And now the moment you’ve all been waiting for! Or… maybe just the moment that I’ve been waiting for, by which I mean I intended to write every day on my two week Atlantic crossing, and then I wrote on none of them, because it turns out that despite being in the middle of the ocean, there’s a heck of a lot to do on a cruise ship.
I wasn’t sure what to expect when I first boarded Royal Caribbean’s Brilliance of the Seas in Harwich, England. I’d never been on a cruise before, and to my travelling sensibilities spending only a few hours in each port city sounded like a really raw deal. As far as a way back to North America though, the value I got on a last minute discount travel site couldn’t be beat, so all things aside I was quite excited for the experience. As it turns out, my expectations were both met and mistaken. It was true, I hadn’t enough time in any of the ports at which we stopped, and yet I think cruising might just qualify as the best vacation I have ever had.
I’ve never been quite comfortable receiving services at places like restaurants and hotels and the like, and that did take some getting used to, but after seven months out of my element, glorious as they were, it was indescribably wonderful to be somewhere I didn’t have to worry about a thing. From the moment you board the ship, the cruise is engineered to make sure everything is taken care of for you. I managed to avoid the porters offering to take my luggage because it was all strapped to my back, but the cruise itself is peppered with staff put there to be make sure you don’t have to do a thing.
Food, for instance, is entirely complimentary. In addition to the Windjammer buffet, open almost all day, there is Park Cafe by the indoor pool serving a more limited fare for breakfast, lunch, and late night snacks, and the main dining room that will serve you like a five star restaurant three meals a day. I had my first dinner and breakfast at that dining room, but then the awkwardness of being attended to while I was a) alone and b) preferred to serve myself became too much. I had most of my meals that first week at the Windjammer, stopping by Park Cafe when I wanted an odd coffee or a piece of fruit, but then I met the Diamond Quartet.
That’s what I call them in my head, anyway, because they're all Royal Caribbean Crown & Anchor Diamond Members. Judy, Jackie, John and Arlynn are a band of senior citizens I met at the Solo Travelers’ Lunch on our first full day at sea. They met on a cruise ages ago and now coordinate to go together, but seeing as they’re all single they still consider themselves solo. I didn’t mind the distinction, and by the end of lunch they liked me well enough that they invited me to join their table at dinner.
Now, it was very nice of them to invite me, and I got along with the table quite well. In addition to the Diamond Quartet, I was joining Bud, a lawyer from California whose wife didn’t like the dining room and thus never ate there, and Chuck and Chris, a hilarious couple from Boston. All of these people were older than my parents, and in the case of the Quartet probably my grandparents, but they made for good conversation over gourmet meals. Nevertheless, there were downsides to eating in the dining room too.
For one, as social and discerning as the table was, it took an average of two hours to finish a meal; two hours that I could have been reading or writing or enjoying time with me, myself, and I. Then there was the food that was, in my opinion, too fancy. It was always delicious, sure, but this is me. I would rather have a raw tomato and a boiled egg than some expertly crafted eggplant and kalamata olive tartare any day. Without the buffet, I also had less control over what and how much of things I ate. When ordering off a menu, one that changes every night, I usually only had one or two vegetarian options, and if those were largely pasta or potatoes or butter, well… there wasn’t much I could do about that. At least it was all delicious?
Or I thought it was delicious anyway. The downside to the company, which I would like to reiterate I loved on a personal level, was that we had very different food and service standards. I’ll eat just about anything if it’s only a matter of taste, and when someone brings me a plate of food, I feel more or less obligated to like it anyway. The rest of the table, however, were a bit more accustomed to fancy meals and five star service, which meant a lot of disdainful looks, judgmental comments, and sending back of dishes. Out waitress, Katrina, took it all wonderfully, but I still found the contempt with which they treated the food (and often the staff and entertainment options) appalling. It was an eye-opening window into how the ‘other half’ lives, but I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that people who had cruised between seventeen and eighty-two times might feel entitled to their opinions no matter how offensive.
I wasn’t serving them at any rate, so we had a lot of lovely conversations, and on the last night of the cruise there was much rejoicing and picture taking along with the exchanging of cards. I even ran into the ladies of the Diamond Quartet at the Boston bus station while on the phone with my mother. My dining companions, however, were certainly not the only friends I made on the cruise.
