Travel journal: October 24 - November 6, 2011
Window into Artificial Worlds.
(a) Going on a cruise.
As you grow older you begin to get a wee bit tired of the daily chores of schlepping luggage, and packing and unpacking when you are on vacation. So you decide to graduate into the growing trend of the “mature” traveler by going on a cruise instead. Granted, with a cruise you may not see or experience much of the real heart of the countries you visit. Especially if you only go ashore with the shore excursions the cruise ship companies provide at inflated prices. But many find safety and security in this approach. This also happens to be an extremely effective way to be isolated from the smelly locals.
But on cruises, you will have the wonderful opportunity to compare and delight at the various ersatz settlements growing like mushrooms around the cruise ports. You can gape in wonderment at the ubiquitous tourist shops and the fast food outlets, each vying stridently for the tourist’s dollars with garish signs and honeyed promises of treasures untold. And if there was a town nearby, you wouldn’t recognize it if you were there just a decade ago. A small, dusty, and quiet hamlet transferred into a Las Vegas inspired community to sell, sell, and sell again. Not that this is bad. Au contraire, mes amis. The money from the tourist have been used to improve the town, restore the monuments, and make lots of people happy, especially the many shopoholics on the cruise boats.
“That is a very nice and unusual bracelet you have there”, you overhear a well-dressed matron address another. I have one exactly like it. Listed at $600 in Neiman Marcus in San Francisco, but I picked it up for $300 at a special sale”. “Oh,” replies the other matron, “I picked mine in a duty-free shop in Charlotte Amalie for $200”.
Make no mistakes about it. The art is to get stuff cheap. The true shopoholic doesn’t buy because he/she needs the item, but because it is super cheap. They’ll spend countless dollars and time just to be able to snag that bargain to increase their GI, which stands for Gloat Index, to be used when they get together with friends later on.
Shopping is supposed to be fun. At every port of call you can load up on plastic busts of various deities and local celebrities, garish T-shirts, decorative rhinestone trinkets, or get genuine fake watches, diamonds and sapphires for a song.
left: In Ephesus you can pick up genuine fake watches for your collection.
You can pick up designer dresses and accessories or very close replicas for a fraction of the price you have to shell out on the Via Veneta in Milan. You’ll find unusual, genuine, local items, mostly made in China or Bangladesh. You can purchase technical doodads with (fleeting) lifetime guarantees. Well, the list is endless; all you need is a big wallet, a pedestrian taste for souvenirs, and lots of storage space in your house. And a local Salvation Army store nearby.
Traveling as a pampered passenger on a well-run cruise ship can be most enjoyable. You get to eat lots and lots of food with enticingly worded culinary appellations; you don’t have to do the dishes, and you only have to unpack once and yet able to visit half a dozen different places in ten days or less. You can lounge on deck chairs doing nothing, get snacks at almost every time of the day, get overpriced massages from nubile and well-toned young ladies, or even visit the gym for a workout to balance the excess food intake.
On another subject, you can also now tell your aunt Agatha, who is otherwise slightly daft, that the Turkish cuisine is far superior than the Mexican, because the shish kebab you ordered in the port of Antalya was made of a better quality meat then the one you tasted in the port of Ensenada. And if you think this is an untenable proposition, you should listen to what our politicians say on their campaign trails. Besides, to aunt Agatha, she’ll believe everything you say, even if you tell her that the moon is made of Swiss cheese. Aunt Agatha, having been raised in a reclusive sect, was never told that the moon is actually made of French Camembert. That is why it is so runny on some days.
The experience is presumably different if you spend your holiday in longer-term lodgings on terra firma. There you have more opportunities to mingle with the locals. You will still get gypped, because you still look, act, and waddle around like a tourist. You will have a larger chance of running into trouble, which you then write off as experience and adventure. Sleeping in different hotels each night also gives you more opportunity to become more intimate with the ubiquitous bedbug. You’ll find these even in 5-star hotels.
(b) The Azamara Quest.
We have been on some 15 cruises before, but this was one of the more enjoyable ones on our list. The cruise was an 11-day trip in the Eastern Mediterranean, beginning and ending in Athens, Greece. The Quest is a boutique ship, slightly more luxurious than the average cruise ship, more intimate, albeit with slightly higher fares. But the service was in general superb, with the staff moving fast and tripping over themselves to be helpful. Wine was included with all meals.
right: The Azamara “Quest” as seen from the battlements of Nerutzia Castle in Cos.
We had some trouble with our toilet, which seems to be a fairly regular problem on a cruise ship, because there are always illiterate morons who dump diapers and sanitary napkins into their toilets. After our third call in just as many days, they immediately upgraded us into a more luxurious cabin two decks higher. It had a working toilet.
The Azamara Quest is a relatively small cruise ship. She has a weight of 30,277 tons, and she is 181 meters long and 29 meters at the beam. The cruising speed is 18.5 knots, which translates to about 20 mph, and which is less than the 25 mph average speed of the Tour de France for the whole race. There were some 650 passengers on board served by a crew of 410 with 50 different nationalities. You can speak in about any language, and there would almost always be a crew member who understands what you are gossiping about. So be careful what you say.
We were also extremely lucky to meet a wonderful couple, Larry and Millie, who we found live not too far away from us. They are very nice; low-key just like us. They come early to meals to reserve a table for us; they listen to our stories; and they laugh at our jokes. And vv. We are compatible, probably because we are just getting duller with age. Goodbye excitement, goodbye attractive bodies and minds, goodbye parachuting out of airplanes between lunch and tea. All we now do is to brag about our grandkid to each other. We each have one, about the same age.
As on any cruise ship, there is a casino. They report the total slot machine payout for the 11 day cruise to be $26,374. Assuming a 90 % payout, the 600 odd passengers must have shoveled some $30,000 into these machines. Which comes down to around $5 per passenger per day. The numbers seem to say that there are actually not too many people dumping money in the slot machines. They make more money on their table games.
But of special interest is the amount of store supplies the ship was reported to carry for the average 11-night trip, which corresponds to a 10-day trip for eating purposes. The list, as reported by the ship, is shown below. Summing it up will give you an average of about 4 lbs of meat or fish to go with the 1 lb of potatoes per person per day. I told you the passengers are overfed. Just look at their bulging tummies and protruding fat bulges as they sprawl out on the deck chairs. Attractive, lissom bodies are in short supply. You will only find them in glossy magazines touting the romance of cruising with the cruise company who paid for the ad.
left: List of store supplies for an average 11-night cruise.
There were 700 gallons of ice cream in the freezers, enough for an 10-oz post-prandial treatment per person per day. And just in case you care for an occasional glass of Sauvignon Blanc or a hearty Merlot with your meals, there are some 10,000 bottles of wine in the cellar.
On the more sober side, it is obvious that with this conspicuously excessive consumption, there is a humongous amount of waste around. Well rationed and prepared, this much food would be sufficient to feed ten times as many people adequately. But nobody seems to be overly concerned about either this or about the hungry children in Africa.
Since it is impossible for every single person on the ship to consume that much meat and potatoes every day, I suspect the data supplied by the ship’s quartermaster must have been vastly exaggerated. That, or he/she must be operating a thriving black market at the various ports of call.
