Mary Lis Travel Blog

12-19-06 

We are in Progreso, Mexico this morning, tied up at the world’s longest dock. We’ve had a lovely leisurely morning – we slept in a little and then had breakfast in the dining room and now we are gathering up our energy to explore Progreso a bit – perhaps find a place to swim.

Yesterday we did a shore excursion called “Catamaran sail, snorkel, and beach party” that involved snorkeling and then time on a “private beach”. There were 38 of us on a catamaran that can hold up to 130 people – more on this later – and we sailed for about 45 minutes to a spot in the ocean where we had exactly 40 minutes to snorkle. We had great fun, though it was a bit crowded with people – the time was way too short. I love to just float so that the fish think you’re one of them and they swim right in front of you. One of them pooped right in front of Mary’s face. She also saw a stingray and a barracuda. I missed both of those things – I spent a lot of time trying to get away from the crowd because I was worried about getting kicked. Consequently I never seemed to be where there were many fish to see. After our very short snorkle we went to the “private beach” which was very crowded with people. When we arrived there were two other catamarans there. While we were there, two others arrived. These had the full 130 people completely jammed on board standing elbow to elbow and made me once again appreciate the pleasures of not being on a huge mass-market ship (there were 6 other cruiseships in Cozumel with us, including Royal Caribbean’s Freedom of the Seas, the world’s largest cruiseship holding upwards of 4,000 passengers).

I found the “private beach” unpleasantly crowded. I spent most of my time swimming and floating, but the salt water started to bother my eyes so we went next to our catamaran and just sat in the surf. I threw our sunblock behind me in the sand and in less than 5 minutes someone had stolen it. I was quite appalled. Later at dinner I told this story to a tablemate who explained that “you can’t leave anything anywhere around here because these people will steal it.” I’m often a little slow to pick up on veiled prejudicial remarks and at first I thought she meant Crystal passengers and then I realized she meant Mexicans.

Often when people make these sorts of veiled racist, classist or homphobic remarks I just sit uncomfortably by and don’t say anything, partly because they’re spoken in code so I’m not sure if I’ve heard what I think I’ve heard, and partly because they’re not blatantly hateful so I’m not sure how to confront them. Then later I think of what I should have said, and feel bad for not saying anything. This time, however, (partly because, unfortunately, our tablemates have made enough such remarks that we’re more in practice now in recognizing them) I surprised myself by rising to the occasion and insisting that it was a cruise ship passenger who stole my sunscreen, not a Mexican. I had to defend this thesis – no, there were no Mexicans selling anything, no, all the catamaran’s staff were on the catamaran, but I finally convinced her.

We were torn about what to do after dinner – there was a classical piano concert that I really wanted to hear, but there was also a “Friends of Dorothy” party. “Friends of Dorothy” is code for “meeting of all the gay and lesbians on board.” The name comes from the stereotypical gay men’s love of Judy Garland. Many cruise ships have a “Friends of Dorothy” party once per sailing, but we had never been on a ship that had one. I felt that it was a business requirement that we go, and so we did. When we walked up we saw about 10 men and were worried that perhaps lesbians are not friends of Dorothy, but we were warmly welcomed and eventually saw two women who were very happy to learn that they are not the only lesbians on board. All the men were extremely friendly, and came forward to introduce themselves. They included two of the ship’s entertainers and two of the ship’s officers and perhaps one of the gentleman hosts, though I’m not positive about that.

We had ordered non-alcoholic drinks when we came in the room and after meeting all the men we sat with the two women. I noticed that Mary had ordered a second drink so I said, “Mary are you ordering a second drink because you found out the alcohol is free?” When she confirmed, I, too, ordered a glass of wine. The two women we were talking with were, I’m sure, impressed with our classiness! We had a nice chat with them. They have sailed Crystal many times and we asked them about how having this big group of travel agents aboard had changed the feeling around the ship. In particular, we had run into some haughty people and we were wondering if these might be travel agents. Our new friends told us that there are normally MORE haughty people onboard (“you guys have bumped some snotty people off”,) but, they both said about the haughty people, “They’re just SO fun!” I loved their attitude. They also told us that Crystal makes a point of having a Friends of Dorothy party on every sailing and that it always includes hosted drinks and h’ors douerves. (sp?)  I really liked that there was such a genuine effort to welcome us.

