On a sea cruise (with Big Brother)
Sep. 27th, 2019 01:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
carbonelIn early August, my mother had minimally invasive heart surgery to replace an aortic valve. I went down to Chicago to stay with her during and after. There were a few moments of unusual interest, but she survived and recovered -- though she's not walking as well as she did pre-surgery.
Before the surgery, she'd asked me if I was interested in a repositioning cruise from Copenhagen to New York. I've always wanted to do one an Atlantic crossing, so I said yes, but that perhaps we should wait and see how she recovered. She agreed. (There was also the issue of getting two weeks off from work with virtually no notice.)
After a few days at home, she brought up the cruise again. I checked with my boss, and we agreed that I could do it as a working vacation, doing a few hours every day. With that approval, we bought our cruise tickets and I bought tickets for the flights. The flights cost about the same as the cruise itself. Repositioning cruises are usually a bargain because of all the days at sea, and this one especially because be bought tickets so close to departure. (Other people got much better deals for flights, and I now know a few other things to try if I do this again.)
On September 6, I flew to Copenhagen (via Amsterdam), arriving the next morning. My mother and I met at the airport. Cell phones make things so much simpler. We went to our hotel, stashed our bags, and lingered over tea until our room was ready. After a brief rest, we went to Tivoli Gardens, which I'd been wanting to do since at least 1979 -- I was in Copenhagen then, but only a few days after the park closed for the winter. It really is a garden -- the grounds are beautiful, and everything was very colorful. I went on one ride, but mostly we walked around, then had lunch. I managed to fall off the curb while hailing a taxi, and got an impressive soft tissue injury. It's mostly better now, but still slightly painful.
We had dinner at one of the many outdoor restaurants along the canal. The weather was a little chilly, but the patios had heaters. I had mussels (moules) and fries (frites), and a tiny can of Diet Coke.
The next morning, we wanted to go to a museum before we headed to the ship. We were interested in the Danish Jewish Museum, but it didn't open early enough. Instead we went to the Glyptotek, starting at their exhibition of 19th-century French masterpieces. We wandered around at a few other exihibitions, then went back to the hotel and then to the ship.
Here's where Big Brother comes in. This was a cruise on the Princess line. As soon as we bought our tickets, Princess started sending us emails about the exciting new medallion system. The descriptions were vague and confusing, so it took us a while to figure out what the medallions were good for. Turns out they're a replacement for the "cruise cards" that normally let you on and off the ship and act as an on-ship credit card. They're RFID devices (or some such) that can be read by scanners placed all over the ship. The good part of this is that you can use it to locate friends and family all over the ship. (It's a 3,000-person ship, so just wandering around is a losing proposition.) In theory, the medallion can also be used to buy items, but the actual infrastructure for that was incomplete, so it only worked at fixed locations, and everything else you had to sign for. The bad part, of course, is the creepiness feature.
Having the medallion did expedite boarding the ship. From getting onto the gangplank to being in our stateroom was 20 minutes or less, and a good chunk of that was just the walking the length of the ship, since our stateroom was near the very front of the ship. Normally it's at least twice that, with one memorable (not in a good way) cruise taking almost two hours, with most of that spent standing in line under a hot sun.
The next day was Kristiansand, a small town in Norway. It was raining, and no one had much to say about the place, so we stayed on the ship. That was convenient for me, because I was able to get some work done. In addition to my regular job, I needed to complete a freelance project. That one was supposed to have come to me in August, but it fell behind schedule sufficiently that I had to do it all while on the ship -- or tell them I couldn't. In the end I got it done; it helped that they decided what they really wanted was a light edit, not a thorough line edit for consistency among all the contributors.
After Norway, we sailed to Scotland, with a day at sea in-between.
In Scotland, our port Greenock, which is the port nearest to Glasgow. We shared a taxi into Glasgow, and after a pub lunch, rode a Hop On Hop Off bus around the city. Those buses worked very well for us, because I hadn't been there before and it was good to see the highlights. Also, my mother's mobility is limited, so a bus is better than any walking tour. We stopped at the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum and admired the stuffed critters. We didn't have enough time to do much more before we had to take a taxi back to the ship to be back in time for departure.