Of all the cruise activities I participated in on board, trivia was far and away my most frequent. I had met Lana in line to book a Shore Excursion the very first day, and when I saw her at trivia later, she invited me to come over and sit down. In that instant, the Fun Bunch trivia team was formed: Lana, Lana’s husband Ernie, Linda, Mary Anne, Gina, and myself. We played a lot. There was morning and evening trivia every day, plus progressive trivia on sea days where each day’s points became cumulative. Some days were better for us than others, but our crowning moment was definitely a special edition of evening trivia on the second to last night. Rather than regular trivia questions, we were asked questions about the crew, and having taken an interest in them because I’m considering working on a cruise ship myself, we were able to blow the competition away. Our prize? Royal Caribbean bags, hats, whistles, and travel wallets.
When I wasn’t playing trivia, there were plenty of other things to keep me busy on the ship as well. Every morning I woke up with the sun to make it to the hour of morning fitness classes in the state of the art gym, one half of stretching and the other of either abs or conditioning. Sometimes afterwards I would hop in the sauna or the steam room, of if so inclined I could have jumped in one of the multiple pools and hot tubs or onto the outdoor rock climbing wall or miniature gold course. Often time there were lectures and game shows scheduled to fill our time, as well as live musicians and photo opportunities set up around the ship. I didn’t do any of the dance classes, bingo tournaments, or crafting exercises, and I never patronized the casino or the extra fancy, non-complimentary restaurants, but missed opportunities aside, the highlight of the entertainment retinue had to be the shows.
Dru, our Cruise Director, promised us that we would see more shows on our Atlantic crossing than on any other cruise of fourteen nights or less guaranteed, and boy did he deliver. Every night there was a headliner show, including singers, dancers, musicians, comedians, magicians, jugglers and so on and so forth. On sea days, there was even a matinee show to boot. I think my favorites were probably the comedian, Steven Scott, the pianist, and the violinists, though I quite enjoyed singer Jayne Curry as well. By the end of the cruise, however, I was so inundated with shows I started skipping a few of them. I needed some time to myself, and that’s impossible to find outside your room on a cruise ship.
We didn’t spend all of our time on the cruise ship though. As I’m sure you know, cruise ships stop at various ports and we’re all allowed to get off and explore, if only for a few hours. At all of these stops the ships offer guided tours called excursions that will take passengers to all manner of local places. As you might have guessed, prices were exorbitant, but I did take one, and it certainly turned out to be one worth taking.
My excursion took place the very first day of the cruise as we stopped in Le Havre, France. Many people were going to Paris, where I can’t imagine they got anything out of the three or four hours they could have spent there after the time it took to drive. Having already been to Paris anyway, I instead boarded a bus for Normandy, headed to the D-Day Beaches and the little town of Bayeux.
I’d always wanted to see the D-Day Beaches, and indeed they were a moving sight. We visited the second biggest American cemetery in the region, walked along Nebraska & Omaha Beaches, and got some spectacular historical commentary from our guide in between. At our gourmet, open bar lunch I made friends with two couples from Texas, as well as what may have been the only other truly solo traveler on the cruise, thirty-five year old Julie from Rhode Island. She was kind enough, but I don’t know that I could have taken her in more than small doses. Since we only ever talked in passing on the ship though, that predilection worked out just fine.
As for the Bayeux Tapestry, the main draw to Bayeux, I had never heard of it. Maybe it’s a good thing I hadn’t though, because if I’d known what we were going to see I might not have been able to contain my excitement. The tapestry, you see, is a visual retelling of William the Conqueror’s invasion of England in 1066. It shows everything from the previous King of England sending his chosen heir to tell William tough luck, he wasn’t getting the throne, on to William’s forcing that heir to renounce his claim, and the resulting invasion when he reneged on his word. I poured over every detail, and then over the exhibits in the museum. I was a little bit rushed because it was a guided tour, but they’d given us a couple hours of free time so the rush wasn’t too bad. I still wanted to see the cathedral though, the original display venue for the tapestry, and missing that cathedral would have been the biggest shame of the entire trip.
I had never heard to Bayeux Cathedral, but I think it might trump Winchester in terms of sheer impact. The pictures don’t do it justice, and even if they did I’m not sure I could explain the depths of my fascination with the way the layers of architecture are so seamlessly laid one on top of the other. You can see the perpendicular arches laid atop the Norman columns, the remains of their capitals supporting the baroque dome towering over the crossing. Even the other members of the tour group, laughing at me as I downright swooned my way back onto the bus, agreed that it was refreshingly impressive after the long line of cathedrals they’d seen strung across Europe.
