The Alternate Reality of Cruise Ships

Here I go, finally updating you all on my winter break – now that I’m well-rested, relaxed, not sick and (the greatest factor in my delay) not distracted. I’m horrible at regular updates, I know. I’m sorry? In any case, here we go!

We got up at a ridiculously unreasonable hour on the morning of Sunday the 20th of December to go to the train station. The metro workers were on strike (of course – this is France, someone is always on strike), so we had to walk, very briskly, dragging heavy suitcases, to the train station – not all that awesome on an empty stomach. There were some other people wandering the streets of Toulouse. All of them were saying “good evening.” Clearly, they had not gone to bed yet. I would rather have been one of them than have to drag my ass out of bed in the morning.

The train ride itself was pretty uneventful. We changed trains in Narbonne, and our connection was delayed, but we had hot chocolate and coffee and all was well. I stared out the window a lot, thought about early morning trains and dreams, napped, and listened to Coldplay. It was very relaxing, while it lasted.

We arrived in Barcelona by early afternoon, got a taxi, made it to the port, and wound our way through the lineup to get onto the boat. I spotted a guy who looked about my age with an amazing hand-painted Cheshire Cat backpack. I was impressed, and told him so. Then there was a bit of hullabaloo at the check-in desk, due to us wanting to pay for both of our rooms on my dad’s credit card, even though one of them was registered under my mom’s name – but we got that cleared up, and got our room key cards, which also double as ID. By the time we finally got checked in, it was well past three in the afternoon, and we were starving, so we went down to the buffet (the Garden Cafe) to eat.

At this point I should probably explain how the food thing works onboard the boat. Our cruise ship, the Norwegian Jade, had about ten or eleven restaurants, some of which were pre-paid and included in the cost of the rooms, the others of which charged cover. We, being cheap, only ate at the pre-paid restaurants, which included the buffet (the Garden Cafe), the two dining rooms (Alizar, the casual one, and the Grand Pacific, the fancy formal one), and the 24-hour cafe (the Blue Lagoon). The Blue Lagoon, in particular, will become significant later.

So, after our meal, we went exploring. Shona and Tristan went off to check out the teen club, and mom and dad and I wandered around looking at things. Then I went back to my room for a while and did a bit of writing. We met up later that evening for dinner, and were then released to do our own thing as the boat left the harbour. Shona and Tristan disappeared to the teen club again, and I ended up wandering up to the Spinnaker Lounge and bar to see if there was any interesting dance music playing and whether or not the 20s and 30s mixer would get me anywhere or if I would have to resign myself to not knowing anyone on this boat. Needless to say, that did not happen.

At the bar, I ran into the guy I’d seen earlier with the Cheshire Cat backpack. I informed him of my plight and begged him to save me from boredom, and he performed quite admirably. He dragged me over to his little circle, and they introduced themselves: Jason, with the backpack, who I had initially thought was only a couple of years older than me, was in fact 26; his roommate, who he had come on vacation with, Louie, had just turned 21 that day and was celebrating by getting drunk; Tara, who had the room directly above theirs, was 22; and her younger brother John, sharing with her, was 16, but easily tall enough to be mistaken for my age or older. We ended up standing around talking for more than an hour, dancing until a ridiculous hour of the morning, and then wound up at the Blue Lagoon at 2:30 (minus John, who had left). We stayed there for the next hour. It was while there that I discovered Jason more or less makes friends with every person he talks to, since everyone we met that night became a regular face in our little group. By the time everyone else had drifted off, we had all talked ourselves into going back to Jason and Louie’s room to watch Inglourious Basterds, which we did. Tara went back to bed halfway through, but I stuck it out until the end. I ended up in bed around six am.

It’s after that point that the days start to blur together. I spent a lot of time in Jason and Louie’s room, which was dubbed both “Jason’s Cave,” reflecting the number of afternoons he spent holed up in there sleeping, and “Party Central,” since it became the meeting and gathering point from that day on. Shona decided the teen club was lame after the first night, and ended up hanging out with us instead. In addition to me, her, Jason, Louie, Tara, and John, we also added a second Jon, a girl named Alessandra, her brother Allan, and a guy named Daniel to our semi-regular collection; then there were loads more people who we would meet almost nightly in Spinnaker’s.

Some nights we’d go to dinner on our own, or with our friends; others, especially special occasions, we’d go to Alizar’s with the family, or get dressed up and go to the Grand Pacific. There were nights both late (five am) and “early” (generally around midnight), days spent in the pool and hot tub and days when I tucked myself away in the book room to write or play games; evenings spent talking or evenings spent dancing. Several movies were watched, many drinks were consumed (most of them not by me), Jason and I tried to salsa (we did get progressively better after the first night, which included me tripping over my own feet and falling on my ass), everyone bought souvenirs, Jason, Louie and Tara smuggled bottles of alcohol onto the ship (they didn’t want us bringing in other alcohol because then they couldn’t sell us their overpriced drinks), Daniel and I spent a couple of hours talking about ancient history and mythology, five different people spilled drinks on me on New Year’s, Jason lost $100 playing craps in the casino, I ran out of shirts and washed them in the bathroom sink, everyone ate far too much spinach and artichoke dip at the Blue Lagoon, nobody got enough sleep, several people hooked up, I gave two brief lessons on Canadian politics, there was a ship-wide Jason hunt when he disappeared one morning (he turned up later after having taken a nap in one of the private rooms off one of the dance clubs) and everyone wrote their contact information on my hands in sharpie on the last night of the cruise. It was mind-blowing.

Being on a cruise ship is kind of like living in an enclosed hotel compound – a hotel that includes two pools, four jacuzzis, a spa, eleven restaurants, a small gym, a casino, a full-sized theatre, two dance clubs, seven bars, free room service, and a 24-hour cafe. It feels like it goes on forever, and yet it feels like it passes in no time at all. Everyone is so cut off from the outside world – internet exists, but it’s ungodly expensive, and most people just don’t even bother. We barely even had any news. There was probably a news channel on the TVs, but hell if I ever paid any attention. You’re travelling with no sense of movement; you’ll wake up in a port one day, spend a few hours exploring, and then come back, and it’s like you just magically appear somewhere else. Shona and I took to calling our normal lives “real life” and the boat “fake life” – because that’s honestly what it feels like. It’s very surreal.

The psychedelic decorations probably didn’t help, either.

There will be more to follow about our shore excursions – I still need to go through all my photos and get everything sorted in my mind. Life on the ship itself was almost more important, in a way. That place was home for two weeks – a two weeks that lasted eternity.