Captain’s Club Exclusive Event

When I asked Wyona to have lunch at noon sharp, Greg phoned back to remind me that the Captain’s Club Exclusive Gourmet Event was at 1:30 pm.  A person can only eat so much food, and the truth is, I haven’t eaten since yesterday, and could probably go a few more days without food and not notice it.  For some, the event holds interest for the drinks – but not for us.  The live band from the ship played, and then the band backed up a quartet and duet that sang, songs from the musicals, or old tunes that this crowd would love.  The food stations are more interesting than Red Sangragria, Santa Helena Chardonnay, Anakena Cabernet Sauvignon, Cosmopolitan, Cuba Libre, Heineken, Bud Light and O’Doul’s.  No to the alcohol.  Yes to the Sushi Station, the Crepe Station, the Skewered Fruit and Belgian Chocolate Station, and the Beef Tenderloin Station.

Wyona plated up a hot slice of marbled beef for Greg, and then he and Dave headed off to a lecture about the Holy Land.  Moiya joined them.  Wyona stayed to eat.  By that time the food was closing down and although a waiter said he would bring a crepe with an orange sauce and loaded on top with strawberries, blueberries and pistachio nuts, she didn’t really believe him.  The food station was gone by then; he went down ten levels to have one specially made, delivering it to her in a few minutes.  She was busy writing down his name – on the last day when the customer survey is done, his name and his good deed will be written somewhere.

She knows how important it was, for on another cruise she commented on the service of one of the waiters at lunch.  She met him 6 months later on another cruise and he told her that her notes about him had been passed on to him and were the first time he has ever been complimented during the lunch hour service, for that is impersonal and no one gets credit up there for their service – no tips and no one knows your name.

Wyona was making me laugh, for she likes to drink out of a nice glass in her room.  But the man who cleans her state room is so tidy, that every time she frees a stemmed glass from the dining room, he finds it and takes it out of her stateroom, no matter where she hides it – behind books, under her pillow, behind the TV.  His job is to remove unwanted items and he does it because he needs that gratuity she is going to pay.   She can’t outsmart him on that, even if she does want a stemmed glass to drink her water out of every morning.  I told her yes, I was mad when the service person took away the champagne bucket from our room.  Moiya had a bottle of wine delivered as a gift and Moiya had to offload the alcohol on to Margaret.  A sad day, when I am more interested in the ice container, than in the specialty drinks. 

A waste, really, to send non-drinkers on a cruise.  There are free drinks before dinner every night.  The five of us don’t think it is worth it to go up 6 floors for a Coke or Sprite.  You know the saying, youth is wasted on the young?  In our case the promise of free alcohol is wasted on cruise-ship Mormons.

Arta

The Suez Canal

There is a difference of opinion between the travel guide on the bus and the one on the boat.  The Egyptian on the bus said that his company is the one with whom Celebrity deals when booking the passage through the Suez and that today’s package for the ship to move through the canal is one million dollars.  I believe him. 

The cruise travel director says that the cost of today’s trip is $300,000.  I believe him, too.  Travelling for so long, I have learned to believe everyone.  Either way, for who knows where the truth lays, Greg, Dave and I were not going to miss the Suez Canal journey of 100 kilometers yesterday.  When the convoy of our ship and 17 other ships following it began to move through the canal, we went to the fourteenth floor of the ship, forward and looked out. 

The night was warm and dark.  The moon was high.  I could make out Orion in the sky.  The air was humid.  The whirring sounds of the birds flying beside us was forefront.  Two spot light were pointed forward, one west at about 1 o’clock and one pointing east at about 11 o’clock.  Those two lights were at the front of the shi, by the obelisk on the helicopter pad.  The birds that had been flying alongside the boat (the ones that Wyona had been trying to feed) now came forward and were trapped in the cones of light.