All in all, it was quite enjoyable for a guided group tour, and well worth the expense to even my penny pinching wallet - not that one good experience was going to convince to shell out hundreds of dollars hoping for something similar at any of the other stops.
Our second port of call was Portland, England, a tiny almost island of a town in the county of Dorset. I had intended to start my self-guided private tour of the city with Portland Castle, just beyond the port, and then climb up to the lighthouse on the other side of the island. When we disembarked, however, I quickly learned that no one was allowed through the port on foot. We could be shuttled to the gate, the bus for which continued on to the castle anyway, or shuttled in to the larger town of Weymouth across the tiny bridge of land that connected Portland to the coast. Now logic would say that didn’t matter. I’d planned to start with the castle anyway. When I heard the word Weymouth, however, all that changed.
Weymouth, you see, features heavily in Emma, the Jane Austen novel I’d most recently finished. I’d expected it was too far away to get to on foot, but if they were going to shuttle me for free…
I still started with the castle, because castle, and boy was I glad I did. It turns out I’d missed the tiny fact that Portland Castle was one of Henry VIII’s device castles, built purely as part of a wider defensive strategy against potential invasion from Charles V of Spain. (For those of you who don’t know, I once got Charles V to undertake that invasion in an alternate reality. And he won. It was epic.) So I spent a bit learning all about Tudor military practices, and then caught the bus back to the ship so that I take the other shuttle into Weymouth and live out my literary imaginings in real life.
I don’t know that there’s much to say about Weymouth. It’s your average coastal English town: big brick buildings, lots of cobblestones and bridges. I wandered the streets, grinning like a school girl, got myself some fish and chips, and headed back to the port.
Port number three was Cobh, Ireland, the port linked with Ireland’s second city, Cork. Of all the ports of call I think I was most looking forward to Cork, and I wasn’t the least bit disappointed. It was a half-hour train ride into the city along the lush and glittering coast. Once there I struck out to see the city like I do any unfamiliar ground, on foot with a carefully selected path.
I began by hiking upward into the picturesque neighborhood of Shandon, home to St. Anne’s Church, the symbol of Cork. I poked my head in the church, though I didn’t pay to climb the tower. Interesting fact about the tower though, it’s called the four faced liar because the four clocks on each face never tell quite the same time.
Despite the municipal importance of St. Anne’s Church, however, it was the Cathedral of St. Mary and St. Anne just a few blocks away that drew more of my attention. I hadn’t actually planned to stop there until I saw just how close it was. Having stepped in the door for a quick look around though, I was immediately approached by an intense old man, furtively holding out a wall calendar featuring pictures of the church. “Keep it,” he said, barely looking at me as he went back to kneeling in the very last pew, praying fervently. The whole episode struck me as strange, but I saw an entire rack of the calendars behind him and they certainly looked free, so I shrugged, tucked it away, and continued with my look around the church, sitting down to pray a bit, even lighting a candle, and then making for the door to continue my walk.
It was as I reached the door that I felt the old mans eyes on me. It wasn’t a bad look, but he seemed almost to have seen a ghost. His eyes were wide and staring, mouth hanging open, and as I walked through the doors I saw him craning to look through the window until I was firmly out of sight. I’m not sure why he was staring so blatantly, or what I might have done, but it was certainly worth a remark. I still have the calendar. It gives me fond memories.
From the Cathedral I made my way up to Cork City Gaol. Alas, my one regret from Cork was that I didn’t have time to tour it. I meandered around the grounds for a bit though, took a few pictures, considered what it must have been like to be a prisoner in such a large and imposing building, and the I headed back down hill. My path took me through Fitzgerald Park, past Cork Public Museum that was just closing for lunch as I passed, and into the city center. There I had the chance to explore the English market, get a taste for the local library, and even stop by the shopping mall full of students just getting off school, before I had to make my way back to the ship. It’s a good thing I made it on time too. We ended up leaving two people in Cork, though I’m not sure if they caught up with the ship eventually or not.
Following Cork was our first sea day, ending the next morning as we landed in the Faroe Islands, a tiny out cropping of islands in the northern Atlantic that once belonged to Denmark. Though they are now self-governing, they still share their currency with Denmark, and until just recently Denmark was in charge of the diplomatic relations as well. Faroese culture, however, is incredibly distinct. The lecture I attended on that previous sea day said so. With only a few hours in port I didn’t like my chances of finding that out for myself, but there’s so much to
see of Faroese culture anyway. The reason the Faroe Islands have been drawing tourists, so many in fact that they won Best Island Destination just last year in some or other reputable magazine whose name I now forget, is their stunning natural scenery.
