Lines

As a preview of my world cruise next January, my friend Nanette and I took the ship I'll be on then in a little mini-cruise from Vancouver, BC, to Seattle. We rode the train from Seattle to Vancouver, then sailed back. It wasn't much of a cruise -- less than a day, most of it happening during the night. There will be several posts about it, of which this, which details all the lines we stood in, is the first.
First line: in King Street Station, Seattle, to get our Amtrak tickets using receipts from online purchase.
Second line: to get the specific seats on Amtrak with the tickets we got from the first line.
Third line: to go through the doors of King Street Station to seat ourselves in the seats we got in the second line.
Fourth line: at the other end of the train ride, to go through Canadian customs. Canadians, even customs officials, conformed to the stereotype -- they were cheerful, polite, helpful, and personable, responding to a request for a stamp in my passport with a smile and the impress of a stamp on a page of my passport. (This is the passport I got to replace the one I lost in Russia, so all it has in it are blank pages were official stamps from other countries should be. It's like I've never been anywhere. The customs lady was very nice about it.)
Fifth line: actually, where there might have been a fifth line, there wasn't one because the Vancouver Sky Train pulled up in the station just as we emerged from the escalator, having encountered another cheerful, polite, helpful, and personable Canadian who gave Nanette a Sky Train ticket when Nanette's credit card refused to cooperate with the Sky Train ticket machine.
Sixth line: OK, now we're at the cruise ship terminal. There were several more cheerful, polite, helpful, and personable Canadians who helped us get there, but you get the idea about that part. And we're in one of those snaky lines delineated by blue cloth ropes waiting to go through metal detectors -- alas! even in Canada, they must worry about the stuff seen in metal detectors.
Seventh line: to present our cruise ship tickets and be shunted into an echoing room full of plastic folding chairs filled with those who would -- eventually -- after a couple hours without access to food or water, with restrooms only a vague whispered rumor among the huddled masses -- be our fellow passengers, but not before the --
Eighth line: to present our tickets yet again, get our pictures taken, and receive the electronic keys to our stateroom on board the ms Amsterdam! Which, you'd think, would be it. But no.
Ninth line: short line to pass through the "Welcome Aboard ms Amsterdam!" cutout so the ship's photographers could take our picture in hopes of selling it back to us as a souvenir. And are we done yet? Of course not.
Tenth line: at the top of the gangway as we Actually Set Foot On Board ms Amsterdam! Yes! We are on the f-ing boat! We are aboard! But we still need to show the stateroom keys to a ship's official to make sure that somewhere between the checkin desk at the end of the eighth line and the step onto the ship, we haven't somehow transmogrified ourselves into people who have no right to be on the ship.

But now. Finally. After all our toils and troubles and hunger and confusion and fear and trembling, we are in our stateroom, verandah suite #6213. We've been told that there is food at the other end of the ship a couple floors up in the Lido Restaurant. But, unable to face the possibility that we might have to face an eleventh line of those with whom we had already shared the last few lines, we order room service, including generous slices of chocolate cake with raspberry sauce. Which was just as good as you think it was.

There were virtually no lines to disembark the next morning. Everyone had been assigned to a subgroup, each subgroup was called forward to pass by an official who read our electronic keys so they'd know who was officially gone. We had to show our passports and customs declarations to US customs, but there were no lines, you just walked up to one of six or seven uniformed guys behind desks, they made sure we looked at least moderately like the photos in our passports, smiled, and waved us through. They weren't Canadians, but they were cheerful, polite, helpful, and personable.

I'm getting a cruise preview

Turns out the ship I'll be sailing around the world on, the ms Amsterdam, will be doing an overnight cruise from Vancouver BC to Seattle next month. So a friend and I are going to ride on it so I can (a) get acquainted with a place that will be my home for four months next year and (b) make sure I don't easily get seasick.

This idea came from a fellow participant in the Wednesday afternoon meditation group associated with my new church, St. Stephens Episcopal. And my travel agent, Diane Ritchey of Cruise Specialists in Seattle, got me connected to a verandah suite, which is much fancier than what I'll be inhabiting during the long cruise. I'll have to make friends with someone rich on the long cruise so I can use their verandah now and again.

OK, so we're on for the Taj Mahal

I just called Holland-America and booked the one-day excursion to the Taj Mahal. They'll fly me from Mumbai to Agra, where I'll spend half the day wandering around the grounds of the Taj Mahal on March 28, 2012. The other half of the day is for an optional tour of the Red Fortress, which I may or may not do. Maybe they'll let me wander around he grounds of the Taj Mahal all day.

Damn! I just poked some numbers on my phone, talked to a nice young man, and now I'm all set to spend a few hours at the Taj Mahal in a little over a year. Of course, I also just wiped out the progress I had made on my credit card bill with my tax refund -- almost to the penny -- paying a year in advance for something. But the nice young man said my ticket for the Taj Mahal will be in my cabin in a hot pink envelope.

This is going to be like Alice falling down the rabbit hole. A hot pink envelope in my cabin. Once this cruise starts, you're going to get a lot of gee-whiz posts as I accustom myself to being on the ms Amsterdam learning the cruise lifestyle. Or maybe some dear-God-what-have-I-gotten-myself-into posts. And meanwhile I sit in my condo sipping herbal tea and petting my cat and knitting another pair of socks.