Our women friends had to leave for dinner so we stood up too, but ended up talking for some time to a couple of men from Texas whom we really liked. This was their first cruise ever and they were a bit nervous about the movement of the ship. Yesterday was the first day there was really any perceptible movement on the ship. I was glad for it because I like the rocking, but I imagine it must be a shock if you’ve never been on a cruise ship before and you’ve been sailing for 4.5 days without any movement.

There was a show that I actually wanted to attend. It was a Tony-award nominated vocalist accompanied on piano by his wife. On Monday night during the Christmas Tree lighting ceremony I had noticed them on the staircase. I thought they were just passengers but they were the most adorable couple and they seemed to be having so much fun that I spent a lot of time watching them. When we got back to our room I learned they were the headline entertainment for Tuesday evening, but we ended up being too tired to go. Instead we went back to our room and were asleep by 10.

12-20-06 

Progreso is a fairly new cruise port and the main reason cruise ships stop there is because the ruins of Chichen Itza are about an hour and a half away. Like most cruise ports, if you don’t venture away from the port it is mainly a bunch of cheap stuff for sale. Our shore excursion of kayaking through mangroves and swimming in a cenote had been cancelled due to lack of interest and when we asked at the shore excursion desk they said there was not really anywhere we could swim in a cenote (We found out later they just didn’t know what they were talking about.) So we opted to sleep in and have a leisurely breakfast in the main restaurant – they made me a delicious asparagus and mushroom omlette and I developed over the week a great love for Crystal’s oatmeal.

After breakfast we took a complimentary bus into town – basically to the end of the 8 km pier – and went to take a look at the beach. The water was very murky and there was no place to put our stuff while we were swimming so we opted to go back to the ship. I did stop and buy some “pearls” for $8.00. I put it in quotation marks because I have no idea whether or not they are really pearls and, for the price, it seems likely they are not. But I love them all the same.

I went upstairs to the gym to workout and then did yoga on the balcony. That was perhaps one of the best times of the cruise for me. At one point I looked up and there were two black frigate birds flying above me – a passenger had pointed out to us earlier that you can recognize them by their forked tails – and it was a wonderful moment. Dinner was French themed, which did not appeal to either of us, so we managed to secure a second reservation at Silk Road, the Japanase restaurant where we had sushi and miso soup and rock prawns and I had the most tender delicious steak I have ever had. The waiter told me it was the same grade as kobe beef. Mary got to have sushi for the first time in her life. She hates seaweed and I asked our first night in Silk Road if they had anything without seaweed. The waiter said they could make it with soy paper instead of seaweed and she was very happy with that and pleased that she could join the sushi nation.

After dinner Mary attempted to go out on deck for her cruise tradition of standing at the front of the ship in the dark and singing along with her IRiver mp3 player, but it was too windy and scary. At 8:30 we went to the movie theater and saw Little Miss Sunshine which we both realy liked. I feel very bad that I was rude to the the poor guy who was standing in the theater handing out popcorn. He handed me one and I asked if it was buttered and he said yes so then I handed it back and said, “Oh, I don’t need that then,” and then walked away annoyed. The poor guy kept looking at me and clearly didn’t know what he should be doing and I felt very bad that I was taking out my annoyance on him. The last time I went to a movie it was on Holland America and they just had little bags of popcorn sitting there that you could go get throughout and even after the movie. On Crystal they made this poor guy stand there with the popcorn and then he left so you couldn’t get more if you wanted. It annoyed me that they made that poor guy stand there holding popcorn. It was also certainly inappropriate of me to take ou my annoyance on the poor guy. The movie experience is better on Holland America. It was either the screen or the projector on Crystal, but the whole picture was broken up into visible little squares. After a while I forgot about them but at first it took some getting used to.

