Boarding, Party of 4

"Who wants to go on a cruise?"

The sentence that hooked me. I had never before been on a cruise. Never thought of it, not seriously. Living in a major tourist destination and working near a cruise terminal brings the Dam ships near my front door frequently. No, I did not curse. That is what they are called - at least, that's what the Amsterdam line is called. That would be the one that called my name. 

My colleague, Maggie, stuck her head in my office one morning and said, "Hey, Sarah, want to go on a cruise?"

I considered it for one small moment and said, "Sure." Gave her my budget and Maggie was off. 

Every few days I'd receive updates on prices and dates until one day - it happened. We found the north bound cruise to Canada on the Nieuw Amsterdam that had our names on it. One of our good friends at work was also in need of a cruise, so we did everything we could until the stars were aligned - we recruited our friend, Carolyn and her friend Felicia, to come along. 

The Ship

From left to right: Felicia, me, Carolyn, and Maggie from atop the ship

Our adventure began on a Monday afternoon. When we ladies met at Anthony's Fish Grotto, we laughed at the amount luggage we each had and pinned on the flours I had brought for each of us. It was Maggie's birthday, so we gave her a birthday sash, had a few laughs, then headed to the terminal. 

We went through the rigmarole of pre-boarding check-in in the enormous B Street Pier. Before we boarded, a photographer pulled us over and took all of our photos. We laughed and posed, all proudly wearing our lovely flowers, which we wore all day, even to dinner.

Second balcony up, us waving to my folks.

My folks came down to the dock to watch us depart. From the balcony of Carolyn and Felicia's room, we waved good bye to them and to the Maritime Museum of San Diego's 101 year old Pilot boat, which floated on by.

The Maritime Museum Pilot Boat on her bay cruise.

Once our boat began to move, we explored the ship. We found the cafe in the Crow's Nest up on the top floor. It was an incredible viewing area. I took some fantastic photos of our city and gave an abbreviated small tour about San Diego to the Canadians and Zonies (what we call people from Arizona) who were listening. All was well until...

I knew ahead of time that gale strength winds awaited us out on the Pacific, but I had no idea how intense it would be. Once we cleared the 400 foot peninsula of Point Loma, the wind broad sided us and the ship began to sway. Being high up on top, we were quite aware of the extra movement, so we booked it out of there and headed back to our rooms to get ready for dinner. 

Made this observation on my way down: a cruise is like a beehive. It seems like chaos at first, but there is order and direction. Every bee has his or her own itinerary and the hive is subject to the whims of nature. Just like those beehives, our boat rocked. Literally and a lot. 

The little TVs said that we were experiencing eight mile per hour winds. The fifteen to twenty foot swells assailing us said otherwise. Let me put that in perspective; in San Diego bay, when we have 12 - 15 knot winds, we see white caps, which are basically the result of one-ish foot swells and it makes for an interesting boat ride, but still comfortable....TWENTY foot swells are the height of two story buildings, and hot-dang do they crash against your 964 foot boat with a BANG. The waves were pounding against our boat. And yes, it was a little nerve wracking. BUT we were all boat people, so surely we would be fine! (I was prepared to the max - I had ginger candies and acupressure bracelets on because I hadn't yet been out on the high seas, so I had no idea how I would do.) 

On my way to my room, I was ping-ponging against the walls from the boat moving. Eventually, I developed better sea legs, but the boat was slamming around so much that the walls were shaking heavily.

Regardless, we all had plans to meet. I had reservations at the Pinnacle Grille, one of the fancy restaurants. I didn't realize at the time how early my reservation was, so when I made it to the room, I flash changed and ran in flip flops in a pitching ship to the restaurant where I changed into heels. The restaurant was lovely and the food was fantastic. I enjoyed a pumpkin sauce scallop, Caesar salad, crab legs, asparagus, and Baked Alaska with Cherry Jerry ice cream. SOOOO good. However, I didn't eat as much as I normally would; the boat was moving so violently that I was going green around the gills. My waitress Anca from South Africa was very kind and helped to keep me distracted. Although it was tough to be distracted when at one point, one lady who had the view of the sea said, "Oh, that's a good one." And then BOOM! A powerful wake struck.

Good times.

The entertainment hall.

After dinner, I went to find the girls and as fate would have it, they were no more than ten feet away in the first hall I searched. We went to find the entertainment for the evening and watched the comedian on board whose name was Russ. He was hilarious. It helped that we had a good crowd of people who were interacting with him. The show room was enormous. The cruise had well over 1,000 passengers, so it's not surprising that the entertainment hall would have the space to accommodate all of us. 

Once the comedy show was over, we went to watch the B.B. King jazz band. The two singers had lovely and incredible voices. We listened to them for some time, then Maggie adjourned from the activities. Carolyn, Felicia and I walked around a bit before also calling it a day. 

The main lobby.

Walking around on a pitching cruise boat was a lot of effort and it was time to rest!

Prior to boarding, we had vowed together to take the stairs and only the glass elevators on occasion, so that we could eat what we wanted guilt free...mostly. I have a Garmin step counter, so I told the girls I'd keep track of our walking adventures. For day one, we reached 11,606 steps.