Greg, David and I went to the top of the ship a little after midnight and stood there quietly, watching the ship move by the buoys that had red lights shining from them.  I don’t know exactly what I expected, but it was more than the narrow channel of water through which we were moving – so narrow that two boats can’t pass by each other, so half way through the trip, we stopped in Bitter Lake, to let the ships that are coming from the south to the north, through the canal, and let them pass us, before we travel along the route they have just come from.  I stood there for three hours in the dark night, trying to let my senses have their fill:  the warmth, the humidity, the sounds, the smells, the sight of the water, light and dark, cool and hot.  At 3 a.m. I told Dave and Greg I had to get at least a few hours sleep before watching more of the journey.  Together we walked back to an elevator.  Along the way a man who had just got up to jog on deck said good morning. 

Four hours is enough sleep for me. I was on Moiya and David’s balcony at 7 am.  I hang over the railing of course.  I am not going to miss one moment of this journey.  We are watching the Asia side of the canal.  My binoculars are trained on the military who are in small houses – not big enough to lay down in, and the windows are open.  The truth is, there are no windows.  There is also the space where a door could be, but isn’t.  Sometimes the military wave their rifles at us in a big hello.  Others have their binoculars trained on us as we have ours trained on them, and they give a wave when they know we can see them.  There are many shrill whistles sounded.  Finally I figure out that this is the way people in the desert talk to each other.

Wyona and I study the sand dunes in between watching the men on guard duty by the canal.  At one place there are two buildings, a mosque and a truck.   The men have their washing hanging out behind the military vehicle.  We notice that they deposit their garbage in a gully a small ways away from the two houses, the windows of which are shuttered and closed.  No one else is around on the banks.  “A waste of a perfectly good beach,” I say to Wyona.  It is hot.  All we have ever imagined from movies about the desert is in front of us.   I think about Laurence of Arabia and Nasser (1956), both of which I have seen again, recently. We try to get our perspective right for we are at least eight floors up.  At first it looks like there are a few feet of pebbles that separate the canal water from the desert.  By the time we have studied the small size of some of the guards, we have figured out those are big boulders lining the side of the canal.  Wyona is better at figuring out how the miracle of this trip could have happened to us, for she is the one who did the planning to make it occur.  I just sit and watch, amazed.  The boat is going 10 knots per hour through the canal.  The temperature is about 85 farenheight. Wyona keeps telling me to get into a pair of shorts.  I stay in the shade.  Moiya is in the sun, small beads of perspiration running down her temples. 

By this time we are on Wyona’s said of the ship. When we run over to Dave and Moiya’s side of the ship a few hours later we see gardens, palm trees, roads, houses, a bustling city.  Still just sand dunes and military installations on our side.  “That is because this side of the canal is irrigated by the water from the Nile,” is what Moiya says, for she has been up on the top of the ship, listening to the ship’s travel lecturer.  She wishes that his lecture had been piped into all of the guests’ room, via the T.V.   I wish that as well.  But Wyona and I choose a road less travelled – the one of watching the desert. I did learn how to watch in detail for the more we sat there, talking to each other about what we were seeing, the more we saw.

The adage that I read down at the cruise services desk is “It is not what you see, but how you see it.”  That adage came to mind today.

Arta

Food à la Celebrity Cruise Ship

Do not read if you are hungry.

I listened to our collective conversation at dinner last night.  We talk to each other about what we have ordered that night.  Does my maple braised salmon taste better or worse than Moiya’s chicken kiev or Dave’s pepper steak.  Wyona and Greg were sharing a Slow Cooked Braised Beef Lasagne and a taste of that went around the table to all.  Then we begin about how tonight’s meal compares to what we had the night before.  We can remember what everyone was eating 3 days ago, and how that compares to today. 

Since we had eaten lunch together as well, we talked about the relative merits of the noontime cherry cloufoise as opposed to the dessert in the evening called ‘Paris Meets New York’.  I wish I could say that is all, but our comparisons have to go through all four courses – the appetizers, the soups and salads, the entrees and then the desserts.