That decided it for me. I was going hiking. And so hiking I went.
The port of Klaksvik also provided a free shuttle into town, so I took that, made a quick visit to the well reviewed church found therein, and began my climb up the mountain. Klaksvik, you see, sits in the valley between two distinct, very Faroese peaks. There was a path up the first half, lined with tiny mountain streams and waterfalls, peppered here and there with odd little goats. The path ended at a view point, but the end of the path of course was where the fun began.
I wasn’t going to hop the fence, but it was when I saw the locals doing it that I decided I could follow their lead. It was wet at the top of the mountain, more bog than anything else. I had to struggle to find a solid foot hold and I didn’t always succeed. A few minutes in to my free hiking, it also started to rain. That was when any hope I had of staying dry failed, but at that point I was determined. Up and up and up I went, my shoes getting muddier and wetter all the time. As I rose those, the clouds began to thicken, and as I neared the top there was a veritable wave of white surging up around me, overtaking me like a storm of blindness that far from terrifying just left me with this overwhelming feeling of peace.
I did make it to the top eventually, and all the cold and the wind and the rain was so indescribably worth it. Standing there at the pinnacle of nothingness is one of those moments I will remember for the rest of my life. I felt absolutely alone in the world, but in such a good and uplifting way. I don’t suppose there really could be any better way of being at one with nature than having it surround you all on its own.
I couldn’t stay up there forever though, especially in the state I was in. Of course the weather began to clear as soon as I started to make my way down, not that that was enough to warm me up. I still needed a long hot shower and a full night of several thick layers before I felt like myself again. I never thought I’d see the day I didn’t mind being cold, but with views like this even I couldn’t complain.
When we got to Reykjavik, Iceland, two days after Klaksvik, I abandoned my hiking plans there before we even got off the boat. The mountain in Iceland was much further away, and the forecast - on my phone as well as out my window - said freezing rain for the duration of our stay. And when they say freezing in Iceland? They mean freezing.
We were ported overnight in Reykjavik, which meant if I wasn’t going hiking I should have had enough time to explore most of the city. When we got in at noon that first day then I bundled up, grabbed my umbrella, and set off to see what I could see. It didn’t really work. As beautiful as the coast was, and as much as I enjoyed walking, the cold just kept getting to me. It was about an hour’s walk from the ship into town because I didn’t want to pay the port the $15 they were asking to ferry me. The walk included an art museum and a statue donated by the United States.
When I got to the famous Solfar Statute, I finally got to turn inland, heading uphill towards Halgrimskirkja. It was only when I was more excited about the warmth in the church than its stunning interior that I realized perhaps this exploring thing wasn’t such a great idea after all. I’d already walked the hour in though. I might as well make the most of it.
And so I wandered further into town, stopping by the tourist office and then a tour company. I wanted to see the Northern Lights, you see, and while I’d hopped to catch a glimpse from the mountain I’d planned to climb, that clearly wasn’t happening anymore, and if I could pay a bit and see them from the warmth of a coach, well… I thought my budget could handle that. The tours for the night were cancelled though. Wouldn’t you know, you can’t see the Northern Lights through impenetrable cloud cover. Go figure.
At that point I just wanted to be inside again, so I spent my afternoon at the National Museum of Iceland. My strategy didn’t work though because while dry, it was nearly as cold in the museum as it was out. I was shivering and hugging myself and enjoying all the information on the signs but just… it was unpleasant. So I made the long trek back to the ship as quickly as I could and flat out resolved I wasn’t going out again the next day. So I didn’t.
And with that decision began six days straight of being confined to the boat. Of course, being confined to a cruise ship is nothing like being confined to a canal boat. It’s a city in and of itself and there’s always something going on. Like all cities though, the ship has a culture and an ambiance all its own, born I suspect almost entirely from the people you find on board.
The vast majority of cruise passengers ticked three distinct boxes: married, American, and old. To be fair, not everyone met all three criteria, but I would wager that ninety-five percent of passengers fit at least two of the three. Not all of them were as well to do as I expected, though of course those pockets like the one found at my dining table did in fact exist. By taking a closer look at each of these three characteristics though I hope I might convey a little bit of the environment in which I was living aboard the Brilliance of the Seas.