The next day was Dublin. The day was cloudy, and it often looked as if it was about to rain, but I only had to pull the poncho out once for a few minutes. We had lunch at a pub and though I'm not much of a beer drinker, I did have a half-pint of Guinness, because I've been told that it's never quite the same is it is right near the Liffey. It was very good, but a half was enough for me. I did try writing my initials in the foam, and it worked (or at least the B worked; there wasn't room for more in my half-pint glass). After that, we took the Hop On Hop Off bus around the city, but didn't stop anywhere.
The day after was Cobh, which is an island port with access to Cork, about half an hour away. Also Waterford, about two hours away. We didn't go to either place. Instead, we took a local tour around the town (no Hop On Hop Off; the town was too small). It's a pretty little town, with an impressive cathedral for its size. The other claim to fame is that the bodies from the Lusitania are buried there. The first 20 or so were buried in individual graves, then the workers realized that there wasn't enough time, and the remaining 100 or so are buried in three mass graves. Originally many of the bodies were unidentified, but names were added as they became known. We had lunch at a nice sunshine-y bistro, but apparently we were some of the last customers -- the owner said the place was shutting down in a few days. I couldn't tell if it was permanently or just at the end of the tourist season.
After that came five days at sea. I had hoped that I would get a lot of spinning during that time, but between my regular job done long-distance, plus that freelance copyediting job, and two trivia games a day (my mother, a woman we met who'd been on Jeopardy and formed a core team, with others joining us ad hoc), I was lucky if I got in an hour a day. My electric spinner was a definite conversation starter, though. Our trivia team did quite well. We didn't win all our games (maybe a quarter of them), but we were almost always in the top five or so. Most of the prizes were (as the cruise crew running the games cheerfully admitted) exceedingly mediocre (coasters, notebooks, bags, and wine corks), but the games were fun.
One standout was a "name that tune and artist" game, where we played with a roadie (for AC/DC, IIRC) who knew all the songs but one. Instead of a mediocre prize, we ended up with two bottles of decent champagne, and the bunch of us spent a pleasant hour knocking off the contents.
The last couple of days at sea, the Internet became exceedingly slow. Apparently our semi-Great-Circle route took us far enough north that we couldn't connect to the good satellites for Internet and had to use the not-so-good ones. Or so our captain explained over the intercom. I assume it's somewhat more complicated than that. I did manage to get the freelance job done by the last sea day, which was a relief.
The next day was Halifax, Nova Scotia. There's a large port complex there, but we decided to save that for after we'd done our main touristing. Since Halifax has a Hop On Hop Off bus, we took that. One of the stops (an unofficial one) was at a glassblowing and glass cutting facility. I would have liked to stop there, but my mother (I thought) wasn't interested. It later turned out that she'd dozed off and missed hearing the commentary, but we didn't have the time to go back to it later. We did stop at the Maritime Museum and spent an hour or so there. There were exhibits (with memorabilia) about both the Titanic and the Halifax Explosion of 1917, when two ships (one laden with munitions) collided, exploding and killing around 2,000 people.
After that, we went back to the port complex and had lunch. I had a wonderful lobster roll, consisting (best I could tell) solely of fresh lobster, a bit of mayonnaise, and a toasted bun. Then we walked around and looked at the tat. One stall was selling maple sugar in the shape of leaves -- three for a dollar (CAD) or five for three dollars. I didn't query his math, just gave him the dollar.
And then back to the ship. It was the second formal night, and there was supposed to be the final production show, which I'd really been looking forward to from the description. Unfortunately, they had technical difficulties, and after we'd been sitting there for about 20 minutes, they regretfully canceled.
The next night was our final day at sea, and including packing up. At least packing in that direction is a finite task, as opposed to packing for embarking on a trip.
And on Saturday, September 21, we landed in Brooklyn. Disembarkation was slow, but I got to my shuttle and thence to my plane back to Minneapolis in decent time.
And a few days ago, I received notification that my status on Princess Cruises has been upgraded from Ruby to Platinum. I've paid a $100 deposit for a future cruise -- if I don't use it in two years, I'll get the money back -- because there are some serious perks for doing so. (What actually happened was that my mother paid the $100 deposit twice, intending them to be for two future cruises, and one of them was accidentally credited to me instead. But I'd been thinking I should do the $100, so we decided I should keep it. Which means I need to send her a check for $100.) I'd be happy to another repositioning cruise, but ideally with a different route next time.
