Captain's Log, Days 1-5

aka: This is Why You Don't Poop in Your Room

We actually had a really great start to our trip (a full-transit Panama Canal cruise from Miami to Los Angeles). We packed in advance, there were no morning-of meltdowns, and it was the quickest (mentally and physically) trip from home to Chicago, even with very prevalent fog from Green Bay south, sped along, possibly, by the audible delights of Bill Bryson’s Neither Here Nor There.

We were courageous in our food choices that evening, and Jack got to enjoy his first Korean meal, as the hotel we were staying at was near approximately 3.5k Korean restaurants.

I say courageous, because as anyone who has ever visited or lived in Seoul can tell you (or maybe it’s just me), Korean food on a digestive system unused to such delicacies, can, ahem……. wreak havoc. I’ll tell you why I know this: when I was stationed in Korea, I lived on an American Army base and worked about an hour away at a Korean Army base. There was a bus that ran at 6am, one that ran at 3pm, and one that ran at 6pm. At said Korean Army base, there was a Korean cafeteria serving (wouldn’t you know it?) Korean food for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Normally with what my job entailed, you are working 12-hour shifts, unless you’re brand new, or have been there forever. Either of those options will have you on the coveted day shift. One day early in my first tour there, being that I fell on the brand new side of those options, when my tender American stomach hadn’t yet acclimated to Korean cuisine, I went and had lunch at the Korean cafeteria. Every meal there consisted of rice, some variety of kimchi, and some variety of soup. That day, my meal consisted of traditional cabbage kimchi (which I’d had in the States before, but never in the motherland) and fishhead soup. At about 2:55, as I was walking out to the bus and every inch of my intestines was groaning in audible agony, I realized what a catastrophic mistake I’d made. Knowing I was never going to make the hour ride back to base without shitting my uniform pants in an explosive and nuclear fashion, I slunk my way to the one-stall women’s bathroom down the hall, to forcefully and fierily spend the next several hours on an unintended colon cleanse before the evening bus came to fetch me.

This is why, with a morning flight in our future, we delved with both trepidation and delight (I know it seems weird to contemplate that Korean food, whether good or bad, is not available anywhere in the da Yoop), into our varieties of kimchi, japchae, and bibimbop. It was a big yum, and I’m happy to report that nobody shit their pants the next morning, either before, or during, our flight. Instead of spending the flight in the bathroom, we enjoyed watching one of my favorite movies of all time, particularly as a lead-up to any tropical vacation, Captain Ron.

A little side note: Remember how we waited forever for Jack’s Global Entry to get its initial go-ahead so we could have our interviews? Well, I got my card about 3 days after we went to the interview, but as of our departure for the cruise, Jack still hadn’t received his, so the running joke was that he’d get the final acceptance email and card when we landed back in Chicago. We weren’t far off; he got it during the cruise, but the positive of that is that although he didn’t have card in hand, because I’d input his GE number into our airline tickets, it still showed up on his boarding pass and we finally got to partake in the coveted TSA Pre-Check line at the airport that we least needed it (John Wayne).

Although this flight did have some moments of turbulence, it was one of the rare occasions thus far that Jack has not had to deal with me crying and/or snotting on his shoulder. It seems the more tired I am, the less I have any excess energy to be anxious about flying, and since I enjoyed a solid 59 minutes of sleep at our hotel in Chicago (no slight on our hotel, I just couldn’t sleep for shit), even though I wasn’t napping on the flight, couldn’t be bothered by trivial things like turbulence.

Like pretty much every other trip we’ve been on together, we found ourselves with an absolutely outrageous bar tab in Miami. While I donned my swimming costume, Jack went to grab us a drink to bring to the pool, and I’ll just say that they were on par with the Nashville/Vegas/Dominican Republic surprises we’ve had in the last year. Ahhh, what is vacation without a $75 bar tab for 2 drinks?

Because our hotel was in a rather industrial area somewhere in a Bermuda triangle of the airport, a swamp, and a bus station, both bar and dinner options were limited, and after the poolside bevvie, we did venture out elsewhere for food. Basically the only option other than hotel restaurant was a place called ‘Your Virtual Food Hall,’ which really sums it up nicely. It’s essentially a stationary food-truck-meets-cafeteria, where you pick one of its five or six different ‘restaurant’ options, order your food, and then walk in and pick it up. Everything is takeaway, no seating options, but lots of food styles and menu choices, and at a Miami bargain price of $40 for two sandwiches.