Wyona studied the menu, then ordered her meal one day, only to find she had been handed the menu from another day.  Only a few days later another of our party got the wrong menu, so it was slipped to Wyona so that she could repeat the experience.  “I don’t know how that keeps happening,” said the young Phillipiino waiter, grabbing it from her and rushing to correct his mistake.

Last night none of us knew about one  menu item.   Wyona turned to our waiter.  “Baby Mizuna.  That is my choice.  What is it?”, Wyona asked, after he had carefully described everything else on the menu.

“I am sorry to have to tell you we have had to remove it from the menu.  Mizuna is Japanese spinach, and we have to replace it with regular spinach.” 

“Oh no, I would never have a Baby Mizuna salad replaced with regular spinach, I will have to choose something else,” she said to him.  She is so crazy.

After every meal, he asks how the service was.  All of us say perfect.  Wyona always says bad to him.  This is what perfect looks like:  9 utensils to start every meal – 3 at each side of the plate and 3 above.  More utensils are then brought, depending on what one’s order is.  On this point, Wyona came back to me after trying to book a tour on another cruise ship, which the cruise agent on the boat told her, is a cut above this boat, and that she will never be happy travelling any other way again if she travels this other line.  One crew member to every two guests.  I told Wyona that the shock of that would be too great.  Going from being the life-time crew member who serves 8 others, to the other end of the spectrum where someone serves you and your husband?  That shock would give a person a heart attack.  Better to cruise on the cheaper lines and find eternal happiness on the ocean.

A few days previously we had lunch with an Australian couple who had visited fellow cruisers in Portland  -- their first time to America.  Among their top five events there was a trip to Costco. 

“Yes, you can buy a hot dog and unlimited pop”, for $1.50.  And did they have poutine there?” Wyona asked, continuing, “Why did I ask?  They probably only have poutine at Costco in Canada.  Do try that when you come to visit us, but don’t be disappointed in the size of our sundaes compared to theirs and then with her hands they demonstrated the magnificent height of that American delight.” 

Yes, food – elegant on the Celebrity Soltice, memorable at Costco.

As Moiya, Wyona and I were looking at a Special Jewellery Event -- beads and a charm bracelet.  We continued our chat about Costco, about how when one of us goes there, we can be sure the two others have been there the day before and bought exactly the same item.  At the same time Wyona and I were ragging on Moiya.  Margaret is the one who pointed out first that we do this to each other, often.  Margaret thought it was a little mean.  The 3 of us collectively thought about why it is seen by the 3 of us as an act of love about which we take no umbrance and which the one being poked at takes the defense of being aloof to what the other two are saying.  Unless of course we burst out laughing.  Wyona and I didn’t even know we were poking at Moiya, but since we were alone in the shop with only the clerk we mocked for a long time and chattered until the clerk finally said to Moiya, “You are taking the brunt of the conversation today.”

Wyona turned to the clerk.  “Where are you from?”

 “Canada,” she said.  “I know you are from Canada too, for I heard the three of you talk about Costco.  It was making me lonely for one of their large muffins.” 

Hard to believe that someone on a cruise ship with food always within an arms reach, could be lonely for a Costco Muffin.

It is morning now. “Going around the corner of Yeman at 21 knots per hour”, says David, as he is waiting for Moiya to go to breakfast with him and watching channel 5 that shows the front of the ship and then a map of where we are.

“Go to the Sky View Lounge and check out the Captain’s Club Lounge,” I said to her. “We have been on the ship for so many days.  There is an exclusive breakfast event there every morning and I can’t work going there into my busy schedule.  You are on your way there.  Check it out and tell me later what you think.”

“You can’t trick me,” said Moiya. “ That is so far out of my way. Two floors up and then I have to walk across the whole ship since we are in the back and that venue is in the front?  And then I could never report back to you the lounge as you would have seen. Nope. You check it out yourself.”

Guess I might miss ever seeing the Exclusive Breakfast. I wish I could care about it, but I can’t.  I would rather blog.   

