End of the cruise

I had a bad dream last night where I dreamt that Ritalin, our mean old cat at home, had died.  It was one of those dreams where you wake up almost crying and I wanted to wake John up to tell him about, but then remembered that she had died in a fiery plane crash in the dream and I didn’t really need to wake him for something some obviously a dream.  I will just have to assume that Betty and Rachel who are watching her, won’t be taking her on any planes.  We slept in, breakfast in bed, and then got up to go see the crew picture that they were going to take on the lido deck of the last voyage of the Destiny.  All of the crew came and then they had some of the passengers enter the picture for a memorable moment, but we were distracted by the fact that we were passing Stromboli and while it’s not shaped like the food or anything, the island is made up of an active volcano.  John wanted to pass it in the night because a lady said that it glows at night from the heat coming out of it, but it was neat to see the plumes of smoke that would periodically puff out of the side.  There is a fishing village at the beach and we couldn’t imagine living on a piece of land that was smoking, rumbling, and most likely going to kill you one day, but to each his own.  It was the first active volcano John and I had ever encountered.

 A long lunch later and it was time to go through the straits of Messina.  The wind picked up so much during this time that it was amazing.  You could barely stand on deck for the wind whipping through there, but we were determined to see this since we went through Gibraltar at night.  Which leads me to a rant:  Carnival is the only cruise line that we have been on and we plan to branch our real soon, but they have finally made me angry on this cruise.  We have had great service, great food, and a really calm sailing that all the veteran cruisers say that we should never expect on a transatlantic crossing again.  Carnival has entertained us and fed us, but have started the renovations of the ship while we are still on it, which is very annoying.  The 6 elevators have been down the duration of the cruise and I think that they are not broken, but they are using them for ferrying materials up and down and don’t want to worry about cruisers.  This was fine when we were in training for the tower of Pisa and I didn’t notice much because we were taking the stairs anyway, but now I’m sore from port days and want the damn elevator to come within the next 50 years…Also, they have been replacing the lido deck.  Again, this was in places and it was easy enough to get around the work and the lido has not been crowded because of the weather, but when everyone went up to get pictures while going through the straits, a whole part of the deck torn up was annoying.  What until you’re in dry dock before doing these things.  We did get told by the cruise director that this is the longest Carnival cruise ever and the most sea days in a row that they have ever done, which might explain how they weren’t very prepared for this many people wanting to do things on the ship, but still. 

Had dinner again tonite with pictures with our wait staff and dinner mates, Kay and Richard.  We were told by the two couples at the table next to us that we were an inspiration to them to become such good friends.  They saw the four of us laughing, talking, and getting along well and thought that we had to be related, but were shocked to find out that we met on the cruise.  This apparently got them to socialize more with their table mates and they are now making plans to get together, to have their children meet and other things.  That was an interesting exchange aided by one of the women’s obvious intoxication that was endearing and not obnoxious.

Last day at sea and on the ship

It’s very hard to believe that we have been on this ship for over two weeks and that we need to get off tomorrow.  I want to get off and don’t want to get off.  We have met some very interesting people on the ship like our room steward who is one of the few people in Indonesia that is Hindu. We discussed meditation and other things.  We met, Frank, a very old man named who seems to use cruise ships as an assisted living facility and has been on 95 cruises, 70 in the last four years, but does not get off in ports and would like it if we had really rough seas which is his preferred type of weather cruising. He states that he and his wife used to cruise a lot and when she died, he didn’t feel that he could go without her, but finally asked for permission and has been on a cruise pretty much all the time since then.   We met only two first time cruisers and one of them has been sea sick the entire 18 days despite starting the medications before we left and doing five different treatments for motion sickness.  More amazing, she has had a good time even though she has to spend a lot of time in her room and feels better after throwing up…There’s the man in our shore excursion group who would lag behind and take illicit pictures even though he had been told repeatedly not to and was shamed by the group for continuing to engage in this behavior and making us all look bad.  Just a few of the random things that come up when you are cruising and around so many different people….