Day 3 found us finally on our cruise ship, the Norwegian Bliss. I’d never encountered an Uber driver who had anything less than either a 4.9* or 5* rating, but I did understand, after the 25-minute drive from hotel to port, why Barbaro was rated a 4.3*. I’d selected a 12:30 port check-in time, and although the lines outside moved quickly, there were a lot of them, and then a lengthy wait after checking in until embarkation. Next time I will be sure to select 2pm or later, after the masses are already onboard.

After getting all our steps in (and then some) exploring our ship, we went to check out our room. We’d initially had an interior cabin, which I honestly like because between the waves and the pitch-black, I sleep like a rock on a cruise ship. However, since I monitor the activity surrounding any cruise I’ve booked, I noticed at some point after we’d made our final payment that the prices had decreased significantly. So when I called NCL, they upgraded us to a balcony room, and honestly, for a 15-day cruise (and now any cruise hereafter since we’ve now been spoiled by it), that was the way to go. The bathroom was bigger than any cruise I’ve been on before, which was really nice, but the toilet took a suspiciously loud and long time to flush, and a couple hours later, stopped participating entirely. By the time we went to bed (and I will note that in said balcony room, although more spacious and scenic, I unfortunately slept like a baby instead of a rock), housekeeping had fixed the issue, and the toilet was now sounding and acting like it should. Good as new.

Day 4, the second day onboard was spent trying to find ‘our bar.’ You know, the one that the bartenders just seem like your people and won’t judge you when you want a hot dog at 2am or a margarita at 6am. We found that in The Local, the ship’s sports bar, which paired perfectly with the playoff American football games we wanted to watch. The positive that day was meeting our guys - KK, Mikko, & Fernan, who would continue to bring smiles to our faces and drinks to our gullets throughout the entire trip. The negative was that since the Lions game was the second of the day, we only made it until halftime before stumbling our drunk asses to bed. I’m actually glad we made it to our cabin, because I don’t remember getting there, just know we both woke up around midnight with plates of pizza (apparently we’d been wise enough to go to the buffet before bed), asking each other who won the game (neither of us knew), and going right back to sleep.

Ahhhhh, Day 5. This is where the fun really begins. In earnest. Let me paint the scene for you: we wake up at stupid o’clock (which would be a common and recurring theme this trip), went to the buffet for an omelette (which, given the amount of times I tried to type before resorting to the spell-checker, do not know how to spell……WAITADAMNMINUTE, MS Word’s spell-checker is rubbish – I DO know how to spell it according to the Google, but Word kept trying to make it ‘omelet’?!) and then back to the room for a nap. Except that didn’t work out. I was still keen to give the whole nap situation a go, feeling as poorly as I did from the football party the prior day, but Jack was feeling hearty enough to go explore and make new bartender friends.

At this point I will preface the rest of this story with the knowledge that I was PMS-y that day, and as is my MO for one day each month, I will wake up knowing I’m going to have a little cry. Sometimes just the knowledge that I’m going to is enough to get the tears flowing for absolutely no reason, or sometimes there is an actual (usually tiny and ridiculous) trigger, but usually ends up with me telling Jack approximately ½ second before it happens, “I’m going to cry today,” and then promptly bursting into tears for anywhere from 20 seconds to several minutes, usually either involving me bursting in to laughter at the same time or directly following.

Okay, now that we have that scene set, try as I might, I was not getting back to sleep. I got up to get myself as together as I was going to get that morning, which obviously includes going to the bathroom. As the universe would have it, the toilet wouldn’t flush. Again. I think the text to Jack went something along the lines, “Where are you? I had an urgent grumpy (thank you Johnny Depp; that one is never leaving my vernacular) and the toilet won’t flush again, and I’m going to cry.”

I called guest services, threw a $20 and an apology note on the shitter, and went to the Spice Bar to find Jack, where I immediately and true to form, started crying. This one was more on the ‘several minutes’ side of things time-wise. There were a lot of lingering sniffles and tear trails, and I only stopped because it was starting to rain, so while everyone else had been out in the elements enjoying the sunshine just a few minutes prior, were now piling under the covered bar area with us.

Now, karma does know what’s up, and this is where it threw me a bone, in the forms of Chris & Sarah. I was in no shape or mood to socialize, and would have been perfectly content to sit there stewing silently and let Jack do all the talking, but it was such an easy first conversation with this lovely British couple. Like most Brits I’ve met, they have a delightfully dry sense of humor, and use sarcasm as a love language. They probably queue beautifully as well, but I never had a chance to stand in line with them. This was just our introductory meeting with them, but ended up not just with a couple of drinks that morning, but lunch as well, and plans to meet up later in the day.

This is where I’ll leave off for now. Such a long adventure must be told in parts, but I’ll leave you with this preview of Days 6-12: if there’s an intestinal parasite to find, we’ll find it!

 
 
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