Arta

Two Layers of Shoppers

Times have changed, said the shop keeper. There are now only 2 layers of travellers.  Those who have so much money that they can come into a store and buy anything they want, and those who buy the usual cheap tourist souvenirs.  The class of people who had two or three hundred dollars to spend is gone.  They were the middle class and they don’t exist in Europe anymore.  Some Canadians, Americans and Brits, but rarely do the European cruisers have that kind of money any more.

Wyona and I always look at bags, scarves and jewellery.  When Margaret’s husband said good-bye to her as she left for this holiday, one of his last words to her was, “I hope you don’t pick up any bad habits while you are gone.”  She hasn’t.  She picked up 2 scarves in Santorini and one on the boat – and that hardly counts as shopping.

“Holy Doodle”, she said when she saw the ring Wyona had purchased but and then offered to let me buy from her. Picking up a piece of jewellery is a significant investment of time; I was glad to be on the receiving end of that deal.   I just say yes. Yesterday at the end of a long day in Santorini, we stopped by some merchants who had 35 % or 50 % off of their rings and necklaces – the end of the season sale. 

Easy to tell it was the end of the season.  Many of the villas and hotels are already closed – really closed.  Plywood is nailed over their windows, no deck chairs are out, and their pools are empty. We didn’t take a ship excursion into town.  Wyona had read that if you go into the village at the other end of Fia, take the cable car to the top of the cliffs and then ride a local bus That way you can go to Oia (EE-yah) for €1.6: 4 euros up in the cable car, 4 down and 1.6 each way into town and out – a grand total of 11.2 euros for the day instead of 89 on a boat excursion.  Another significant saving would have been to walk to the top of the cliffs on the same trail that a donkey ride can also transport you to the top, the donkey ride being 4 euros – the same price as the cable car.

I can’t remember the last bus I rode where the bus fare is taken on the ride – except for those trips I take home from Sicamous and haven’t purchased a pre-paid ticket. Then I am all the way to Golden before I have to pay. Here the local ticket taker walks down the crowded isle, bills stuffed in one hand, a set of tickets he tears off in another and clenched between his hands is a set of 5 metals columns out of which he dispenses the correct change, should people give him bills.  “What do I want 30 centimes back from 3.50” said Wyona, “so I just whispered to him, ‘Keep the change.’  That is how my hand got an extra squeeze and a large smile from him.”

She did the same thing with her money to a clerk in a jewellery store in Athens.  A young 19 year old shopkeeper said to her on the street, “Come in.  I give you no hassle.” 

“No hassle?” she confirmed. 

“None ,” he said and he was true to her word.  He let her look around for more than an hour, just left her alone, though she had gathered information along the way that it was his brother’s shop (aged 32) and his uncle was somehow in the family business. 

When the bill was finally totaled up, for her it was tip time – to the younger shop keeper, even though the older brother and uncle had tried to hover around making the sale.  When he saw the size of the tip he ran to get her another “free” gift.  The tip may have been too much for him to comprehend.

Arta

Sister Trip

Moiya, Wyona and I took a sister trip -- something we learned to do years ago.  I would like to say it is an annual event that it is driven by some anniversary, but no ... it just happens when one of us thinks – why is it that we are so busy we don’t have time for each other anymore.  We hop in a car and have no idea if we will be driving 2 miles or 200.  We only know we are getting away together.

This week Wyona was the driving force behind organizing a trip which is a lot of work and entails the following: make sure that all three of us can leave the property at the same time,  making sure that we have enough money behind our credit cards so as not to not be hindered by any of the hidden costs that such a trip can incur.

Moiya saved money on yesterday’s sister-trip.  Lunch at Red Robins was a burger for each of the three of us.  She is the only one who turned her burger over to examine the bottom of the bun.  Now, tell me, who does that in a restaurant. But ¾ of the way through, she had to take a look and then ask the waitress about the green splotches on the bottom of the bun.  The manager came out to assure Moiya that he had thrown out the rest of the buns in that package, and that this item would be deleted from her bill and to thank Moiya for so graciously bringing that fact to their attention.  That is the moment (recognizing the now low price of Moiya’s bill) that Wyona decided it was her turn to treat Moiya to lunch -- the bill being only a Coke and some sweet potato fries.