The next day was a sea day and we had seminars to attend in the morning and afternoon. At the morning seminar we were supposed to discuss something in groups and some guy sitting in front of us said that he couldn’t leave his seat for some reason which I didn’t catch. Mary gave me a look and then wrote me a note that said, “‘I’m on quarantine’ and he’s HERE?!!” Once I caught what the jerk had said I couldn’t stop watching him. We both watched as he went and handled the juices and touched his face and touched just about every surface in the room. At the break we went back to our room and each took an Airborne. After the break he moved to the other side of the room (equal opportunity infection) and later in the afternoon we saw him in the hot tub. We were appalled. This was a travel agent, no less! The poor women who sat next to him in the morning were at our table that evening and they said he later told them he had just been released from quarantine which is not as bad, but he was still incredibly poorly behaved. Mary watched him go up to the refreshment area, pick up a tea bag and then put it back. It’s no wonder there is more Norwalk virus on the bigger ships. There are just larger numbers of people which basically increases the chances that some rude person is going to feel that is is more important for them to get their money’s worth on the cruise than to not infect their fellow passengers.

After our seminars we went to the Spanish class. At first we were the only two people there, and for that Juan Carlos gave us a bottle of Mexican Christmas beer that is in Mary’s suitcase and perhaps we will enjoy it on Christmas day. He told us about what he and his partner Cesar, did in Progreso. They signed up for a tour in town when they got off the ship. They were the only two people on the tour and for $40 got a six hour tour that included some ruins, the town of Merida, and swimming in a cenote. We were a bit jealous. A few other women showed up to the class and we all had to give speeches to the class in which we said our name and our marital status and how many pets we had. At the end he held a graduation ceremony for us where he had one of the Yamaha keyboards play pomp and circumstance and then he called out our name and had us come get our diplomas. The Spanish class was definitely one of the highlights of the cruise.

After Spanish I went upstairs to the art class to get my framed artwork. When I get a chance I will add a photo of it to this blog so you can see how talented I am. They had an open house of the ship between 1 and 6 so that people could see other categories of staterooms so we went to check out the penthouses and also the rooms without a verandah. At 5:30 we met George and Helen Litterst, the Yamaha teacher and his wife, in the bistro. Mary and I had met Helen at the Mozart tea a few days earlier and really enjoyed talking to her. She thought we would enjoy talking to George also and we had a nice chat.

We had our farewell dinner – we found we had really come to enjoy the group of people we were seated with – and then we went to the farewell show which we both found disappointing because they didn’t do a farewell to crew as they’ve done on every other cruise we’ve been on. They have the whole crew come out on stage and we get to applaud them. This show consisted of some fairly bad “ballet”, some opera singing and then a comedian who was pretty funny. He came out dressed as a Norwegian stewardess named Tuna who, among other things, talked about how she was being sexually harrassed by the ship’s captain. The other part of the show was the headline singer, Michel Bell, whom I had wanted to see a few night’s earlier. He was good, but a little too dramatic for both of our tastes.

Mary was very well-organized and packed. I was tired and basically just threw things into suitcases – thus the repack the next day in Ft. Lauderdale. We had the most movement of the entire cruise the last night and I was rocked to sleep like like a baby.

12-22-06 

The roughest night at sea is always the night after we get off the ship. At least that has been our experience both times we’ve sailed for seven days out of Florida. Yesterday we got off the ship at about 10 am. It was a very civilized disembarkation. Two nights before, they had given us our luggage tags and disembarkation times and we were not required to vacate our staterooms until it was time for us to vacate the ship. That allowed us to have a fairly relaxed morning. We showered and had breakfast in the dining room and then made our way to the Galaxy Lounge where we waited a few minutes and then left the ship.

Immediately we were surrounded by swarming porters trying to grab our bags for a tip. As I was telling Mary, “We don’t need a porter; just say no to any porters,” an attractive female porter came to ask us if we needed help and I said, “Sure, thank you very much!” Mary completely understood my change of heart and didn’t even question me. We had reserved a Hertz rental car and it seemed like it was actually quite good that we had a porter because she led us to where we should wait for the Hertz shuttle. There was one other man waiting also.

Now I say “seemed” because it took a very long time for the shuttle to come and when it did, it came across the street. We had to run across the street with our bags and then the driver tried to tell us that the shuttle was too full. These are the times I summon up my loud, offended personality and I said, “We were here before these other people and we were told to wait across the street.” He said, “Well this is for people with reservations only.” I said, “We have a reservation.” He said, “At the downtown office?” I didn’t know where my reservation was, only that it included pickup at the cruise terminal. I showed him my reservation and he jammed all our luggage into the van and the poor guy who had been waiting with us across the street had to hold some of our luggage in his lap. It was a long drive – probably over 20 minutes to the downtown Hertz Local Edition office where we all piled in and waited at least another 30 minutes in line.