Excursions

I just got the 168-page brochure that describes excursions available on my world cruise next year. It is intimidating. I can about wrap my head around riding a really big boat around the world. That makes sense. But this brochure reminds me that, well, we'll actually being Going To Places. And that there are a lot of things to do in each of those places.

168 pages. And very few pictures, mostly just text, and not particularly large print either.

Sometimes the excursions are about what you would expect -- going out for an evening at a Tango Show in Buenos Aires, for instance, will cost me $79 including transportation,  not unreasonable. If I knew how to ride a horse, I could spend $339 for a private polo lesson. And for $39 I could spend half a day "In Evita's Footsteps".

But then there's the six-day tour of China that departs from a port in Indonesia and catches up with the ship again in Hong Kong. It includes the Great Wall, the army of terra cotta men, The Forbidden City in Beijing, the Wild Goose Pagoda, built in 652, and a cruise down the Li River -- "—limestone spires rising above a smooth river at one of China’s most aesthetic destinations. The river is like a green silk belt, and the hills are like turquoise jade hairpins." Cost? A mere $5000, if I can find someone to double up with, which, as it turns out, I can, because I've been in correspondence with a woman in Florida who is also taking the cruise and wants to do that excursion.

Of course, I could just stay on the boat and watch the world arrive one port at a time and depart one port at a time. But how you gonna keep me down on the boat after I've seen this honkin' big excursion brochure? And can I really end up spending as much on excursions as I'm spending on the cruise?

Dang!

old Michael Caine movie

It occurs to me that these posts now, anticipating where I will be in a year on the cruise, are kind of like an old Michael Caine movie, whose title I can't remember. It's a caper movie that starts out with Michael Caine's character explaining his plot to his accomplice. Shirley McClaine is to be recruited to be part of it, and as MC talks, we see the plot playing out just as he wants, with Shirley McClaine's character sitting silent and mysterious, which is just what his plot requires. Then we see how the plot actually plays out, with SMcC being lively and intelligent and unpredictable. Of course, in the end, that's just what's required, they pull off the heist, MC's character falls in love with SMcC's character, and they all live h.e.a. It's an American movie, of course they live h.e.a.

The reason I cite this movie is because I'm beginning to suspect these fantasies of what it will be like will turn out to have nothing whatsoever to do with the actual experience of being on the cruise. Now, it's me sitting at my computer daydreaming (with the help of Wikipedia) about places I have no real idea about. Then, it will be me on this enormous boat with 1000 other people actually being there. Actually being there, 3-D, air as hot or cold or humid or dry or ocean-smelling or hurricane-ridden as it really is, people, both on the ship and at the ports, being as unexpected and fascinating as people actually are, Sun beating down with tropical furor or enveloped in icy clouds or hidden in storm clouds. And no living h.e.a. because there is no e.a., just now, and now, and now.

Dang. Just can't find any substitutes for reality, can we?

Does anyone remember the name of that movie?

Antarctica

In a year, on January 31, 2012, we'll be cruising the South Shetland Islands, of which there are a couple dozen, most of them with two names, one for Russians and the other for everybody else. More penguins and seals, and a lot of coldness -- the midsummer* average temperature is about 35 degrees Fahrenheit. So I'll need to pack something warm or huddle inside for several days, which hardly seems a good way to spend time on a cruise. It doesn't look like they plan on us landing anywhere, which is probably just as well: Wikipedia says that "...[the islands]  remain more than 80% snow and ice covered throughout the summer." Plus which the resident population is 0 -- lots of research stations and scientists of several nationalities, nobody selling souvenirs or hawking lichen burgers to tourists.


I'm beginning to appreciate that I'm going to be on this big boat for FOUR MONTHS. We spend three days cruising around Antarctica. I'll need to be sure and do a lot of meditating during our times at sea, otherwise I can see myself getting into a "you've seen one iceberg, you've seen them all, when's the next lounge show?" frame of mind.

*No, really, midsummer. We're in the Southern Hemisphere, so in end of January there is like the end of July here.

the Falklands?

OK, in a year from today, 1/28/12, I'll be in Stanley, Falkland Islands, or, if one has Argentinian sympathies, the Islas Malvinas. I know nothing about the Falkland Islands except that Britain and Argentina went into a somewhat silly set-to over them some years back. According to Wikipedia, "virtually the entire area of the islands is used as pasture for sheep," which is a perfectly fine profession, and might be very appealing to the overstimulated for the ultimate getaway vacation ("Come to the peaceful Falklands, watch the sheep wander out to pasture, take a nap, watch the sheep wander back from pasture.") But we're only going to be there for a day, and we're already on vacation. Let's see what Weather Underground has to say about the weather. Well, today late afternoon, it's 54 degrees Fahrenheit and 82% humidity -- I suppose islands generally have high humidity, what with all that ocean all over the place, and 54 degrees isn't awful. Oh, wait, look back at Wikipedia: they have PENGUINS!





Penguins. OK, I'm reconciled to the Falklands.