At our last stop of the day, Costco, we stopped for an ice cream cone.  I am the one who loves cones.  They got cones, but the clerk delivered a sundae to me.  “I wanted a cone,” I said.  “Yes, I know,” said the cashier, “but the helper delivered a sundae, so I will just charge you 23 cents more.”  At 3 pm, I am too tired to argue and deliver the extra money to her.  She takes a cone and places it upside down on my sundae.  Now doesn’t look appetizing to me.  And further, I am worrying that someone watching will think that is the way I order my sundaes. In the meantime, someone in the food line-up has commented on Wyona’s new pillows, and in a monologue has told Wyona that the now non-stop chatter lives in Kelowna for 7 months of the year, rent4s in Hawaii for 5 months of the year, has done this for 35 years and has cruised 8 times. The woman is also pulling her latest cruise agenda out of her purse to show Wyona – who really hasn’t had the chance to say a word to her. Then the woman says, “So nice, chatting and off she goes,” Wyona. still silent, watching her leave, shakes her own head and asks, “What did I do to deserve that!”

Wyona told me never to leave my bill taped onto items in the cart. Someone might steal the bill and the groceries, she said, and then Wyona checked that I didn’t ignore her caution to me and watched me until I tucked my receipt into my purse.  When it was time to produce our receipts at the Costco Exit Wyona couldn’t find hers.  The futile exercise of finding her now-lost- receipt lead to checking each of her pockets – of which she has many ... on every outfit she wears, just not on today’s clothing, but that is her regular uniform – lots of pockets. Watching her check each pocket is like seeing someone give themselves their own security pat down.  Next she dumped out her purse onto the camera counter where the clerk also helped her try to find the receipt, by going through multiple papers of the day.   

No receipt. 

A third strategy, the camera clerk told her, is to go to customer service and get a duplicate receipt – not a bad thing to do unless you have to do it in the presence of the person you have just lectured about keeping good care of your receipts.

Oh yes.  Sister trips are good trips.

Arta

Hubbard Glacier

Wyona here:

Right now it is 10 p.m. at night.

We spent the day from 6:00 a.m. until 9:00 a.m. seeing amazing things as we cruised Hubbard Glacier in Alaska.

Photo: Wyona Bates

We were just one half mile away from the glacier, the closest the captain has gone for the last 30 cruises.

As we went in there were a few icebergs but not enough to stop us.

However, as the captain went to exit Yukatuk Bay, the iceburgs had gathered behind us so he took a second route out around an island close by.

Photo: Wyona Bates

Here are a few of the pictures.

It was beautiful, amazing and cold!!!!

For the last three hours today we have been engulfed by thick fog so the captain pulls the fog horn every five minutes.

We had a lucky, clear and sunny day.

Wyona

The Travellers in First Class

Yes, Tonia -- I am one of those who love train travel.

To get Wyona's and my tickets for the Britrail passes, there was only once choice, due to our advancing ages. We had to travel first class.  That was hard on two women who are always looking for sales.

Still, I am hooked on train travel.

That would make sense, considering the number of times I have stood at the side of the tracks and waved to those who are passing by. 

 2... our passes let us travel through England, Scotland and Wales ...

And I am missing my travel companion
Greg and I were lucky.

We had Wyona who would figure out the schedules, look for destinations that would work between stations, pack a lunch for us, make reservations for hotels if we had to stay over, and she would act as the alarm clock -- the one who got us out the door on time, for trains wait for no one. 

... the feast?  Wyona's box lunch for  us ...

When Greg retired he got a new life and I lost an old one -- the one where I did lots of train travel.

What would be good for me is if he would go and find some contract work.

Then Wyona would be mine again. l

I miss those picnic lunches on trains. 

Arta