When we finally received our car, a guy brought it out up front and parked it in heavy traffic and yelled at us to hurry and get our luggage in the car – he didn’t help, he did not provide a map or help us with directions. We got in the car, which stunk of cigarette smoke even though we had reserved non-smoking, and drove off, depending on Mary’s instincts to get us to Ft. Lauderdale. We left behind us one of the couples that had ridden over in the shuttle with us. They had reserved a mid-sized car and were given a Mustang convertible. They were very unhappy with this and asked to speak with the manager. The obviously bored, couldn’t care less man they were dealing with said he was the manager and shrugged his shoulders. Now, we, on the other hand, had reserved an economy car and they gave us an SUV. The obvious solution would have been to switch the two cars, but customer service was not on the agenda at the downtown Miami Hertz agency. We didn’t even know we had an SUV until they brought it to us outside. We chose Hertz because they generally have the best selection of cars and they were also one of only a few agencies that has cruise port pickup. We usually use Budget, which does not charge extra for a domestic partner to be an additional driver. Hertz would have charged us $10 so Mary was the sole driver.

We managed to get to our hotel in Ft. Lauderdale by Mary finding the freeway and then me pulling up my MapPoint software on my laptop and navigating. We are staying at The Pillars which is a lovely luxury haven within the craziness that is Ft. Lauderdale 2 days before Christmas. Even though we arrived early, they had a room ready for us and we got settled and then drove to our favorite restaurant from our last time in Ft. Lauderdale, Galanga Thai. It was not as good as last time we were there and the waitress was completely indifferent. Mary ordered panang curry and asked if it came with bell peppers. The waitress said, “Whatever it says on the menu,” and Mary said, “Well if it comes with peppers, I don’t want any.” Her curry came loaded with bell peppers to the point where she couldn’t eat it.

We then stopped at Walgreen’s to return the sunburn solutions that I never had to use on the cruise. Yay! I wanted to exchange them for a birthday card and some other items for Mary. I went to a cash register, where there was a “Code Six to the Front!” in progress. When it was my turn, I told the woman I wanted to do an exchange. She rolled her eyes at me and then yelled, “Code Five to the Front!” She then directed me to go away and someone would come somewhere eventually to help me. As I waited, whatever the next customer said was responded to with a “Code Six to the Front!” Apparently they have been watching too much ER at this particular Walgreens.

Next we stopped at Whole Foods to get some food for the plane today. This was horribly crowded and we were definitely ready to get back to the hotel, especially with the friendly South Florida driving that includes speeding up whenever you see anyone attempting to move into your lane.

At the hotel, Mary slept and I repacked my suitcases which I had basically just thrown everything into on Thursday night. I actually really enjoyed repacking – it was a bit like solving a jigsaw puzzle – and I gained a great deal of space. Next we ventured out to find an ATM. The closest ATM was at a Marriott hotel and shopping center next door. We saw a booth with a sign that said “Information” and foolishly stopped. When we asked where an ATM was the guy said, “Oh, I don’t know, maybe in the back near the restrooms. Are you visiting here for the weekend?” I said, “We’re on our way home. Where are the restrooms?” He said, “Are you spending the night tonight?” I’m a little faster than Mary at noticing a sales pitch so I said, “No,” at the same time she said, “Yes.” This led him to launch into a sales pitch for something Marriott and we walked away still without any clue where to find an ATM. We finally found one and went back to our hotel where they kindly lent us a plate and some silverwear so we could have our dinner – mine was my leftovers from lunch, Mary’s a salad from Whole Foods. Then we walked outside our door to the pier and hailed the Water Taxi to take a nighttime cruise through the canals of Ft. Lauderdale. There were not nearly as many xmas lights as I had expected, but it was still lovely. We got back to the hotel about 8 and were asleep soon after. I don’t know if the water taxi, which we have done both times we were in Ft. Lauderdale, has contributed to the sea legs, but it was definitely a rough swaying night here in our room at the Pillars and even as I type right now I am experiencing very rough seas.

Well, we have to leave here in 45 minutes to get to the airport for what I anticipate will not be a pleasant day, so I will post this and get into the shower. Later I will cover the last two days of our cruise.