Ship’s Log 12/15/14

It’s Monday. Happy Hour in the Ocean Bar on the Upper Promenade Deck: Buy one, get one for a buck. “Blue Christmas” is playing in the background. While virtually everything is included in the fare, alcohol is not. As they say, booze pays for the cruise. So, buy-one-get-one-for-a-buck Happy Hours (which are truly only an hour long) are a real bargain. (The other bargain: A bucket of five beers for $20.)

It’s not just alcohol. You pay for soft drinks, bottled water, sports drinks. Basically anything that comes in a can or bottle. The other option is to invest in a pre-paid drink package. Basically, all-you-can-drink. For $50 a day…plus gratuity…per person. Roughly $800 for a 14-day cruise. But I digress. We are at sea today, heading for Willemstad, Curaçao. A sea day usually means it’s a “formal” night. So, half the folks in the bar are in coats and ties and evening gowns. A handful are in dinner jackets. A few in full-blown tuxedos. One douchebag is in tails; looks like he should have a baton in his hand.

I’m sitting here in a pair of light blue shorts, hideous Hawaiian shirt and sneakers. My only effort toward “formality” today involved shaving. About 25 percent of the passengers onboard generally ignore the “formal” nights. Most of us are generally among the “open seating” crowd. We don’t have assigned times and tables for dinner. We are relegated to the downstairs dining room.

The smart money is upstairs on Deck 11 – the Lido Deck. Food is buffet style – generally the exact same menu as the dining room. The ambiance is a lot more informal, obviously. (Most folks sit by the swimming pool and eat.) But unlike the dining room, the meat is carved in front of me. The service is obviously quicker. You can hit the buffet line multiple times, so you can have the beef wellington, try the tilapia and still come back and hit the pasta station.

Considering the mission here is to feed 1,200 people…four or five times a day…I can’t complain about the food. They do an excellent job of it. There are also two “premium” restaurants. The cost is not included with the meal plan, but nominal. ($10 for lunch/$29 for dinner.) The food is “gourmet” and prepared especially for you. Eating alone, I haven’t felt the urge. Yet.

I had a bowl of Frosted Flakes for breakfast and a glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice. The fresh-squeezed juice is one of the biggest excuses to get my ass out of bed and up to the Lido Deck in the morning. So is the fresh pineapple. Lunch today was a salad assembled by me from the salad bar. (Food consumption is so ubiquitous onboard, it takes a focused effort to limit caloric intake. Salad was a “smart” choice that will likely be thwarted by my dinner and dessert choices.)

The desserts are hard to resist!

I spent some time in the surprisingly well-equipped library today, studying the atlas and consuming three more chapters of the John Grisham book I loaded onto my Kindle before I left. I burned roughly 130 calories on the treadmill in the fitness center. And then spent a few hours on my computer combing through the shit-load of photographs I took in Key West, San Juan, St. Thomas and Antigua.

My new Canon 70D died on me yesterday. I’m back taking photos with my cell phone.

A few hours later…

I gave in, dressed up for dinner and did the (downstairs) dining room. Dress shirt, blue blazer, loafers and a candy-cane necktie that plays jingle bells. We’re currently a few hundred miles off of Venezuela and frankly, it’s getting too warm for dressy-up clothes. I ended up sweating like a whore in church all through dinner. My choice for dinner was French onion soup, cracked pepper sirloin and shrimp with spinach. And a bottle of Dos Equis (XX). Very satisfying, albeit sweaty. They sat me at a deuce today, alone. But ended up with a nice couple next to me from Seattle with whom I chatted. Both had lost their first spouses to cancer and have spent the last 12 years traveling together. He was in a tux. She was resplendent in, yes, sequins.

I signed up for one of the Holland America-promoted excursions tomorrow in Curacao. We get in to port early, around 7AM. And won’t shove off until after 11PM. Unfortunately, my excursion leaves the dock at 8:45AM…which means I gotta get up and out early.

Sleeping is NO problem for me on the ship. Getting up is. That gentle rocking motion is like Ambien. My excursion tomorrow is another beach day. We’ll get a nice tour, I’m sure, as we venture across the island. For the most part, my excursions have been limited to sand and surf. It’s the Caribbean, after all.

I realized today that I’ve been on the ship for a week already. And part of me is already getting anxious about going back home.