November 5, 2014 - Triangulating on the Onion

Royal Naval Dockyard, Bermuda

This post is still in outline/draft form. Sorry.
 
Bermuda is a fairly flat island, reminiscent of the Bahamas _____miles to the south. It is roughly the same latitude as Charleston, SC. Bermuda is part of the UK, having been colonized by the British in 1609. The Spanish discoverers of Bermuda arrived in 1503 and found an uninhabited island, strategically located.

We met our guide, David Fox, on the pier. He is a Blue Ribbon taxi driver, which means he has completed a special course of study. His cab was a celan, comfortable mini-van. From the dockyard you can see an old fort, a few museums, and  a shopping mall inside the old barracks.

Bermuda is pretty. The water is a brilliant aqua, the color often seen in the Caribbean. All the houses are pastel and covered with stucco. They all have white roofs with an unusual (to me, at any rate) terraced design.  

Within the last month Bermuda was hit by two hurricanes. Hurricane Gonzalo (?) was particularly severe. A lot of the damage had already been repaired according to David, but we saw numerous palm trees lying on their sides, beached or sunken boats, and roofs being repaired.

Hurricane

Colorful houses

white roofs, terraced, collect water, dispose of sewage

Beautiful bays, pink sand beaches, aqua water

Blue Ribbon taxi, David Fox, on time, clean car

world's smallest drawbridge

welcoming arms

moongates

nice houses, not a lot of retail

not a lot of tourism infrastructure, hotels, restaurants, activities 

main industries - tourism, off-shoreinsurance

no large scale agriculture - everything imported, gas $8/gallon

 nice weather

Michael Douglas

 Hamilton, black rum
 

St. George - historic St. Peter's church, stocks and dunking chair - re-enactment, unfinished church

Gibb's Hill Lighthouse - oldest cast iron

Horseshoe Bay Beach

overall imprssions - clean, neat, prosperous, boring, would not go back

1 hr 45 min to Newark

watched two drunk pax being helped back to the ship

Derek FLoyd - Elton John

Darrell Joyce

Bermuda shorts - only one guy

November 3, 2014 - Welcome Back

At Sea

Another warm sunny day, with some clouds in the afternoon. The Captain says it will get rougher tonight as we approach a low pressure area.

I went to the book club to discuss The Rosie Project. I really enjoyed the book. It was interesting, and also quite funny. Ken went to a lecture on the convoy that saved Malta: Operation Pedestal 1942.

We went to the Pub Lunch and then spent the afternoon reading, enjoying the sun, and putzing around.

We were invited to the 5:15 Captain's Circle Cocktail Party tonight. We went down a few minutes before 5:15 and the line went all the way back to the Explorer's Lounge. By the time we got into the room there were no seats and very few places to stand, yet people were continuing to stream in. There didn't appear to be any crew members taking an interest in the situation, so we decided to leave. On the way out we saw the Captain's Circle host, Jeff. I told him that he had invited way too many eople and there were no seats left. He laughed and said something nonresponsive like "There are a lot of parties." 

Big fail, Jeff. Big fail, Princess. If there are too many people, you need to have more parties. It's not that hard. Don't take the lazy way out and hope that people won't show up. This is not how I want to be welcomed back. Grrrr.

November 2, 2014 - Breakfast with Tiffany

At Sea

I don't know if Tiffany really was her name, but I'm sure it was something trendy like that. Tiffany's grandmother was sitting about 18 inches awy from our table at breakfast. It was impossble to avoid hearing the conversation she was having with a friend. 

Grandma may have been a little confused. Based on her conversation she clearly thought Tiffany was her own child, not her grandchild. And all the other grandchildren, too. She seemed to want to control every aspect of her daughter's life, and she felt herself in competition with the other set of grandparents. The daughter and son-in-law had to spend all of their holidays with her. Her iPad was full of pictures of "her kids," little girls in tutus. "They are always happy if they can dress up, of course." I'm sure she had a husband, but he wasn't mentioned in the discussion.

Bite my tongue, bite my tongue. Not all little girls are happy to dress up. Why should they be expected to conform to society's parameters for how women should look and act? This Grandma wasn't any older than I am. She should know better. And why can't grandma and grandpa, who are retired,  go to California to visit the daughter and grandchildren? Why must their daughter's whole family schlep to New Jersey and spend their limited vacation time all the time to visit Grandma?

Why am I reacting so strongly? Let me think. Oh, yeah. When I was growing up we made the long, boring drive to New Jersey at least twice a year to visit Grandma and Grandpa and aunts and uncles and cousins. It was really boring and tense. Years later I found out that my mother enjoyed these visits less then I did, but as a child I was not really able to tune into the undercurrents. To the best of my recollection, my grandparents were not particularly interested in their grandchildren, or in any children. My brother and I had to entertain ourselves. I remember trying to play solitaire with a pinochle deck. I have no memories of special times with my grandparents. They certainly did nothing to make me feel special or valued. Many, many years later my father told me, privately, that he regretted not taking our family on real vacations. I don't know if he was speaking for my mother. She never said anything to me like that.

