This cruise has eleven travel days at sea, a quick refueling day at Dutch Harbor, Alaska, then a couple stops in Japan before we finish in Shanghai, China. After nearly a week of consecutive sea days we're settling into a nice relaxing - if slightly boring routine. While we work to keep interested during the long sea days, the bigger challenge is resisting the never-ending call of the buffets. Who ever thought that scheduling an exercise seminar on "How to Lose 14 pounds in 14 days" at the begining of a two week cruise has a twisted sense of irony. Here is Brian enjoying his "all you can eat" bacon for breakfast. That's okay because it's low carb and gluten free, right?
After breakfast we head up to the lounge Brian calls 11-Forward because Brian's a nerd and likes to pretend we're in the Star Trek bar (anyone out there know what the heck he's talking about?). We find a cozy little corner in the lounge and camp out for the day. We read on the Kindles, make lists, play card games, drink gallons of hot tea and wander in and out of semi-interesting lectures.
Of course we take a break in the middle of the day to join the lunch buffet frenzy. Dang good thing they have a decent salad bar to balance out the tempting dessert display.
In an attempt to chip away at all the buffet calories, we try and get a little excersie in the afternoon. Fortunately there is just enough space in our tiny little cabin to do some 7-minute workouts consisting of some simple calestenics. Thanks to our friends, Jodi and Kay, for introducing us to this fitness app! If we've been especially tempted by the buffet that day, we'll hit the fitness center treadmills too. We also always try to take the stairs since all the old folks are using the elevators.
Another form of exercise on the ship is full-impact shopping. This is what happens when you bottle two thousand consumers on a ship for a week and then spring a $10 Madness sale on them. It's a whole different kind of feeding frenzy! Unfortunately, (or maybe fortunately) because I have such a small pack, I don't join in with the Madness mob. Gotta prioritize my future souvenir purchases over these piles of plastic purses and cheap scarves.
We've come up with the analogy that cruise ships are like a mini floating Las Vegas. There's a casino, lots of buffets and lounge acts of varying talent. There are cheesy evening shows, high-priced drinks and fancy-pants restaurants. You can even get married here. While the cruise director keeps saying, "relax, you're on vacation", we're much more in the mode of using this cruise as a transport ship. A cruise is a very comfortable and civilized way to travel but still isn't our favorite way to vacation. I'm sure we'll be missing all these luxuries when we're crammed on the train in the middle of Russia.
As mundane/boring/repetitive our long days at sea are, we are definitely enjoying the lack of Internet access. You can pay for it on the ship of course (ka-ching!), but we've decided to consciously unplug ourselves from the world for these two weeks. It's both challenging and calming. It took a couple of days to stop the habit of pulling out the phone to ask google a question or kill a few minutes on Facebook while standing in line. But now the brain is starting to retrain itself to focus on one thing rather than flit from distraction to distraction. On the down side, Brian had to wait two weeks to find out who won the Iowa-Iowa State game. Yes, somehow, he survived.
One side benefit to traveling west like this is that we gain an hour of sleep every time we cross into a new time zone - which is nearly every evening on this cruise. We should finish the Pacific crossing well-rested, well-fed and ready to explore China.
"One way to get the most out of life is to look upon it as an adventure." - William Feather
