This post is part of a series. To catch up, go read Cruzin’.
Day two and we are at sea, off the cost of Mexico. Sachie and I wake before dawn, watch a Caribbean sunrise before the worst of the heat and humidity sets in.
I’m still foggy, vulnerable, when there’s a knock on the door. Could it be? Was this it? We lock eyes and I see my own hopes and fears written on Sachie’s face. Even far from sight of land, they know we are here, they know our cabin. They have come.
“Room service! Your breakfast is here,” it was Kamil, our steward. He had two plates of fruit, croissants, decaff, double-barrel black coffee for me and two types of fruit juice, and he meant business.
Room-service breakfast is a decadence that that even I don’t stoop to but this was magnificent. Other than the coffee. Today we would be at sea all day and it’s a chance to explore the ship and generally loaf about. I’m going to say it, the enforced lassitude was pretty welcome.
I’ll take this opportunity to gather up some of my B&W film photos because there’s not much else going on until the cocktail party at 3pm.
It’s a bloody long walk from one end to the other and all the rooms cabins look the same. Luckily we were next to the lift.
Here are some folks enjoying a Jacuzzi. The ship is famous for these and has a couple that are shaped like old-timey champagne glasses. Transparent and one floor deck up, so no farting or hanky-panky.
That’s the main pool and it’s the focus of above-decks life. It’s here that you can see the ship’s funnels in the X shape, logo of the line and the big elephant statue. More on him later.
There’s some interesting architecture about, naval architecture that is, but I’m going to say that overall the design is fairly tasteful.
And here we are powering through the Caribbean with no land in sight. It’s a sea-life for me. An open horizon, free to chose any point on the compass and… what’s that? Yes, a drink does sound good.
It’s just after lunch and there’s people on the jogging track (walking) and exercise on the pool-deck.
But it looks like the queue for early-afternoon brighteners is extending into the yoga space.
Of course there’s more than one pool. There’s another one inside that’s warm in winter and cool in summer, because it’s inside. There’s another pool at the front, which is essentially the first-class area because we are not allowed there. They are allowed in here, and you can tell them because their cards are a different colour. Oh! How I yearn to depart my humble five-star common life and ascend to the ship’s bow with the great and good!
If you look carefully you can see another, less fortunate but still enormous cruise ship being, literally, left in our wake. Top left. This is the view from the “stern” of the ship. The stern is the ‘ass’ or ‘butt’ of the boat. Here’s another view.
Ass you can see, the ship has an ample ‘stern’, or ‘butt’. The glassed-in section is Eden bar, above you can see a railing, where I took the previous shot. Sailor-folk call it the taffrail.
And here we are. This, I guess terrace? No! Deck! is adjacent to the buffet and coffee shop (and the pizza bar, open 24/7) and is where we would take lunch.
And who’s that now? Mrs Sachie is here playing her prosecco-flute. That other liner hasn’t caught up with us either. Horizon, centre-right.
Up top there’s a garden, or a lot of pot-plants. No doubt so the crew can see a bit of green after months at sea. To smell the shore and dream of one day going home to become rich on the hard-won barrels of whale-oil stowed in the hold. Ha ha, no. The only crew up here are taking your drink orders and it’s a place to park the kids and goggle at movies on the big screen. Also, the smoking area deck is around the corner.
That’s enough art-student photography. Back to the 21st Century.
Remember that cocktail party at three? Attendance mandatory? It was at Eden bar, which is pretty nice. Split over two floors decks with lots of plants.
Our friends from the night before filtered into a little roped-off section, waiters stewards with trays of colourful cocktails cruised about. Most of Mrs Sachie’s MVC colleagues were of the American persuasion and, I’m going to say it, a lot of them are big ladies.
Now, I struggle to be in kissing-distance of the top-end of my healthy BMI but, fuck me there’s a lot of fat ladies at this party and they can’t all have hormone issues. I honestly don’t want to cause anybody hurt so I’m going to anonyimise this photo.
There. The weird thing is, the husbands are normal, mostly. And by normal, I mean like me. Husky, but could probably run on lap of the track above us before getting a stitch. Maybe three before vomiting. I’m not trying to be mean, although I probably am, but the phenomena of very large women and their frequency was pretty… eye-opening. I don’t want lay blame as there are clearly other forces at work but… crikey. I’ll write about this more if I get around to the Disneyland section later in the trip.
Sachie and I retired a table halfway up the stairs with our, fairly ordinary, cocktails while her US colleagues orbited below, to feel a bit smug. After a while, the captain turned up.
That’s Kate McCue and she’s skinny as a rake. I guess ship-borne rations are not as generous as the meals state-side, but it’s probably just genetics. She is something of a ‘celebrity’ on the Celebrity line and is apparently the first woman to command a vessel of this class. She is from landlocked Las Vegas (kind of) also is rumoured to have a hairless ship’s cat and has taken some valuable time off from steering the ship to come and talk to us. Now, I’ve just read the article I liked above and I know that she is no longer captain but that is now and this was then.
When she’s not making appearances, it’s the captain’s job to make morning and evening announcements and toot the horn. At least as far as I can tell. Maybe she nominates the hog’s-eye man each night or something too. The chauvinist in me speculated that there was some steely-eyed man at the helm while I watched her speak and quietly stroked my goatee.
Mrs Sachie and I left early and I want to say that her colleagues were overwhelmingly welcome and lovely people, as everyone was on this trip, but if I don’t make fun of them, you won’t keep reading. So it’s your fault.
Mrs Sachie and I snuck away from the cocktail party to have some cocktails back at the Mast Bar, which would become our hideout for the cruise.
Dinner, this night, was at Cyprus, the Greek place.
We got a table near a window and there really is something to watching the sea roll by while getting a back-rub, being spoon-fed by a Filipino waiter as the somellier pours sparkling wine down your throat from above. That’s what it felt like anyway.
It’s time to talk about the elephant in the pool.
You can’t really miss Dumbo, he’s kind of the star of the ship and he’s there day and night balanced precariously on…
THE BODY OF THE WORKING MAN.
You have to hand it to Celebrity Cruises that they would place this statue at its greatest place of honour, the pool deck, to be gazed upon and pondered by ‘Producer-Joe from LA’ as he reclines on his lounger, Mai-Thai cupped in one hand other hand on a starlet’s bikini-cup. The outsized elephant of capitalism, the very symbol of the ‘not-union’ US-Republican party, balances and relies on this Atlas of the working-class, whose weary muscles strain under the weight day-in, day-out. Yet we can see from his determined face that he will never give in, never give up, to carry this weighty load, so much larger than himself, to the ends of his sinew. These two rely utterly on each other in a majesty of symbiosis. The noble worker perspiring into his singlet to keep the mighty elephant aloft. For if disaster were to strike and the elephant were to grow too dense, too rich in body and form and crush the only being keeping him aloft, why, the elephant would have to stand on its own two four feet and walk around instead of being carried. Likewise, if the elephant were to fall off, the man would lose all purpose in life and probably starve. No matter the outcome, it’s hard not to admire the noble worker and grieve his inevitable fate.
Given the crushing conditions that many cruise-crew work under, surviving on tips, with no legal protection under the Law of the Sea and the Libertarian wet-dream that cruise ships are, I think the artist snuck one by them.
Looks like I’m on the elephant, and I didn’t pay a penny to be on this boat. In our own little world, that’s Mrs Sachie straining under there while BMI scare-tactic Dan walks on her back. It’s OK, she asks me to from time to time. Maybe that guy just has a really badly slipped-disk.
Keeping on the theme of a massive and greedy capitalist delicately balanced on the neck of his diminutive brother, tomorrow we land in Mexico!