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Wanderung 13

Any Which Way But Loose:

Meandering Many Miles in Multitudinous Mechanisms

September 2006

Sunday, September 10th - Sailing up the Inland Passage.

We hit the Lido deck buffet for breakfast at 7:00 a.m. sharp, thereby obtaining a window seat. That gave us a great view of the Inland Passage plus a school of black and white Pacific porpoises (dolphins?) that flocked over to play in the ship’s wake. I mean, when our ship went past a school of them, they all started streaming over toward it like it was a Pied Piper or something. After breakfast our pilot left as we left the Inland Passage and headed north-northwest into the broad swells of the Pacific, at which point the Zuiderdam finally began to move a little bit. To us it was still a laughably gentle rocking motion, probably due to the ship’s stabilizers, but some folks were indeed getting seasick and we felt sorry for them.

It was an “At Sea” day, so we put in the morning taking a general tour of the public areas of the ship, which gave us an impression of the ship’s cultural ambience. Holland America offered a large variety of amenities, but all of them came at a price. You could, for example, eat in a special dining room for an extra $20 a day, swim in a special “hydropool” for an extra $20 a day, or indulge in various exercise classes such as Yoga or Pilates, again for an extra fee. Princess cruises did not offer a special dining room or a special pool, and their exercise classes were free as they seemed to concentrate on keeping their passengers more fit and active. The Princess ships even offered “cruise dollars” for each exercise activity that could ultimately be spent in the gift shop to purchase hats or T-shirts with the ship’s logo. In contrast, the Zuiderdam devoted proportionately a much larger area of the ship to the spa and the casino than the Princess ships we have cruised on, so on balance the emphasis on the Zuiderdam was more on gambling or spa recreation inside the ship rather than physical exercise.

Some things, of course were in common among the four cruise lines we have patronized. They all offered excellent food and entirely too much of it for our own good. If I may paraphrase Shakespeare, however, the fault for overeating clearly lies not in the ships or the stars but rather in ourselves. They all seemed to emphasize shopping opportunities for jewelry, paintings, and other various kinds of luxury goods. The staff were always uniformly helpful and extremely friendly and the officer corps acted, well, official. The passengers also made a difference to the shipboard ambience, however, and surprisingly often those differences seemed to accord with prevailing cultural stereotypes. British folks were generally cool, aloof, and non-communicative in shipboard situations and definitely did not appreciate my attempts at humor. Germans were stiff, orderly, and always promptly on time, but still often friendly in everyday interactions and they even appreciated my jokes to some extent. Aussies and Americans seemed to be the most open and friendly groups and my levity seemed to go over the best with them.

We followed the general tour of the ship with a "behind the scenes" tour of the galley area, which was far more interesting. The galley was, of course, spotless, and had very industrial looking cooking equipment. But in contrast to the fancy and artistically decorated dining rooms just outside, the galley was severely functional stainless steel everywhere we looked.

The mostly Filipino kitchen staff were very polite and we saw both ice sculpture and a watermelon being carved. The staff also offered free samples of cookies at the bakery section and sausage and cheese at the meat section, which I reluctantly refused. I was amazed at how such a small galley could feed three meals a day to 1800 passengers plus 800 crewmembers.


 

After a quick lunch with Lois we sat in our balcony for a while and read our books. Looking out over a clear blue sea to the horizon whenever I looked up from my book was remarkably relaxing. It was so relaxing, in fact, that when Lois and Monika decided to go shopping I simply turned in for a short nap until it was time to get dressed in our formal gear for the Captain's reception in the Vista Lounge in the bow. There we sipped champagne while being briefly introduced to the officers of the Zuiderdam.

Having had our preprandial drinks, we joined Phyllis and Bill in the Vista Dining area in the aft section of the ship and had a nice dinner. Wending our way back to our stateroom we were astonished to see a brilliant rainbow just aft of the ship. In fact, it became so intense that we saw a secondary, fainter rainbow just to the right of it, and when we went out on the afterdeck for a better look we found rainbows on both sides of the ship arching up into the sky, a beautiful sight.

We rejoined Phyllis and Bill in their cabin to split a bottle of wine and sat on their spacious verandah to enjoy the view. Their verandah faced aft so we had a view of the ship's wake receding to the horizon. Suddenly Monika said, "There's a whale!" and we excitedly scanned the area where she was pointing just to the left of the wake. Sure enough we saw multiple spouts and several big, black backs of whales as they took a breath and then plunged back into the depths. Happy to have seen porpoises and whales on our first day at sea, we returned to our cabin, read a bit, and then turned in for the night.

Copyright 2006 by R. W. Holt and E. M. Holt
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September 2006
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