The married criterion doesn’t take much explaining. Cruises are, almost by definition, a social event, and a lot of the social aspects are built around couples. Dance lessons, the Love & Marriage Game Show, even trivia eschewed the standard convention of no more than five to a team so that three couples could compete on teams of six. I met a hand full of people traveling with friends (i.e. the Diamond Quartet or Marry Anne and Gina), but even then, even numbers were the rule. And let’s face it, if you’re married and going to go on vacation with someone, chances are it’s going to be your spouse.
Of course it helps that all of these married people had had plenty of time to find husbands and wives. If I had to guess, the median age of the cruise passengers was somewhere around 65. The Diamond Quartet were probably in their eighties, John perhaps even older than that. They had grandchildren my age at any rate. The other members of the dining table were in their late sixties, and as for my trivia team the youngest by far was Linda, freshly turned 50. Sure there were the odd exceptions. I already mentioned Julie, and there were a handful of kids running around that belonged to someone. The Love & Marriage Game Show featured a couple who were in their late twenties or early thirties, and one that I would place somewhere around thirty-five, but all in all the age expectation held. So much so that I was repeatedly mistaken as staff throughout the cruise. I was a passenger? But I was so young!
The demographic makes sense of course. Most people don’t have the time or money to take two weeks out for a transatlantic cruise before they retire, especially in September. So that’s what we got, lots of retired doctors and lawyers and dentists. And their husbands and wives. It was the last characteristic, however, that I hadn’t quite expected.
There were Australians on the ship, and Brits, and Germans, and Spaniards, and Japanese. I overheard a few Canadians, Chinese, and Brazilians, French speakers that might have been from either France of Quebec. So we had a diverse representation, but they were not represented equally. Probably ninety percent of people I met on board were from the United States. I would be interested to see the ship manifest, because it is conceivable that non-English speakers just didn’t participate in the English-run events, but I still would have expected to see them around the ship. Yet everywhere I turned it was American American American. People from California and Florida and Indiana and Jersey, Texas and Massachusetts and New Hampshire and Maine.
It was unnerving at first. I hadn’t been around more than a handful of Americans at once in months, and all of a sudden it was like I’d stepped onto a floating U.S. of A. In fact, the ratio of Americans to non-Americans was probably pretty close to that of the geographic territory. I got used to it pretty quickly though. In a lot of ways it felt a bit like coming home. All of a sudden I appreciated the openness of Americans that much more. People struck of conversations with strangers like it was nothing, accepted everyone as if they’d been friends since birth. I’m not sure how much of it actually had to do with citizenship and how much was just the cruise paradigm, but I was touched by it nonetheless. And American or no, the age difference meant all these new friends were a segment of the population I think I needed to get to know.
There were aspects I wasn’t surprised by of course. Everything moved more slowly, be it in the hallways or the gym. Rushing was all of a sudden rude, because I lot of these people couldn’t. I was used to that of course from the canal boat, but the slowness on the cruise ship held none of the canal boat’s sense of doom, gloom, and defeat. No matter what age, it takes a person who is loving life to keep getting out and going, and with the help of the crew, they can do it not matter what their state of mobility. We had plenty of people in walkers and wheelchairs, but each was more friendly, vibrant, and jovial than the last. The passengers were elderly, sure, but whether they were there because they were young at heart or they were young at heart because they were there, young at heart they remained, and it gave me a lot of hope for humanity.
Of course age comes with a few things that are less inspiring too. I made a point of not talking politics with any of my fellow passengers. Conversations would veer that way sometimes, and I just kept my nose down. Social conventions evolve, of course, but the way many of them talked about social changes and cultural differences still bothered me more than a bit. My trivia team, for instance, wasn’t at all fond of Obama, and they wanted everyone to know it. My favorite lecturer on demographics, despite being a tenured professor, hadn’t quite updated his way of referring to people to conform to politically correct norms. The subjects came up sporadically enough, however, that it didn’t cause me too much strife. There’s some things we may never be able to change, and in the elderly I’m not sure it’s always worth the try.
The way these people live, however, it probably doesn’t matter anymore, and I can’t even fault them for it. Cruising among the retired, you see, is a lifestyle. They go from boat to boat to boat, traveling the world in comfort and style, never doing more than they want, but never lacking something to engage their minds and attention. They’re surrounded by friends and excitement, but they never have to over exert no matter where their health puts the exertion threshold. It’s a good life. Who knows, maybe it’s one I’ll want to pursue further down the road, or even not so far - chips fall where they may. Regardless, however, I thoroughly enjoyed the cruise, and lifestyle or no it’s a vacation I intend to pursue again soon.