Fast forward one generation. I bring my kids to see Grandma and Grandpa. It's pretty much the same story. Grandma and Grandpa want to "see" them, but after 5 minutes they are done. It is pretty clear that they don't particularly like kids. We only spend a couple of days with my parents, and then we fly south and go to Disney World. 

When our son was born my parents did come to Alaska. At this time I still believed that it was possible for them to build some kind of relationship with our daughter. I suggeested they take her to a children's museum. I thought that would be a great way for them to interact. We dropped them off and arranged to meet them at the museum an hour or so later. When we returned, my parents were sitting on a bench in the entryway and our daughter was running around inside the museum not bonding with them.

Well, this blog has not gone where I expected it to go when I started writing, but I have a lot that I need to process. If I become a grandmother some day, I want to be able to achieve a good balance between apathy and micromanagement (with none of either).

After _________ at breakfast, we had a very pleasant day. (I am looking for a word that is the opposite of eavesdropping. A word for listening to someone else's conversation even though you don't want to. Overhearing?)

The weather was perfect and the seas were calm. We spent a lot of time sitting on our balcony reading. 

Ken went to a lecture: Midget Submarines and the Attack on the Tripitz. (Tripitz might be a great name for a website. "Plan your next vacation on Tripitz.com." Actually, I think there is a site called "Tripit.") I went to Cruise Critic meeting for people interested in going to New Zealand. One woman there lived in New Zealand, and several people had been there and came to share their experiences. It was not what I woul call an informative meeting.

Before dinner we went to see the production show, What a Swell Party. I really like all the costumes and choreography in this show, even though the music predates me a little. At dinner we were taken to a table occupied by three older people who pretty much ignored us and each other. It was like going to a funeral. After a few minutes we decided not to endure another awkward, strained dinner with people we who didn't get the point of sharing a table. We have never walked out on a dinner table before, and it's a little awkward (and probably rude), but it's our vacation and we have suffered through enough tedious dinners already. We were going to go upstairs to a different dining room, but the hostess snagged us on the way out and said she would give us a different table. I hope the first table didn't see us going to the second table. The second table turned out to be very nice. We had a very lively conversation with nice people.

November 1, 2014 - SAR Mission!

At Sea

Today was pretty uneventful until about 5:00 pm. We had been sitting out on the balcony enjoying the balmy weather. The sea was almost flat and it seemed as though the ship was just floating along idly, making no wake.

Right after Ken commented on the slow speed the ship was maintaining, the Captain came on the speaker system to make "an important announcement." Except for the daily noontime report and announcements prior to leaving a port, this Captain doesn't make an announcement unless it is important.

The Captain said that about an hour ago two ladies had reported to a crew member that they had seen flares on the starboard side of the ship. The captain asked that the two unknown ladies report to the Purser's Desk as soon as possible. He also said we were turning around to go back toward the area where the flares were seen.

Even though we are on the port side of the ship, just a few minutes later many men could be seen standing on their balconies peering through balconies. We watched as our ship turned around and the we began to sail away from the sun.

A bit later the Captain announced that more than 2 passengers had seen the flares and he thanked everyone for their help.

We went down to dinner. Everyone was talking about it - in the elevators, in the hallways, at dinner. Everyone had to recount all the different cruises they had been on when the ship had to turn around. After these stories had all been told, people started telling each other about every rescue incident they had ever read about.

Finally, during our dinner, the Captain announced that they had a satellite photograph and had been able to determine that the objects sighted had been two orange buoys and we were returning to our original course.

I realize there are a couple of things here that don't make sense. Why did it take an hour for the messsage to get to the Captain?. If it got to him faster, why did it take an hour until he decided to turn around? How do you mistake a buoy for a flare? Where did the photo come from? I didn't hear the last announcement very well due to dining room clatter, so maybe I missed something.

So now, let's rewind and go back to the exciting day we had before dinner. In the morning we went to a lecture by David Russell entitled A Destroyer at War. It was about HMS Express during WWII. The lecturere had a family connection to the ship, so that made it a little more interesting, but I am not as fascinated by WWII history as Ken is.

Later on I went to a talk called iPad Tips and Tricks by Dan, the Assistant Cruise Director. It was surprisingly crowded. There wasn't even standing room. I didn't realize so many people on the ship had iPads. Dan shared some very useful tips and I am glad I went even though I had to stand up for almost an hour.

After dinner we went to An Evening with Derek Floyd. He was given a larger venue for this show. I liked his performances in the more intimate piano bar better. We got there 30 minutes before the show and got the last two seats. I'm not willing to go to very many things more than 30 mintes early, ven with my Kindle. they originally had him scheduled for two shows, but cut it back to one, thus creating the crowding problem.

Finally, we went to a performance by Jennifer Fair, an opera singer. We have seen her on before, on an earlier cruise, and we remembered that her show was very good. I think the show we saw this time was the exact same show, but it was a good one, so it was nice to be able to see it again. She has the ability to bring opera down to the level of people who have never been to the opera. For example, before singing O Sole Mio, she talked about Elvis Presley and his rendition of It's Now or Never. She also alternated operatice pieces with popular music such as Think of Me from Phantom of the Opera and Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah. 

By the way, the weather has gotten very nice and the sea is calm. It's so relaxing.