Friday afternoon November 5, 2010 (Fourth travelogue of this trip).
I will spend most of this post talking about the ship. However, there is one item that I forgot to mention. Pat got very sick late Tuesday night. Acted like the flu. She was pretty puny most of Wednesday, but felt reasonably good on Thursday for the wedding. No one else got sick, so I doubt it was the flu. We all ate about the same things, so that was probably not the problem. The doctors have to really minimize her immunity system because of the RA and it could have been a very benign bug that got her.
We are having a kind of exciting day. The captain announced last night that we could not leave the dock due to high winds. They did not seem all that high to me, but what do I know. Well, this morning I woke up early and we were still at the dock! We finally departed at 8:00 AM Miami time and that gave us 24 hours to travel 6-700 miles. We were supposed to leave Thursday at 5:30 central time. After we had been at sea for a couple of hours, the captain announced that we would arrive in Miami at 10:00 AM Saturday. That really puts us in a bind to make our flight. I have acted as the group correspondent with the travel agent to establish contingency plans. She seems to think we can make our flight. I think that is optimistic, as just about everything would have to go perfect (including clearing customs which can take quite a while). We will keep you posted.
Up until today the seas have been like glass. However, this storm really has us rocking. The waves are said to be at least 15 feet. I am surprised that a ship of this size with all of the latest stability technology is rocking as bad as it is. Most everybody is feeling OK, but the ship is handing out sea sickness pills to anyone that wants them.
Now to the ship. Before I start in with that discussion, which will be a bit negative, I need to be clear that we have enjoyed this cruise. This has not been our favorite ship for several reasons. First, the rooms seem to be designed by someone who does not have a clue. The theme is curved surfaces/walls and that resulted in separate toilet and shower areas -both of which are frosted glass enclosed and just plain uncomfortable from a privacy standpoint. The sink is very shallow and tends to splash. Indeed, they changed our faucet (without our asking) with the stated reason being to minimize splash. The sink is at the foot of the bed. There is almost no room to walk around the bed.
As a side note: I often talk about the book “A Corporate Tragedy”. It is a story of the terrible mistakes that IHC made many years ago that took them from a company much larger than John Deere to a shell of itself. One of the major stories in the book was how they told the engineers to go to hell and had the marketing folks “design” a tractor. It was a terrible failure that caused the farmers huge amount of problems and they ultimately were courted by John Deere and many made the switch. This ship looks like it was designed by the marketing folks.
Next issue is a personal one with me. I have very sensitive hearing that is easily overloaded. The public areas have blaring music and then everyone tries to talk over the music making it even more obnoxious. The most annoying noise issue is in the spa. The thermal pool is quite noisy by its nature. The problem is that they have it in the same room as the supposedly relaxing heated ceramic lounges. That problem gets worse when people try to shout over the water sounds. At times I have had my iPod cranked and still could hardly hear the music. On other ships, the pool is in its own room as it should be.
Now let's talk about the crowds. I have told the story many times that mom and dad took me on several cruises before I was 16. All but one were on freighters that had accommodations for about 100 passengers. This was because my dad hated crowds. I guess I take after him to a degree. We have been on ships that had almost as many passengers and it did not seem to bother me as much as this cruise. As I think about it, it might the the demographics. The other cruises were with Stampin' Up! folks. Indeed they even chartered the entire ship for some of the cruises. These are pretty conservative folks who do not drink a lot and who are not out to impress everybody. Many of the passengers on this boat seem to drink heavily. That results in very loud discussion and some pretty obnoxious behavior. I am not a prude, but it just seems to grate on my for this trip.
Ok having said all of the negative things, I need to make sure that folks understand that this has been a wonderful cruise. We are part of a group of 26 great folks and we had a lot of fun together.
Maybe my bitching is based on the fact that we had to pay for this trip {grin}.
I have attached a group photo at the wedding. Looks pretty neat huh?
That is all for now.
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