Legend of the Seas

David has a love/hate relationship with our cruise ship.  He described Legend of the Seas as "a floating assisted living center," and "a floating petri dish," yet he has also tracked the position of the ship fondly ever since we debarked.  Legend of the Seas is now creeping up the coast of Australia on its way to Singapore.  

David and I have always loved cruises.  This one, though, had too many "at sea" days--seven of them on a 15-day cruise--and there was no place but our cabin to read in peace and quiet.  On the sea days, there was frenetic activity everywhere, all the time--napkin-folding classes, trivia games, lectures about meteors and comets, dance classes, rock bands, shopping briefings, yoga on the deck.  Most cruise ships have quiet libraries for hermits to retreat into, when they need a break from all that fun, but Legend of the Seas' library was a few books along the wall of a café.  When I protested to a particularly noisy man that this was the library, he said, "No, it's the café, and people always talk in cafes."

The ship also died in the water one morning, off the coast of Cuba, when the engines malfunctioned.  All the lights went off and the toilets wouldn't flush.  "In ten minutes, everything will be functioning perfectly," the captain announced, but it was most of the morning before we were underway again.  And then we got norovirus, both guests and staff (Dave said it made the national news).  Sick guests were afraid to tell anyone because the sick people were confined to cabins and had to beg for doctors to come certify that they were well again.  As one shore excursion began, we heard a woman telling the activities director that she and her husband had called and called the doctor, but he wouldn't call back.  Her husband was well and wanted to go on the shore excursion, but no one would come examine him!

There.  That's all the bad things.  There were also wonderful things.  Our tablemates were delightful.  The couple above were professors at a university in Trondheim, Norway.  He taught mechanical engineering to future product managers, and she trained elementary school teachers.  Every conversation with them was fascinating.  We talked about the union system in Norway (which they believed in), the use of English as an international language, and about their national costumes, which they wore to important family events such as christenings and funerals.

The man on the above left was a union foreman in a mine and his wife was a former head cheerleader who then worked in a bank.  The man was a great poker player who was competing for a free cruise.  The woman on the right was a jolly Montessori teacher from Philadelphia and her husband was a retired lineman who was glad to be through with his winter job of fixing downed power lines in the middle of the night.  Another couple, not pictured, lived in a native village at the top of the Aleutian Islands in Alaska.  The man was a commercial fisherman who was half Eskimo and Aleut and half Mexican and Russian.  His Mexican ancestor lived in a fancy hacienda in Chihuahua and came to Alaska on a sailing ship before the age of steam engines, seeking his fortune.  The food on the ship was luscious, and we quickly became addicted to the whole wheat rolls studded with pumpkin seeds.  I told the group I would formulate the recipe and send it to them.

The captain was a charming Norwegian man who went out of his way to greet the guests.  We returned from a shore excursion one evening to find him welcoming one guest after another as they reboarded his ship.

 We love the sea itself.  We stood on the top deck with our friend, the Alaskan commercial fisherman, and watched him point out schools of fish and large predators subtly ruffling the surface of the water.  We watched the ripple of waves through ship windows.

We also loved the nightly entertainment, which we certainly didn't have at home.  On a 15-day cruise, there were tribute groups ("The best Temptations tribute group in the world", above), clean comedians, cabaret shows with great dancing and singing, and even the ship's dance band putting on a concert with pieces by Rimsky-Korsakov and Tchaikovsky.

 And, of course, there were the many sweet stewards and servers, who remembered our names and folded our towels into shapes of dogs and toads!