Statesman > XL Blogs > Archives > 2005 > June > 16 > Entry
The cruise report
So here’s the recap of the Alaska cruise. Seven nights. Three ports. Many Dramamine.
Life’s sweetest reward: There is a misconception that one spends a cruise rolling naked in prime rib, burying one’s face in giant creampuffs. Nothing so decadent happened on my watch. The food was decent, though — and certainly scads better than on my first cruise. We ditched the formal dining room, which means that somewhere there’s a very angry waiter who wanted out tips, and went to the casual cafe every night. I was pleased with the tasty soups, salads, antipasti and stir-fry, and flat-out enraptured with the suspiciously decadent low-fat frozen yogurt. But there were some surprising misfires. I revised my rule that in a ramekin=good. And how do you mess up just a plain old hunk of cheese? Sarah confused. Head hurt.
Come aboard, we’re expecting you: Want to see our ship? Pretty cool, eh? There was even actual art all over the ship, and it touched my heart my heart that someone went to the effort to make this happen.
An irrational pet peeve of mind is that various places onboard had names and, the cruise line tried to convince us, unique identities. As if someone had decided to open up a hot new nightclub and it just happens to be on Deck 13.
And I had a lot of trouble finding my way around the ship. I went upstairs when I should have gone down. Sometimes I had to circle around a few times to find the exit to the cafe. But the cruise line cannot be blamed for this.
Fellow travelers were occasionally problematic. After we spent the day in Juneau, my dad overheard two other passengers pondering what the capital of Alaska was. They decided it was Anchorage.
One evening, we sailed into prime whale-watching territory. Suddenly, everyone was Captain Ahab, freely tossing around phrases like “He’s breaching!” I also heard a lot of this: “Hey, there’s one … oh, wait. That’s a wave.”
Your ship’s crew: My stateroom attendant’s name was Vaughan. I kept him expecting him to turn to me and say “My name isn’t really Vaughan …” and then get smashed by a breaching whale.
At first, I thought Vaughan was emotionally withholding because he wouldn’t fold my towels into animal shapes, but on Thursday, there was a little towel dog waiting on me. Or maybe it was an elephant.
Constantly haunting me was the disembodied voice of Allan, our cruise director. Really, by the second day, he could have just begun his announcements with “Hey, it’s Allan, what’s up?” but he never failed to remind us that he, Allan, was our cruise director. I was worried that Allan, my cruise director, had been up for about three weeks solid, concocting exciting shipboard activities for me, but not worried enough to actually partake of them. Not the art auction, not karaoke, not even Strippers of the Sea, which I feared might involve seeing way too much of Allan, my cruise director.
On a friendly shore: Off the ship, our fate was often in the hands of tour guides, and that was indeed a gamble. I missed this, but I’m told that one of the guides instructed the group to do “moose waves” This apparently involved sticking your thumbs in your ears and flapping your hands as if they were moose antlers. I know — it makes no sense to me either. This is the kind of thing that will win you the enmity of my family. Later, we took a blood oath to destroy the guide and her people, no matter how many generations it might take.
I think I was the sole Lindner grumpy enough to be bugged by another guide, whose every sentence had both unnecessary pauses and ended on an up note, as if it were a question. Like this: “We …are the rainiest … city in the nation?” Wishing very, very hard did not make my iPod Shuffle fly to me from the ship.
On the other hand, low-key Ian, who walked us through a rainforest, had appropriate inflections and did not try to make anyone dance the hokey-pokey or something like that.
And the helicopter pilot my brother and I had on our glacier tour totally rocked. My mom, who was in another copter, said it looked like he was being more daring than her pilot, which made us feel quite “Top Gun.”
Set a course for adventure: I have a lot of problems with how often cruise lines use the word “adventure” to try to get you to take cruises. I’m not trying to disparage the experience at all, but I think for an adventure you need a pickup truck and guns.
That said, you can do some neato things on a cruise. We saw four glaciers on the helicopter tour, which was amazing (a couple of amazement points were deducted because the tour company force-fed us Enya on our headphones). One of the glaciers was called The Hole in the Wall, but I hear it used to be better.
We got out and walked on one of the other glaciers. I know you’re holding your breath here, but I didn’t fall. Or even almost fall. This at least partly due to the “Napoleon Dynamite”-type boots we slipped on over our regular shoes. It kind of made me want to dance on the glacier, but there was no point pushing my luck.
I did have one moment of fear. I went in the Interpretive Center at one of our stops, thirsting for knowledge, and the only thing in the room was taxidermied animals. You know that one part in “Sin City”? Yeah.
Let if flow — it flows back to you: I liked visiting Alaska — how else would I have found out that Juneau has tanning salons? — but I was awfully happy to see Texas again. Stepping off the plane, I felt a blast of hot, humid air — and of pure joy. My John Cusack Medal of Honor-winning boyfriend picked me up and we spent the next day shopping, eating and couch-sitting. Home rules, even if there aren’t any towel animals.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: By Sarah Lindner
Comments
By kk
June 17, 2005 07:44 AM | Link to this
Sarah -- Thank you for this snip of brilliance ...
"My stateroom attendant’s name was Vaughan. I kept him expecting him to turn to me and say “My name isn’t really Vaughan …� and then get smashed by a breaching whale."
By Ellen
June 17, 2005 11:24 AM | Link to this
What a nice surprise. When I clicked on this link, I fully expected a brief "what?" reaction to Tom popping the question...
By Jeff
June 17, 2005 05:07 PM | Link to this
Thanks for the shout-out, and as always, I wear my Cusack Medal with pride. Great wrapup of the cruise, although I miss the story of your dad's reaction to the music played at breakfast & lunch. ("What's that called?" "Dance music, Daddy?" "No, that's not it...")