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Month: September 2011

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A Speedy Cruise-Ship Orientation

On a cruise, after a couple days on the ship, you get the lay of the land. It’s good to give yourself a tour of each deck early on, to find the special places and find out about your various activities, eating, and drinking options. Here’s a quick look at how my cruise ship (Royal Caribbean’s Liberty of the Seas) was laid out.

If you can’t see the video below, watch it on YouTube.

 

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Poolside on the Top Deck on a Day at Sea

A day at sea on a Mediterranean cruise might take you from Barcelona to Rome, or from Rome to the Greek Isles. This truly is a relaxing day, with nothing to do but eat, laze around the pool, and marvel at the vast and seemingly pristine nature of the open sea.

If you can’t see the video below, watch it on YouTube.

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Day at Sea: When a Very Big Ship Seems Very Small

On a beautiful day at sea, there’s lots to do. Today, I marveled at the huge blueness of the Mediterranean, and then took a unique tour that gave me a rare look at the inner workings of the day-to-day management of a cruise ship.

I was continuously inspired by the simple vastness of the Mediterranean, and how we could spend an entire day at sea and see no land and almost no boats. There’s a clean, dramatic, relaxing, screen-saver beauty to a two-tone-blue world of sea and sky.

A highlight for me on this cruise was the “all access” tour. Out of 3,700 passengers, a dozen of us opted to pay $150 for a three-hour tour that took us behind the scenes. We got to visit each department and talk to the officer in charge, gaining an appreciation for the complexity of running such a huge ship. This man managed the ship's food inventory, and was responsible for keeping the pantry and fridge stocked for 5,000 hungry passengers and crew for a week at a stretch. Each vast refrigerated warehouse had a particular temperature designed to keep a particular kind of fruit or vegetable fresh and crunchy for the longest period of time. The officer admitted that if bananas are on the "push list," you’ll see more banana smoothies at the poolside bar. How smartly he manages the produce inventory on the ship has a big impact on its bottom line. While they ship lots of items from their company depot in Florida (because things are much less expensive in the US), he made a point to say that since fruits and vegetables in Europe are simply tastier than ours in America, they purchased most of them here.

The bridge (the huge command center from where the captain and his crew run the ship) comes with a wing that juts out on the port and starboard sides and gives a great view back towards the stern. As part of our “all access” tour, we got a chance to see the ship’s state-of-the-art navigational tools in action.
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Naples — Where the Ship Drops You Off at the Front Door

When you dock in Naples, you don’t have to worry about how to take a train or taxi into town to see the sights. A tourist information desk near where you disembark can give you a map, answer your questions, and send you walking on your way to explore this gritty city.

Here in Naples, the ship docks right in the town center. As in every port we visited, there’s a non-cruise-sponsored, tourist-information desk there staffed only when the cruise ships arrive. While the cruise companies are a bit conflicted about providing information to enable independent travelers to do their own thing smartly, these city tour desks are generally enthusiastic about providing practical info to help independent travelers figure out what to do and where to go. With the help of a city map and a felt pen for taking notes, you can walk into a city within minutes of disembarking.

Some friends that I made on board were new travelers. They walked 100 yards off the ship, went through the cruise-shop terminal, and peered into the urban jungle of Naples. They decided it was too much, turned around, and spent the day on the ship enjoying the pool. They even had a poolside pizza in honor of the city they were missing. Had they kept on walking for fifteen minutes, they would have found themselves in a classic Neapolitan world like this…without a hint of tourism.

Naples is a delight, even without the traditional sightseeing. Skipping Pompeii, Capri, and Naples’ great museums, I spent most of my day simply wandering the streets of perhaps the most gritty and colorful city in Europe. As I found on several occasions, within minutes of disembarking, I was immersed in the wonders of this port town — without a hint of the mass cruise industry. The main downside to cruising: Limited time in each port. Still, you can accomplish a lot in eight hours.