{"id":1067,"date":"2015-05-09T01:06:50","date_gmt":"2015-05-09T01:06:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/travelwithus.us\/?p=1067"},"modified":"2015-05-09T01:34:40","modified_gmt":"2015-05-09T01:34:40","slug":"severe-gale-winds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/travelwithus.us\/?p=1067","title":{"rendered":"Severe gale winds"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Sunset<\/a>
Sunset after today’s storm cleared<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Tomorrow will be our last day at sea before arriving in New York early Sunday morning. What a painless way to get from Europe to the U.S! Today we had Severe Gale winds combined with rough seas. I wasn’t aware of this when I decided to write longhand for an hour this morning. I started feeling a bit seasick but wanted to continue what I was doing so I tried going out to the balcony and writing out there but it was COOOOLD. Tomorrow I will not sit down to write without checking the state of the seas first. Fortunately, I live with a person who constantly reports the weather, so all I really have to do is listen.<\/p>\n

Both yesterday and today we dispensed with the restaurant altogether and had all of our meals in the Kings Court Buffet. It is incredibly freeing as the restaurant meals are long and drawn out and we would rather spend our time doing other things, like reading and listening to podcasts. This morning Albert came to clean our room about 11:30 and we have taken to leaving whenever he wants to clean the room so we went downstairs and sat in the Grand Lobby to experience something called Eight Bells that we have read about each day in the Daily Programme. It occurs at noon every day and my curious wife was curious about what it is. Here is what it is: there is a bell on the deck above the Grand Lobby and a man stands in front of the bell at noon and rings it eight times. There was a woman walking right below it as the bell was rung for the first time and I saw her jump and then look up and then walk away with a decided scowl on her face. (Note from Mary: the Eight Bells has a maritime history; something about a bell ringing every half hour and eight bells signifying the end of your four hour watch, or something. Why they now do all eight bells at once, at noon, I know not.)<\/p>\n

Mary and I, of course, both loved the ceremony of the Eight Bells and after the eighth bell I saw that there was someone holding up some soft of proclamation in front of the bell. “Look, now he’s holding something up!” I said to Mary and I stood to get a better view. It turned out it was a woman holding up her iPad to take a picture of something. The Captain’s Announcement was supposed to follow the eight bells but he seemed a bit late and there was lots of noise in the Grand Lobby so I suggested to Mary that we move to another area of the ship where it would be quieter. We moved to the area outside the Illusions Theater where there are chairs lining the passageway and people sit there and watch the sea out of the big windows. I suggested that Mary film the swells while the Captain made his announcement, which she did, but a few people walked by talking very loudly and I heard a woman further down shushing them. I was impressed that someone else cared about the Captain’s Announcement as much as Mary. Once the announcement was over Mary said, “I couldn’t help shushing those people. In situations like that it just comes out of my mouth involuntarily.” So I guess Mary still takes the prize for the Captain’s biggest fan. (Although as far as I know she did not line up this afternoon at 3:30 to get something autographed by the Captain. Or maybe she did. I was at my book club.) (Note from Mary: Nope – I was busy giving back my blackjack winnings at that time)<\/p>\n

After the Captain’s Announcement we went up to the Kings Court Buffet and I put together a salad and a little sandwich and ran back down to the room to watch a movie called About Time that was playing on the Drama Channel of the tv at 12:30 pm. I was in the mood for a movie and this was a not particularly great movie about a guy who can go back in time and redo things in his life. However, I enjoyed it. After the movie I showered and it was time for my book club meeting to discuss Elizabeth Is Missing. As I was leaving I said to Mary, “I only hope that it will not be as bad as the pilates class.” If you are a faithful reader you will know that I had concerns about how I would get my cream tea if the book club went until 4:30. Mary and I made a plan. I would go get her at … guess where … the casino at 4:15 and we would go get tea but if I wasn’t there by 4:15 she would go get tea and bring a scone back to the room for me. Up in the buffet they put out the scones along with big bowls of clotted cream and strawberry jam and the jam is a little subpar, in my opinion. This morning, though, I noticed that they had little jars of what looked like quality strawberry jam so I brought one up to the room to have with my tea. (The funny thing about my “tea” is that it’s all about the scone and cream and jam – sometimes there is no tea at all.)<\/p>\n

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I went to my book club which was held in a room called the Boardroom which was a nice little room on Deck 9 that I had never seen. We were all women, about ten of us, probably 2\/3 British and 1\/3 American. Our leader, Victoria, is the Ship’s librarian, and considerably younger than any of the rest of us in our “club” that will only ever meet once. Victoria did a good job of leading the discussion which was very interesting. We talked about the book and about aging and dementia and caring for aging parents. I really enjoyed it. The book, as I may have said, is written in the point of view of an 82 year old woman suffering from dementia. She is taken care of by her daughter and granddaughter. Most of the women in the group strongly identified with the daughter and there was one woman who even disliked the main character and just couldn’t understand why she wasn’t in a “home.” There were a few conversations about the health care system in our various countries – the U.S., Britain and Sweden which is where one of the British women was initially from. Our young leader, who is from Crimea, said she had never heard of Alzheimer’s or Parkinsons before she read this book. (Since neither are mentioned in the book I assume she did some research after reading it.) One of the women conjectured that was just because Victoria is young, but Victoria said they do not talk about mental health issues in her country. I stayed at the book club until the very end and thought it was great that I could have this discussion with women of varying ages from a few different countries. Most book clubs I’ve been in there are people who haven’t read the book and the longer the book club goes on the less there is talk about the book, because everyone becomes friends and it becomes a social group more than a book club. So that was another reason I really liked this book club – we talked about the book.<\/p>\n

