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Cruise, part 1
So I'm back from the Caribbean, with a cold and a touch of vertigo that is partly a combination of the cold and partially my brain still not quite convinced I'm on solid ground. The motion-sickness patch kept me from getting sick to my stomach, although I got one of the side effects listed in the literature which kept me from doing anywhere near the amount of reading I'd planned - blurred vision. It's temporary and not a problem (unless accompanied by red, painful eyes, which I did not have) - it only was noticeable when I tried to focus on small stuff like text on a page; looking at people or around the room or out at landscape didn't seem any different. It was like my glasses weren't *quite* the right prescription: I could make the text out if I concentrated, but it was hard. At any rate, now that the patch is off, it's slowly returning to normal - I can actually stand to read LJ now and a couple of days ago it would have been headache-causing.
I'd use the patch again if I was on a ship - I could read for the first few days, at least, and if I was seasick not only would I not have a good time, but anything I read while nauseated would get associated with that feeling in my mind and I'd ruin several good books that way. (I only do comfort reading of old favorites when sick - ruining a couple of books by reading them when sick taught me that.)
Anyway, the cruise was almost completely good, except for Saturday night when there was a series of mysterious pages on the intercom, and a lot of weird pitching to port and starboard and engine rumblings. The cruise director eventually got on the intercom and let us know that a passenger had fallen overboard, and we were turning around and searching. Two of my group were walking around on the deck when it happened - they said that the ship was leaning into the turns so far that water sloshed out of the pools - the more the ship leaned, teh tighter the turn, and the faster the turn. The Norwegian Cruise Lines ship Rhapsody of the Sea was nearby and came and searched also, and after 4 or 5 hours the Coast Guard arrived and released our ship to continue on to Galveston, where we arrived 5 hours late.
There was never any announcement that the man had been found, so I expect that he didn't make it. There's a news story here, although they got the length of the delay wrong - we were supposed to dock in Galveston at 6 AM and didn't dock until 11.
The rumor mill has it that the man was trying to climb from one balcony to another. Whether it's true or not, I suspect alcohol was involved - I did a bit of research into cruise ship deaths and disappearances before the trip, and most of them involved people getting drunk and falling off the ship, either through doing stupid stuff or through throwing up over the railing and losing their balance because of the violence of their paroxysms.
Anyway, Saturday night aside, the rest of the trip was pleasant, even being rained on in Cozumel, and getting a migraine in Jamaica.
Here's some photos of and from the decks of the ship - I've got the photos of the shore excursions on my hard drive and haven't gotten around to making Web-viewable versions yet. Will post when I do.
These are all pretty much of the exterior, mostly Deck 10, since we spent most of our time there. I don't have any regular interiors because I felt conspicuous and touristy hauling the camera around. :) The interior of the ship was basically that of a luxury hotel. Deck 9, the Lido Deck, had the three (three!) swimming pools and the Restaurant Cezanne, which was the main buffet for the ship. Going up a flight of stairs to Deck 10, right above the Restaurant Cezanne, was an area called Sur Mer, which had a fish-and-chips grill and a bunch of tables and chairs, and not very many people, so we tended to congregate up there. All the food was free (unless you went to the exclusive dining restaurant or the patisserie on Deck 5), and non-alcoholic, non-soda drinks were free, too.
The basic feel of the cruise was not the elegant, beautiful-people feel that the ads would lead you to believe, but more of a con for normal people. Many of whom were drunk before the ship raised anchor, and who stayed that way through the entire trip. It was quite possible not to take a drink for the entire time (I abstained due to the seasickness patch), and much cheaper, too, since drinks tended to run $3.50-6.75 plus 15% automatic gratuity, but there were a lot of people taking full advantage of the many bars on the ship.
There are 28 photos in the Flickr photoset for the ship, and I've pulled out a few representative ones here.
View the whole photoset here.
Yes, the ubiquitous towel animals. Carnival (ad maybe other cruise lines: I dunno) room steward leave towels folded into animals on your bed after they come in and turn down the beds while you're at dinner. :)
I got a pedicure at the spa, and got tut-tutted at about the state of my feet. I blamed it all on karate. XD But I now have bronze toenails. :D
This is from Deck 10, looking down at the aft pool on Deck 9. There's an automatic cover-thing that comes out and forms a roof over the pool when it rains.
Another towel animal. I think it was decided it was some sort of dog.
The Loch Ness Monster, or a brachiosaurus, or something.
The Humping Walri. One of our group called them seals, but they have a distinctly walrus look to me.
A disctinctly obscene walrus look to me, because I am twelve.
I think this may be a pig.
The waters of the Caribbean are blue. Blue. Did I mention theyw ere blue?
