July 26, 2009
Fun Twenty-five Hours a Day
We’re well out into the Atlantic now. Having cleared the coast of Africa, the first landfall to the south off of our balcony is Antarctica, which makes us wonder why our cabin steward closes the balcony curtain and locks its door every night. Maybe he’s concerned about James Bond landing on our balcony in a hang glider.
As often happens, they scheduled concurrently the only two things today that really interest me—Maxtone-Graham’s lecture and the ship’s shuffleboard tournament. Not a close call, really. We went to the lecture, a spellbinding account of his interviews with three Titanic survivors, one of whose memoirs he later edited and annotated. He has also been having book signings in the afternoon, so I (and all the other ocean liner groupies) bought a book and had it signed—in my case a copy of the survivor’s memoirs.
This ship is laid out in the new style. In the old days, cabins were located in the hull and public rooms in the superstructure, but to give everybody they can a balcony, they’ve reversed the traditional. The cabins are in the superstructure (we’re on deck 11), and the restaurants, show rooms, entertainment areas, and planetarium (if you need one) on the main deck (7) or within the hull below.
I have to admit, the balcony is a kick. I didn’t know how much I’d use it, but it is nice to sit out there isolated at least a bit from your five thousand fellow souls. It’s also great for playing the pipe, with two steel walls and a glass backdrop opening to the sea. Makes my wheezy fife playing sound like a church organ (though I try to peek around corners to see that no neighbors are out before I start sandblasting).
My one criticism of layout is that the ship isn’t really designed very well for one to look forward. The open-deck viewing areas forward are usually closed because of high winds, while the inside spaces forward are devoted to such pursuits as a gym, a bridge (cards) club, and the library. These are all fine things to have, but all involve people doing other things than watching the view. Put them down in the bilge. (It’s a giant, designed version of people who get window seats on airplanes and spend the whole flight reading—antagonizing.)
I enjoyed some good jazz this evening, with three sets, each peopled by a different combination of musicians, two quintets and the basic trio. Took the opportunity to try some rum. Not as caustic as scrumpy, and didn’t taste as much like a barrel as scotch, but beyond that I have no expertise.
The ship employs thirty-one musicians, at least that I’ve discovered. They can muster a fourteen-piece big band for the ballroom dance gigs or as a theater orchestra. They have a string quartet to play you into dinner, a five-piece reggae-disco combo for the dance club, a jazz trio for the lounge, a flute-piano duo, a harpist, and two piano-bar guys.
I’m certainly enjoying the music, as you can imagine, but can’t pretend to understand the economics of all this. To fly from Denver to London we paid sixty percent of what we’re paying to sail to New York and fly back to Denver. For the extra dollars we get much more civilized transportation, the services of thirty-one musicians, all the great food we can pack into ourselves, and six nights in their nice hotel. It must be the economics of scale—the savings of moving 3,000 passengers instead of 300. True, cargo (that’s us!) moves cheapest over water, but still. . . .
