Of all the places we have been, off shore, south of Halifax is the least likely place I would have expected to see our first aurora, and barely at that. I have added two photos of the aurora. Mine is the one you will need to view in a very dark room to see the colour, the second is simply proof that someone saw colour. It was interesting how few people saw colour without the aid of a camera.
A cruise ship is a people watcher’s paradise. Passengers and crew present in different ways. The hotel maintenance crew consists of stewards who are visible and others like laundry who are invisible that perform a repetitive daily dance. Stewards arm their carts with fresh towels, linens and cleaning supplies early and await passengers departing staterooms. As rooms are cleaned, towels and linens are collected eventually to disappear behind doorways leading to service elevators and to the ship’s laundry for the cycle to begin again. By noon most of the stewards are gone and the corridors become quiet for a few hours. Early in the evening the stewards return to do a minor clean up and turndown service which is now an option not universal.
In parallel, there is another part of the hotel that deals with food. This ship has three main dining rooms, all of which are available for dinner, one of which is always available for breakfast and another available for lunch on sea days only. Additionally, there are three buffet service areas. Their availability cycles with time of day. Two service areas are open at breakfast. As morning passes and demand decreases one area closes for breakfast and prepares a lunch service. When the first lunch service opens the other service area closes breakfast service and prepares its lunch service. As noon approaches a third service area starts a slightly different lunch menu. There is a pizza service, hot dog or hamburger service and ice cream service available from mid morning to late at night. Two of the buffet areas rotate to a dinner service as an alternative to the three main dining rooms. A steak house and Italian restaurant open for evening service but at extra cost. The third buffet morphs into a specialty dining area alternating roles as the Crab Shack or BBQ restaurant, again for a fee. As you might predict, the food service areas are accompanied by bar services on virtually every deck not committed totally to staterooms. Some specialize in wine, others in martinis and others in anything liquid. Only one venue is open 24 hours a day, the International Cafe. It offers a variety of coffees, along with sandwiches and pastries that change emphasis over the day. Behind the scenes there is a food and beverage team that manages menus and prepares menu items. On the front line are a host of visible staff; bartenders, waiters and assistants attending to passengers preferences. The same faces may appear as your breakfast waiter, beverage distributer in the buffet and dinner time assistant waiter.
Passengers and other stuff on the next post.
Today in Sydney remains unsettled between rain and cool breezes and occasional sunshine, not enough to convince us to go ashore. Perhaps the hot tub will call us later.
Paul Theroux, The Tao of Travel: Enlightenments from Lives on the Road
The wish to travel seems to me characteristically human: the desire to move, to satisfy your curiosity or ease your fears, to change the circumstances of your life, to be a stranger, to make a friend, to experience an exotic landscape, to risk the unknown.