Before the surgery, she'd asked me if I was interested in a repositioning cruise from Copenhagen to New York. I've always wanted to do one an Atlantic crossing, so I said yes, but that perhaps we should wait and see how she recovered. She agreed. (There was also the issue of getting two weeks off from work with virtually no notice.)
After a few days at home, she brought up the cruise again. I checked with my boss, and we agreed that I could do it as a working vacation, doing a few hours every day. With that approval, we bought our cruise tickets and I bought tickets for the flights. The flights cost about the same as the cruise itself. Repositioning cruises are usually a bargain because of all the days at sea, and this one especially because be bought tickets so close to departure. (Other people got much better deals for flights, and I now know a few other things to try if I do this again.)
On September 6, I flew to Copenhagen (via Amsterdam), arriving the next morning. My mother and I met at the airport. Cell phones make things so much simpler. We went to our hotel, stashed our bags, and lingered over tea until our room was ready. After a brief rest, we went to Tivoli Gardens, which I'd been wanting to do since at least 1979 -- I was in Copenhagen then, but only a few days after the park closed for the winter. It really is a garden -- the grounds are beautiful, and everything was very colorful. I went on one ride, but mostly we walked around, then had lunch. I managed to fall off the curb while hailing a taxi, and got an impressive soft tissue injury. It's mostly better now, but still slightly painful.
We had dinner at one of the many outdoor restaurants along the canal. The weather was a little chilly, but the patios had heaters. I had mussels (moules) and fries (frites), and a tiny can of Diet Coke.
The next morning, we wanted to go to a museum before we headed to the ship. We were interested in the Danish Jewish Museum, but it didn't open early enough. Instead we went to the Glyptotek, starting at their exhibition of 19th-century French masterpieces. We wandered around at a few other exihibitions, then went back to the hotel and then to the ship.
Here's where Big Brother comes in. This was a cruise on the Princess line. As soon as we bought our tickets, Princess started sending us emails about the exciting new medallion system. The descriptions were vague and confusing, so it took us a while to figure out what the medallions were good for. Turns out they're a replacement for the "cruise cards" that normally let you on and off the ship and act as an on-ship credit card. They're RFID devices (or some such) that can be read by scanners placed all over the ship. The good part of this is that you can use it to locate friends and family all over the ship. (It's a 3,000-person ship, so just wandering around is a losing proposition.) In theory, the medallion can also be used to buy items, but the actual infrastructure for that was incomplete, so it only worked at fixed locations, and everything else you had to sign for. The bad part, of course, is the creepiness feature.
Having the medallion did expedite boarding the ship. From getting onto the gangplank to being in our stateroom was 20 minutes or less, and a good chunk of that was just the walking the length of the ship, since our stateroom was near the very front of the ship. Normally it's at least twice that, with one memorable (not in a good way) cruise taking almost two hours, with most of that spent standing in line under a hot sun.
The next day was Kristiansand, a small town in Norway. It was raining, and no one had much to say about the place, so we stayed on the ship. That was convenient for me, because I was able to get some work done. In addition to my regular job, I needed to complete a freelance project. That one was supposed to have come to me in August, but it fell behind schedule sufficiently that I had to do it all while on the ship -- or tell them I couldn't. In the end I got it done; it helped that they decided what they really wanted was a light edit, not a thorough line edit for consistency among all the contributors.
After Norway, we sailed to Scotland, with a day at sea in-between.
In Scotland, our port Greenock, which is the port nearest to Glasgow. We shared a taxi into Glasgow, and after a pub lunch, rode a Hop On Hop Off bus around the city. Those buses worked very well for us, because I hadn't been there before and it was good to see the highlights. Also, my mother's mobility is limited, so a bus is better than any walking tour. We stopped at the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum and admired the stuffed critters. We didn't have enough time to do much more before we had to take a taxi back to the ship to be back in time for departure.
