080621 Cruisin'

I am not a cruise person. That is not to say that I did not enjoy my recent cruise. I really did have a very good time. I just am in no hurry to run back out on another one. There are people out there who could gladly move from cruise to cruise. That is just not me.

To put last week in reference, I had an opportunity to purchase tickets for my lady friend and myself to take a four day cruise to Canada at what I think was a great price. I won’t mention the price here because I do not want readers writing in to tell me that I paid too much. Neither of us had ever been on an oceanic cruise before. A three hour Hudson River cruise was pretty much the high end of our experience curve. Four days and four nights at sea from New York City to Saint John Canada and back seemed like a good opportunity to learn how much we like cruising. We sailed Tuesday evening, spent Wednesday at sea, explored Saint John on Thursday, were at sea all day Friday and made port Saturday morning.

When you are at sea you can go swimming, lie in the sun, eat to excess and gamble in the casino. As I learned from my trip to Atlantic City last year, I don’t really enjoy casinos or gambling and I can swim, sun and eat until I am sick in my own house. It is nice to do it on a cruise ship but after the novelty wears off you might as well go home.

I have to wonder what kind of person is a cruise person after stopping to relieve myself. Next to every toilet on the ship was a plaque asking me to please not flush towels. Now did someone in charge gaze thoughtfully toward the horizon and receive the divine inspiration that he needed to make sure no one ever tried to flush a towel? Or did some genius ask himself what he should do with all of the damp towels and get it into his head that all he had to do was flush them. It has never occurred to me that I should flush I towel, but after reading that plaque the first time all I could think of was flushing towels. I never did of course.

In fact, I behaved so well that I only needed to be spoken to by staff once on the entire cruise. Apparently elegant dining night extended to the dining room I had entered and shorts did not cut it. I am very proud to say that the only time I needed to be spoken to on the cruise was when I was told to leave the dining room.

I was afraid I would not even make it onto the ship. When I climbed up to the second floor of the pier and saw the line snaking back and forth across the platform and then security running luggage though a metal detector, the was the possibility that I might be accused of breaking the rules. My luggage contained a bottle of Long Island Iced Tea. The Carnival Cruise Lines takes a dim view of any alcohol which does not come from one of their many bars. The only exception to this is wine which is brought on board and turned over to the crew who will provide it in the dining room for a corking fee of ten dollars.

Luckily there was no x-ray to go with the metal detector and I made it onto the cruise ship safely. Unexpectedly, disposing of the empty bottle was harder than bringing the bottle on board. The cruise was actually a good time but I don’t know how soon I would want to go out on another.