At 4:30 I went back down to our stateroom and there was a scone waiting for me (Mary IS the best!) but no Mary and no note from Mary. I ate the scone with my superior jarred jam and then went in search of Mary. I did not find her but when I got back to the stateroom a second time she was out on our balcony sketching the sea and the clouds. It was almost time for the guest talent show which I was very curious about. Mary chose not to go so I went on my own. The main reason I wanted to see the talent show is that you tend to see the same people over and over again on a cruise ship and you make judgments about them (or at least Mary and I do) and I was curious to see what talents these people might have (or not.) There were seven or eight performances – all either singing or playing piano and all of them were quite good and seemed to be seasoned performers. One of the big crowd pleasers was a woman who looks like she could be 100 years old who belted out two songs, ending each one with a jazzy “Oh Yeah!” She got quite the ovation. She was good, but I’m pretty sure if she wasn’t so old she would not have gotten that ovation. However, given her age, it was amazing and inspiring that she was up there performing. I was thinking about the most recent talent show I saw, which was an excellent show by students in the Portland Public Schools – a “best of” kind of thing, and one of the crowd pleasers there was a group of kindergarteners doing a little dance and song – completely uncoordinated in both their movements and their song but oh so adorable. And it seems that as we age we revert back again and in today’s talent show it seemed like the oldest participant was also the most adorable and thus received a huge round of applause.<\/p>\n

After the talent show I went back to the stateroom and Mary and I went out onto the Promenade Deck for our daily mile walk. This was the hardest one yet. When we first went out there Mary wanted to turn back because it was so windy she was afraid we might get blown off the ship. But I pointed out that her Captain closes the decks when it is dangerous and that there were other people walking. It was definitely our coldest walk of the cruise. The wind cut right through us and it did feel at certain places that we might get blown off the ship. Also, because of the wind blowing the seawater about, all the railings were covered with salt, and as we ran our hands along them our hands became coated in crystals. I was tempted to lick my hand but knowing how many other people have been running their hands along those railings I refrained. I told Mary that if she was blown overboard I would shout, “Man overboard,” and she thought I should say, “Human overboard,” but then changed her mind since Man overboard would be faster for me to shout. I also instructed her to throw herself to the ground if she felt herself being blown overboard. Fortunately she did not have to throw herself to the ground and I did not have to shout “Person overboard” and we both survived our mile.<\/p>\n

We had dinner up in the King’s Court where we found a nice table next to a window. There were two other couples sitting near us and they were chatting with each other and we were eavesdropping, which we do quite a lot of. One of the couples was older and from Texas and the other was closer to our age (50s – we are no spring chickens ourselves). The woman in the older couple began by complaining about Cunard. This is very common and was also very common on our last Cunard cruise. Cunard advertises as a luxury cruise line and they are not luxury in any sense of the word so people have expectations that are quickly dashed once onboard. And, both the service and the food have gone downhill since we were last on Cunard in 2008. But we both had very low expectations for this cruise and are thus having a lovely time. Anyway, Mary thought the woman was being too negative about Cunard, and didn’t approve, but things got worse. Soon they were talking about Obama and about how Texas could secede from the U.S. and would have if so many Yankees and Mexicans hadn’t moved there. At this point Mary said, “I don’t think I can take this.” I suggested we move but she said, “No, it’s alright.” Then she got up to get more food while I held down the fort. I heard how Obama is causing the racism in our country and then on the subject of recent shootings the woman from Texas said, “If they come into my area, they’re going to get shot,” and the other woman high-fived her and Mary came back to the table and I said, “Let’s have dessert in the room.”<\/p>\n

“Couldn’t take it anymore, huh?” Mary asked and I shared with her what I had overheard and then said, “We’re not really having dessert in the room. We’re just moving.” There was more but I’ll refrain from getting too political here. The conversation really depressed my girl and she felt that it was very bad form for them to be talking about politics when people are supposed to be enjoying their vacation. I pointed out that we were eavesdropping to which Mary replied, “How could you not hear them?” but she had to concede that if we talked to each other like normal couples we wouldn’t have heard. But where’s the fun in that?<\/p>\n

When we got back to our room we discovered that we had been gifted with a coffee table hardcover book called “The Story of Cunard’s 175 Years” that must weigh five pounds and I wonder if I can fit it in my luggage. Mary certainly can’t as she packed everything into a 19 inch suitcase that is generally used for a weekend trip. As I type this, Mary has been leafing through the book and I’ve been enjoying the new book smell of it. And that’s all for now. Except that Mary is now $1.50 up, down $17.50 from yesterday’s $19.00 up.<\/p>\n

MARY: Our fellow diners did totally harsh my buzz at dinner, it’s true. It wasn’t just the depressing political talk when I’m trying to be carefree on vacation, though that was bad enough. It’s that they were unrelentingly negative about everything – they hate Obama, they hate Cunard, they hate the ship, they don’t like Rome, where they’d been prior (too many tourists) – every subject that came up was savaged by them, which I found to be a downer. But, as my sweetie points out, I guess that’s what I get for choosing eavesdropping as my evening’s entertainment. Luckily there was a nice sunset to end the day, so I feel better.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

<\/path><\/svg><\/i> \"Loading\"<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tomorrow will be our last day at sea before arriving in New York early Sunday morning. What a painless way to get from Europe to the U.S! Today we had Severe Gale winds combined with rough seas. I wasn’t aware of this when I decided to write longhand for an hour this morning. I started … Continue reading Severe gale winds<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

<\/path><\/svg><\/i> \"Loading\"<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,3,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-april-2015-italy-england-qm2","category-everything","category-vacation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/travelwithus.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/travelwithus.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/travelwithus.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travelwithus.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travelwithus.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1067"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/travelwithus.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1067\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1071,"href":"https:\/\/travelwithus.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1067\/revisions\/1071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/travelwithus.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travelwithus.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travelwithus.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}