Love...exciting and new.

Norwegian Sky: Its no Love Boat

Any child of the 1970s who has been aboard a cruise will likely have the same reaction.  Why isn’t this ship like the one from The Love Boat?  And why couldn’t you just skip the Pacific Princess and drive to Puerta Vallarta from LA?    That last part is probably for the Angelinos among us, but it stands to reason why my boat, Norwegian Sky, didn’t really have the same oomph I expected from a cruise liner.  Perhaps the magic of television just made everything seem nicer.  Perhaps its because I’m older and, like going back to high school after you’ve graduated, cruise ships look different to adults.  Or perhaps it is because they never showed you real cabins on The Love Boat.

Apparently the word “cabin” isn’t the term du jour among cruiselines.  I stayed in a “stateroom”, and believe me when I tell you there’s nothing stately about it.  Ok, so I didn’t choose my room, and I am unemployed so economy is important.  However, when a bed folds out from the wall and I’m expected to sleep in it, something has gone horribly awry.  Most likely, that fold-out was meant for a child, and the room was not meant to be shared by 3 larger-than-average sized adults, only one of whom is physically able to mount the upper bed.  Even still, the room was teeny-tiny.  You couldn’t open the door without closing the closet, and two people had to be in bed in order for the third to get to the bathroom.  Don’t get me started on the bathroom.  When we embarked, the bathroom smelled like, well, bathroom.  Like Greyhound Bus, public toilet bathroom.  Not a good first impression.  However, if I’d been given 2 or 3 welcome aboard cocktails instead of one, I doubt I’d have noticed.  You’ll be happy to know that the smell dissipated eventually.

For a small room, though, they did cram lots of things in.  There was a “lamp” on the wall behind my fold-out bed, the pillows were good, and it was rather comfortable once I got used to the idea of potentially careening towards the floor in the middle of the night.  And once I convinced myself that the bed would make several creaking noises before breaking off from the wall, crushing my cousin Von beneath it, I slept like a baby.  Maybe it was the water (which I couldn’t see or hear from the window-less steerage cabin), or perhaps it was the Drink of the Day, every day.  Or perhaps it was knowing that there’d be no phones to answer, no e-mails to read, no incessant need to update my Facebook status.  While eating dinner, someone noticed that for the first time in years, there were no cell phones on the table and you couldn’t see thumbs flying in the midst of a frantic text.

In other words, we were on vacation.