who have been there, and more who live and have
lived there. They can give us suggestions on where to go and what to
do that no guide could tell us. Another big bonus to an Alaska cruise
is not having to fly to our port of embarkation. Driving to Seattle
or Vancouver is infinitely cheaper, easier, and safer than flying in
some overloaded sardine can. Factoring in the flights, the shuttle
buses, the perks, the excursions, the tips and side trips, we spent
somewhere around four thousand dollars for this trip – we figure
that an Alaska cruise could probably be done for at most half
that much, if not less. I think fifteen hundred bucks could get it
done. Our tax returns could probably pay for it with room to spare.
And
out of nowhere, my dad floated the possibility of taking us as well
as my sister on another cruise to Mexico in the next few years. I
could handle that – just as long as we don't have to share a cabin.
Joy says I need a CPAP machine of my own now, my snoring has gotten
that bad. There's no way in hell Dad or Julie could handle that.....
