In Transitu

It was a drizzly, gray Monday morning when we left London. We took a cab to Waterloo Station. Southwestern Railways assigned a helpful young man to assist us with getting our luggage on the train and attaching a ramp for John’s wheelchair. As I have said before, the British have come a long way in working with people with disabilities. 

We started chatting with a couple of Americans on the train and it turned out that they were both headed towards Southampton, both about to embark on the same cruise we were. Sharna was from a small town in Texas, about an hour south of Fort Worth. Amy was from Milton-Freewater in eastern Oregon. Before moving out there for a job, she had lived in Portland, and it turns out that that she sometimes has performed with Pink Martini. They explained that they are half-sisters who never met until they were adults. Chatting with these interesting people made the trip go by faster. 

We stayed at the Harbour Hotel in Southampton. Our friend Vicki, who lives in the nearby village of Romsey, had recommended it. After our small and somewhat spartan accommodations in Russell Square, it seemed luxurious. When we woke up Tuesday morning, we looked out onto the marina. 

Both the Mayflower and the Titanic departed from Southampton. One of those, as I recall, had a better voyage than the other. 

Our ship is the Caribbean Princess and it was docked on the Ocean Cruise Terminal, a short cab ride from the hotel. Again, the people there were marvelous to John and a woman in a bright orange vest simply pushed us to the front of the line. But we had to wait around for about an hour before they would let us board. 

I thought that our waiting would be over when we arrived on board, But everyone was ushered into the central atrium of the ship and told that our rooms would be ready “soon.” A couple young women, obviously from somewhere in Eastern Europe, attempted to entertain. 

Twelve o’clock to one o’clock, one o’clock to two. The rooms would still be ready “soon.”  By three o’clock the mood in the room was almost mutinous. The Filipino servers would smile and say “How are you?”, departing before you could give them an answer. Finally around four o’clock they left us go to our room. 

When we booked this cruise, I told John that we had to be a little more frugal. We would fly premium economy, not business. And we would book a room with a window, not a balcony. I was definitely not expecting to like this room as much as I had the one on our transatlantic adventure last spring, but even so I was a little disappointed. While clean, the furnishings look to be about 20 years old. Cruise ships often claim to be floating five star hotels. In this room I feel like I’m in a floating Motel Six, well, maybe a Holiday Inn. 

Wednesday was the first of a couple days at sea. We started to learn our way around the ship. We went to a helpful overview of Trondheim from a woman from the cruise office.

And shortly after that, there was a fairly lame presentation on the Vikings from some Scottish woman. She is apparently some kind of academic, but I have the feeling she was the equivalent of a community college professor. 

We had dinner with Sharna and Amy. It was supposed to be a formal dress night, though neither John nor I had brought along anything even remotely formal. It was typical cruise ship food: it sounded good, looked good, and tasted, well, sort of okay. 

In the evening, we went off to the show. A couple of these on previous cruises had been pretty good. The Choir of Man, which we saw on our last cruise, is now a successful West End show. This one, however, seemed seemed like the initial auditions for America’s Got Talent.

We left early and headed to bed.