Until next time when you get to hear about our first full day aboard trapped inside at sea!

Your humble author,

S. Faxon

A Dutchie Party

Hello all,

For those of you who may recall, I have in my arsenal of friends a lovely friend from the Netherlands (also known as Holland). My friend, Lieke, inspired the post, "The Dutch," and now has inspired another. 

This past week I went over to Lieke and her husband's house to attend a Dutchie Party - a birthday party, no less. It was Like's birthday and I knew I was in for a cultural and wonderful treat.

For my long time readers, you know of my affinity for baking. Birthday cakes happen to be my specialty, but I'm not talking about your standard sheet cakes. Oh no. What I made for Lieke's birthday, was a dark chocolate tart cake with Grand Mariner and a hint of orange. It may have ended up looking like this:

Yep. It tasted as good as it looked, but we'll get to the feasting part in a minute.

While Lieke, my friend Christy and I caught up, Lieke's husband made us dinner. This is a normal routine in the household and Stephan is an AMAZING cook. Christy was given an assignment by Lieke to write her birthday card entirely in Dutch, a language that neither Christy or I could begin to speak correctly.

 But, Christy is an excellent friend and did as requested marvelously. Of course, the words that she wrote were literal (like, how in the States if we said, "it's raining cats and dogs," Americans know that to mean it is raining heavily, butt people in some countries would duck for cover because those words together do not translate to have the same meaning) and apparently she read like someone from South Africa, but the heart was there and that was evident.

We all sat down together and ate ridiculously good Dutch pancakes. What's a Dutch pancake you may be wondering? Well, unfortunately, they were so good that I did not stop to take a photo of them, but here's my attempt to define their goodness: imagine a thin pancake, not so thin as a crepe, but not so thick as your average American pancake. They are usually served with raisins in the batter, but due to the fact that the market we visited did not have raisins, we went without. They are also usually served either sweet or savory - sweets tend to have apple slices right inside of the batter, whereas savory have BACON!!!!!!!!!!!! Cooked right into them. Can you tell which was my favorite? 

With the bacon ones, we spread Dutch syrup on top and rolled them up like you would a stuffed crepe.. The syrup was thick, but not like molasses. It went perfectly with the bacon. For the apple pancakes, we put cinnamon or an apple spread, which was like apple jam.

The food was incredible and Stephan kept bringing pancake after pancake to each of our plates. I honestly have no idea how many I consumed, but it felt like a lot.

After the delightful dinner, we sat at the table a long while, planning our next adventure. During the span of this, I went to use the restroom (uh-oh, a bathroom story!). Everything was fine until I realized after flushing, that there was a significant amount of water on the floor. I looked at the toilet and realized that water was pouring out from the back tank of the toilet! I kid you not, I had just been thinking, "Wow, this is a great place to live. I hope to find a place like this where everything is cutesie and works properly." Alas, it was as though I had set up the curse intentionally.

Calmly, I approached Lieke and Christy to say, "I hate to be the bearer of this news, but the toilet is leaking from the back and there is water all over the floor."

We all went rushing into the bathroom to see what was going on. Armed with one or two towels, which were soaked in a minute's time, we flushed the toilet to see what was going on. Sure enough, the water was coming out from the top of the back tank. We lifted the top of the tank to see if the water was not draining properly, only to have a gushing tube shoot water out at all of us, getting us and the bathroom only more wet. 

Several side splitting laughs later, I was able to turn off the water going into the toilet, stopping the intense water flow from further spraying us. So what caused this unlikely oddity? Lieke and Stephan told us that the building supers had been working on the water pipes, so they were not terribly surprised that something like this would happen. Let me tell you, I still felt bad for being the lucky soul to raise their awareness to this issue, but luckily I was armed with cake.

After Lieke tested her other bathroom (it was ok) and called maintenance (they only have emergency responses to "plugged up toilets"....) we all sat down and prepared ourselves for the dark chocolate treats. 

Christy and I both asked for smallerish pieces and we knew that Lieke was likely to return with just a bite, but what she came to us with was a bit of an embarrassing amount of riches.

We laughed, we talked Lord of the Rings, and dreamed of lands void of spiders (legend has it that there are no spiders in New Zealand, and if you know the truth to this and if it is contrary to my belief, please don't crush my dreams....Christy!)

We didn't leave Lieke's place until well after midnight. Staying awake at work the next day proved to be an interesting and entertaining challenge, but it was worth it. As you all well know, my mantra is "Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit." - Henry David Thoreau.

Now go on, everyone, go eat yourself some home made chocolate cake.

Your humble author,

S. Faxon

PS - I gave myself bangs this week. As my dear readers, I trust and rely on your responses. What do you think? Should I change my picture on the blog at the top of the page, from me with Asia in the background (in the photo, I'm in Europe with Asia behind me) to the following picture depicting my "tude". As you can see, the picture is complete with cat tower and a scrimshaw necklace with a tall ship on it. It's up to you, readers, to let me know what you think! Please leave a comment below with your opinions!