Despite there being 3500 passengers and some huge number of crew on board, it was fairly easy to find relatively secluded places on board, because the ship was Just So Damn Big.
Anyway, go look at the rest of the photoset. :) Other photoset sto come in the enxt few days: Jamaica's Black River, the Grand Cayman turtle farm, swimming with stingrays, and many, many feral chickens, and dramatic blue waves on the coastline of Tulum.
I'd use the patch again if I was on a ship - I could read for the first few days, at least, and if I was seasick not only would I not have a good time, but anything I read while nauseated would get associated with that feeling in my mind and I'd ruin several good books that way. (I only do comfort reading of old favorites when sick - ruining a couple of books by reading them when sick taught me that.)
Anyway, the cruise was almost completely good, except for Saturday night when there was a series of mysterious pages on the intercom, and a lot of weird pitching to port and starboard and engine rumblings. The cruise director eventually got on the intercom and let us know that a passenger had fallen overboard, and we were turning around and searching. Two of my group were walking around on the deck when it happened - they said that the ship was leaning into the turns so far that water sloshed out of the pools - the more the ship leaned, teh tighter the turn, and the faster the turn. The Norwegian Cruise Lines ship Rhapsody of the Sea was nearby and came and searched also, and after 4 or 5 hours the Coast Guard arrived and released our ship to continue on to Galveston, where we arrived 5 hours late.
There was never any announcement that the man had been found, so I expect that he didn't make it. There's a news story here, although they got the length of the delay wrong - we were supposed to dock in Galveston at 6 AM and didn't dock until 11.
The rumor mill has it that the man was trying to climb from one balcony to another. Whether it's true or not, I suspect alcohol was involved - I did a bit of research into cruise ship deaths and disappearances before the trip, and most of them involved people getting drunk and falling off the ship, either through doing stupid stuff or through throwing up over the railing and losing their balance because of the violence of their paroxysms.
Anyway, Saturday night aside, the rest of the trip was pleasant, even being rained on in Cozumel, and getting a migraine in Jamaica.
Here's some photos of and from the decks of the ship - I've got the photos of the shore excursions on my hard drive and haven't gotten around to making Web-viewable versions yet. Will post when I do.
These are all pretty much of the exterior, mostly Deck 10, since we spent most of our time there. I don't have any regular interiors because I felt conspicuous and touristy hauling the camera around. :) The interior of the ship was basically that of a luxury hotel. Deck 9, the Lido Deck, had the three (three!) swimming pools and the Restaurant Cezanne, which was the main buffet for the ship. Going up a flight of stairs to Deck 10, right above the Restaurant Cezanne, was an area called Sur Mer, which had a fish-and-chips grill and a bunch of tables and chairs, and not very many people, so we tended to congregate up there. All the food was free (unless you went to the exclusive dining restaurant or the patisserie on Deck 5), and non-alcoholic, non-soda drinks were free, too.
The basic feel of the cruise was not the elegant, beautiful-people feel that the ads would lead you to believe, but more of a con for normal people. Many of whom were drunk before the ship raised anchor, and who stayed that way through the entire trip. It was quite possible not to take a drink for the entire time (I abstained due to the seasickness patch), and much cheaper, too, since drinks tended to run $3.50-6.75 plus 15% automatic gratuity, but there were a lot of people taking full advantage of the many bars on the ship.
There are 28 photos in the Flickr photoset for the ship, and I've pulled out a few representative ones here.
View the whole photoset here.
Yes, the ubiquitous towel animals. Carnival (ad maybe other cruise lines: I dunno) room steward leave towels folded into animals on your bed after they come in and turn down the beds while you're at dinner. :)
I got a pedicure at the spa, and got tut-tutted at about the state of my feet. I blamed it all on karate. XD But I now have bronze toenails. :D
This is from Deck 10, looking down at the aft pool on Deck 9. There's an automatic cover-thing that comes out and forms a roof over the pool when it rains.
Another towel animal. I think it was decided it was some sort of dog.
The Loch Ness Monster, or a brachiosaurus, or something.
The Humping Walri. One of our group called them seals, but they have a distinctly walrus look to me.
A disctinctly obscene walrus look to me, because I am twelve.
I think this may be a pig.
The waters of the Caribbean are blue. Blue. Did I mention theyw ere blue?
Despite there being 3500 passengers and some huge number of crew on board, it was fairly easy to find relatively secluded places on board, because the ship was Just So Damn Big.
Anyway, go look at the rest of the photoset. :) Other photoset sto come in the enxt few days: Jamaica's Black River, the Grand Cayman turtle farm, swimming with stingrays, and many, many feral chickens, and dramatic blue waves on the coastline of Tulum.