It Was a Trip of a Lifetime! But I Didn’t Even Want to Go – Part 2
I use an app that counts your steps every day. Apparently, this app does that even when you haven’t asked it to. But I am glad it did, because on this trip of a lifetime that I didn’t even want to go on, I became a walking phenom!
Heading out to the airport, unloading luggage, standing in line after line after line, boarding the plane, disembarking the plane, standing in line after line after line, then finding our suite—yes! A suite!—on the 12th floor (deck) at the very bow of the ship, I happened to look at my phone. I had walked well over 8,000 steps, and the app thought I should join the 10,000-step club! Please note that before last Friday, I was doing well to walk about a third of that. We were exhausted before the cruise even began.
Exhausted or not, it was incumbent upon us to unpack first. Then we met our steward, Aswar. Aswar has become our hero. I’ll touch on that in a minute. For now, we were hungry. So, via overpacked elevators, we squished ourselves up to the 16th deck to find the buffet. The buffet was what was still open, and since they serve very decent food, why not? Then I lost my housemate. As in, she disappeared. We’ll call her B.
Keep in mind that this was my first luxury cruise. Ever. The last time I took a real vacation was 42 years ago. So not being able to find my housemate was terrifying. It might not be the biggest ship in the fleet, but with 17 decks and more than 1,000 feet long, it was ginormous to me! And I had no idea how the system worked. Thankfully, yes, there was a system, and it was a good one. But even with the system in place, finding B was a guess—a big guess! But the Good Lord was with me, and I did find her. Or maybe she found me. In a very big room. Where I had been frantically and unsuccessfully looking for at least 10 minutes in just that room alone (we were separated for a good 20 minutes at least). Either way, there she was, just out of my search range. I should have known. I didn’t even mind the fact that my food had gotten cold by the time we reconnected. But I do know that this search significantly contributed to my number of steps that day.
Anyway, after consuming some much-needed sustenance, we came back to the stateroom and started figuring out what was what, according to Aswar. He gave us some very interesting information that included all the goodies we suddenly qualified for simply by being in our suite: free room service, free laundry service, free food from most, if not all, of the four-star restaurants on board. Free movies. Free WiFi for two devices. (I got a discount for my laptop as the third device.) Access to the concierge lounge with service. Priority disembarkation at the end. And we qualified for port valet service that made our trip back home even simpler.
You see, B had bid on an upgrade after she had paid for our previous arrangements. (This trip was a belated birthday gift for me.) There was definitely a miracle involved here, as she had bid far below the cost of the suite with the most unlikely chance of it succeeding. But here we are! Wheee!!
The first day after our arrival on board was a sailing day. We were supposed to get used to where we were, explore the ship, figure out how things worked. Everyone was expected to wear a lanyard with a little plastic bottlecap-looking thing on the end. These were our medallions. Medallions knew who you were. Medallions let every crew member know who you were. Medallions knew if you were a U.S. citizen or not, as we had been required to provide our passports during the boarding process. This was very convenient, and it is quite appreciated on board. But it reminded me of the 13th Book of Revelation, where it is prophesied that the Beast (the Beast out of the sea, no less!) would force people “to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads.” (Revelation 13:16, NIV)
There have been tomes written about the Beast of the Sea and the Beast of the Earth, so I will not go into yet another philosophical study here. But when you read this scripture, you’ll see that the reason for the mark is “so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark,…” (Revelation 13:17, NIV) It says nothing about the mark being used to locate a person at any time. But the technology is there—I’m wearing it as I type!—so it’s not hard to imagine this as an added feature for anyone or anything we might consider a Beast.
So back to the ship. Instead of wandering around exploring, we hightailed it back to our suite, enjoyed the view from the balcony and bow of the ship—we were immediately under the bridge, so we got a pilot’s eye view!—and crashed in our respective extra-comfy twin beds. I must admit that the state of our full-sized suite had taken a bit of the edge off of me not wanting to go on this trip, but the next day would start our adventure—not only on the ocean—but in Alaska itself.
Naturally, I had a meltdown. Find out why and how things turned out in the third part of this little series: It Was a Trip of a Lifetime! But I Didn’t Even Want to Go – Part 3.