The next day was Dublin. The day was cloudy, and it often looked as if it was about to rain, but I only had to pull the poncho out once for a few minutes. We had lunch at a pub and though I'm not much of a beer drinker, I did have a half-pint of Guinness, because I've been told that it's never quite the same is it is right near the Liffey. It was very good, but a half was enough for me. I did try writing my initials in the foam, and it worked (or at least the B worked; there wasn't room for more in my half-pint glass). After that, we took the Hop On Hop Off bus around the city, but didn't stop anywhere.
The day after was Cobh, which is an island port with access to Cork, about half an hour away. Also Waterford, about two hours away. We didn't go to either place. Instead, we took a local tour around the town (no Hop On Hop Off; the town was too small). It's a pretty little town, with an impressive cathedral for its size. The other claim to fame is that the bodies from the Lusitania are buried there. The first 20 or so were buried in individual graves, then the workers realized that there wasn't enough time, and the remaining 100 or so are buried in three mass graves. Originally many of the bodies were unidentified, but names were added as they became known. We had lunch at a nice sunshine-y bistro, but apparently we were some of the last customers -- the owner said the place was shutting down in a few days. I couldn't tell if it was permanently or just at the end of the tourist season.
After that came five days at sea. I had hoped that I would get a lot of spinning during that time, but between my regular job done long-distance, plus that freelance copyediting job, and two trivia games a day (my mother, a woman we met who'd been on Jeopardy and formed a core team, with others joining us ad hoc), I was lucky if I got in an hour a day. My electric spinner was a definite conversation starter, though. Our trivia team did quite well. We didn't win all our games (maybe a quarter of them), but we were almost always in the top five or so. Most of the prizes were (as the cruise crew running the games cheerfully admitted) exceedingly mediocre (coasters, notebooks, bags, and wine corks), but the games were fun.
One standout was a "name that tune and artist" game, where we played with a roadie (for AC/DC, IIRC) who knew all the songs but one. Instead of a mediocre prize, we ended up with two bottles of decent champagne, and the bunch of us spent a pleasant hour knocking off the contents.
The last couple of days at sea, the Internet became exceedingly slow. Apparently our semi-Great-Circle route took us far enough north that we couldn't connect to the good satellites for Internet and had to use the not-so-good ones. Or so our captain explained over the intercom. I assume it's somewhat more complicated than that. I did manage to get the freelance job done by the last sea day, which was a relief.
The next day was Halifax, Nova Scotia. There's a large port complex there, but we decided to save that for after we'd done our main touristing. Since Halifax has a Hop On Hop Off bus, we took that. One of the stops (an unofficial one) was at a glassblowing and glass cutting facility. I would have liked to stop there, but my mother (I thought) wasn't interested. It later turned out that she'd dozed off and missed hearing the commentary, but we didn't have the time to go back to it later. We did stop at the Maritime Museum and spent an hour or so there. There were exhibits (with memorabilia) about both the Titanic and the Halifax Explosion of 1917, when two ships (one laden with munitions) collided, exploding and killing around 2,000 people.
After that, we went back to the port complex and had lunch. I had a wonderful lobster roll, consisting (best I could tell) solely of fresh lobster, a bit of mayonnaise, and a toasted bun. Then we walked around and looked at the tat. One stall was selling maple sugar in the shape of leaves -- three for a dollar (CAD) or five for three dollars. I didn't query his math, just gave him the dollar.
And then back to the ship. It was the second formal night, and there was supposed to be the final production show, which I'd really been looking forward to from the description. Unfortunately, they had technical difficulties, and after we'd been sitting there for about 20 minutes, they regretfully canceled.
The next night was our final day at sea, and including packing up. At least packing in that direction is a finite task, as opposed to packing for embarking on a trip.
And on Saturday, September 21, we landed in Brooklyn. Disembarkation was slow, but I got to my shuttle and thence to my plane back to Minneapolis in decent time.
And a few days ago, I received notification that my status on Princess Cruises has been upgraded from Ruby to Platinum. I've paid a $100 deposit for a future cruise -- if I don't use it in two years, I'll get the money back -- because there are some serious perks for doing so. (What actually happened was that my mother paid the $100 deposit twice, intending them to be for two future cruises, and one of them was accidentally credited to me instead. But I'd been thinking I should do the $100, so we decided I should keep it. Which means I need to send her a check for $100.) I'd be happy to another repositioning cruise, but ideally with a different route next time.
