A last word on the Cruise

 

I felt a bit emotional about the end of the cruise, whether that was because I'd enjoyed it so much or just Stockholm Syndrome I can’t easily say, but it was definitely an important holiday within our larger trip.

We met a lot of very nice people.  One group in particular stand out (Hi Sue, Andy and the rest of you) from our second dinner, who were a delightful crowd of veteran cruise-goers also from the UK.  It was nice to meet people with their own stories to tell, as (and this will sound spoiled as hell) we are getting a bit sick of our own voices, talking about this trip.  So our raucous table of miscreants (the waiter had us sing an Elvis song, for no reason I can discern) was a welcome change of scene.

The entertainment was cheesy but endearing. We did pretty well at the cruise-long quiz league, bearing in mind there was just us two in the team.  We won the Mr and Mrs game, because survival requires that I be synchronised to my wife’s every whim and thought.  Although Chan still doesn’t know why she dragged us up on stage.  Although I had managed to tie my bow tie that night (first time since we got married, and that time I had our naval officer friend Simon to dress me) so perhaps she just made the most of me being presentable.

On the last day at sea there was an egg-drop competition which we failed at comprehensively.  We had to build something to protect an egg after we lofted it off the top floor of the atrium.  We rather half-arsed ours by filling four condoms with water and packing them, some plastic bags and one and a half pieces of French toast around our egg.  We made an eggy, slightly-lubed water bomb. Some of the other entries were more creative but we were going for accuracy.

I dubbed it “The Babymaker”


Deputy Cruise Director Matt with “Eggburt”

 
To be fair, Chan was dead on.

So, the entertainment as cheesy, a fair number of our fellow passengers were stereotypical grouchy old Americans, the restaurant food was nice but did have the hint of ‘airline’ about it due to the scale of production, and the bodies scattered about the pool don’t bear looking at, but for all that it was a pleasant place to call home for two weeks.  The staff really made constant efforts to make everything great and I really liked wandering around the ship, eating or swimming or whatever at a whim.  

As we approach the end of the American phase, it was nice to see some countries that we otherwise might not have visited, and to have this to bookmark this part of the trip.

Kurzfassung auf Deutsch: Die Kreuzfahrt ist beendet. Es war angenehm und wir einige tolle Leute kennen gelernt.