SCOTT LUDWIG: Ship-wrecked: Afloat for the holidays (Part 1)

I’m not particularly seaworthy, so I’ve never been much for cruises. I’ve been on a few, but if given the choice of going out to sea or staying at home on dry land, I’ll go with ‘B’ every time.

But this year for Christmas, I chose “A.” Well, my wife did. I just got caught in the crossfire.

Along with the two of us, our son and daughter-in-law spent five days over the Christmas holidays on the Atlantic Ocean sailing on a cruise line I won’t mention by name because not everything you’re about to read is particularly flattering. So their name will remain anonymous.

But I will tell you that it’s named after a Scandinavian country. And it’s not Sweden or Denmark. So if you’re thinking about taking a cruise, here’s a few things you might want to take into consideration. (Feel free to clip and save for future reference.)

Taking it one day at a time: Day One was entirely spent at sea, which allowed us to recover from the previous day’s drive to the port in Jacksonville and then dealing with the porters handling our luggage. More specifically, for Cindy to recover from dealing with the porters.

The first porter placed our five pieces of luggage on a cart – which took him every bit of 8 seconds – and Cindy gave him a tip with all the cash she could find in the spur of the moment, which was $3. The kind porter – and I say that in the most facetious way possible – said we had five pieces of luggage, implying that his tip should have been at least $2 more.

Cindy said, “Well, I’ll just fix that” and pulled every last piece of our luggage off the cart. I couldn’t possibly have loved her more.

The four of us took our luggage to the second porter, who was responsible for putting it on the ship, and by that time Cindy found another $3 in her purse. After he took the luggage belonging to Cindy and me, she tipped the porter $6 and we got in line to board.

Shortly thereafter, our son and his wife got in line behind us, only they still had their luggage with them. They said the porter refused to take it, which was Cindy’s cue to return to beast mode. You probably know how that turned out.

After that, we ate lunch, checked into our rooms, explored the ship, ate dinner, and called it a day. In other words, it was pretty uneventful. So the best thing I have to say about our first day at sea wass that we didn’t hit an iceberg.

On Day Two, we docked at Freeport in the Grand Bahamas. The first thing we saw when we got off the ship was a cluster of booths known by locals as a “straw market.” I discovered that meant that each one sold the same conglomeration of items (presumably) hand-made out of straw.

Except that everything was displayed differently in each booth – apparently so tourists wouldn’t realize they could find whatever they were looking for at any one of the booths. That being said, we took a cab – that is, if a cab can be shared by 17 people with eight different last names – to another straw market that looked pretty much like the one we’d just left except that at this one the booths were all in a straight line as opposed to being scattered all over the place like they were at the dock.

Cindy found a cute straw purse with Stitch, well, stitched on one side. We bought it for our cat sitter – Stitch is her favorite character – and had her name stitched on the other side. The vendor gave us a deal on the price, so including the cost for transportation we got the purse for only $110.

Day Three, we rented a villa on the cruiseline’s private island, where we would spend a leisurely and, if we so desired, sand-free day at the beach. The quite costly excursion was to be part of our Christmas presents to one another, “was” being the operative word because things didn’t quite go as planned.

Due to heavy winds and choppy waters, taking the tender boats to the island was determined to be dangerous, so our excursion was cancelled. That meant instead of a day on their private island, we spent another day at sea. We planned on attending an art auction that afternoon, but when we showed up for it at its scheduled time of 5 p.m., there were only a few other people in the room.

After waiting 15 minutes for it to start, our daughter-in-law found someone to ask what was going on. Or I should say what went on: the auction was already over because they held it at noon instead of 5 o’clock since the private island excursion had been canceled – something we would have known had one of us been telepathic.

So now after three days, the best thing about two of them is that the ship was still afloat.

Next week: Days Four and Five