10 Things You Learn When On A Cruise Ship

I'm going to conclude my series of blogs about my honeymoon cruise with some things I learned about cruising:

1 - If you go to the bar, it confuses the bar staff.

They expect to wait on you, which isn't what I'm used to - several times I went to the bar for a drink, only for the bar staff to ignore me, and just as I'm thinking about complaining a waiter comes over to take my order and more or less tells me to go get a seat and he'll find me.

2 - My drinks orders are possibly not posh enough.

I've ordered Archers and Lemonade, and Spiced Rum with Diet Coke, and on these occasions the waiters have had me repeat myself several times, all I can assume is that people are normally ordering champagne or at the very least gin and tonic, and my drinks aren't what is generally expected of a cruisee.

3 - It's amazing how many people cruise regularly.

We were looked upon with some interest for being first time cruisers, and one morning we met someone who had cruised 22 times.

4 - Ships layouts are weird.

Sometimes the ship layout is confusing, particularly when decks are blocked off midway. Are you on Deck 6 at one end, and wanting to get to the other end? Well, you'd better go up to Deck 7, walk to the other end, and then take the stairs back down to 6.

And don't even think about trying to go down to Deck 5 and walking along, you crazy fool.

5 - The staff are extremely good

Everyone says hello or good morning or some such to you, from the cleaners on up. they appear genuinely pleased to see you, which is obviously in their training, but it does make you feel good and welcome to be there.

6 - Money? What Money?

One odd thing is that when you buy anything, you don't use money, instead you have a card which is charged at the end of the journey.  I don't have any problem with this, but they also want a signature for every purchase also, which seems over the top - I just want to say "it's my card, just charge the thing and have done with it!" but I guess it's to deal with people trying to say that they didn't actually buy things on the ship.

7 - The lifts are BUSY.

Certainly on the ship we went on, because the decks used by cruisees go from 4 to 18, it's too far for people to comfortably take the stairs (for example - might you be thinking about going from the bar to the buffet? That's ten floors!) and so the lifts get a good hammering.

8 - You are on a ship!

The first few days I somehow convinced myself that we were in some sort of fancy hotel that magically relocated itself from day to day.

Then, about 3 days in, we encountered our first rough seas, and they weren't pleasant.  Not a big deal - seasickness tablets took the edge off - but be aware of it.

9 - Expect to spend.

Even though you've forked out big style for the cruise, expect them to try to get you to spend more, on such things as acupuncture, health and wellbeing treatments, craft sessions, photos (for example, for a copy of a photo we had taken with the captain we spent the best part of 20 quid), duty free... the list goes on. so do expect to spend on board, or plan accordingly.  That said, for the week I think we spent about £300 on the ship, which isn't a huge amount for a weeks holiday.

10 - Have respect for the crew!

The crew, especially the captain, have to juggle the demands of mastering a huge ship along with dealing with all of the annoying passengers. I must imagine that sometimes the crew must think that it would be a lot easier to get around without all of us complaining bunch on board!

So, all in all cruising is great. it isn't the cheapest holiday in the world,. but it's really great.

Have I missed something out from the 10 that you think should be mentioned? Say in the comments!

If you want to see what I brought back from my honeymoon, check out my MANEATING video where I test Norwegian chocolate bars!

Also, I've just posted a blog over on the Life Whacko about mortality and stuff.  If you're in the mood for a bit of deep thinking (deep for me anyway) go check it out.

Honeymoon - Part 2

(If you missed part 1 of my honeymoon blog, here it is)

Tues day last week visited Skjolden, a village in Norway's longest fjord, Sognefjorden.  We saw a glacier!

A bloody massive chunk of ice next to a lake near Skjolden.

Skjolden was nice although quite a small place - it was interesting to see the mooring process here, as opposed to Stavanger, where they (I assume - I was asleep when it happened) sailed up to the dock, in Skjolden a boat went to the quayside with a rope, which two lads heaved onto a metal lumpy thing (the thing that you tie boats to - it probably has a technical term) with the aid of a tractor.  At one point one of them nearly fell in, which was quite exciting.

On the Wednesday we visited Geiranger, probably the best known of the fjords and extremely pretty, although quite a touristy place.  I did get a photo of two Norwegian policemen:

And I dropped off travelling book 9 in the ticket office in Geiranger, I'm hoping by now that someone has picked it up and taken it away!

Geiranger was very beautiful, but there (apparently) is a limit to the amount of water you can watch fall down mountains.  We took an excursion up Mount Dalsnibba up some very tight and twisty roads (great fun because our coach driver knew exactly what we was doing, and a lot of tourists in hire cars coming the other way didn't), which culminated in staring into mist (it would have been a great view so I understand if the mist hadn't been there).


The last stop in Norway was Bergen, Norway's second city, and again a very beautiful place. We travelled up the Fløibanen, a funicular (cable railway) which goes up the mountain of Fløyen and is great - we were lucky to get a trip on it quite early in the day, it's a big tourist attraction and gets busy very quickly!

Bergen, taken from the top of the "funicular" (a very steep cable railway)

One thing about the cruise - at the start of the cruise we went through a safety induction, where we were told in the case of an emergency, amongst other things we have to take along with our life vest, is any medication we've brought for the trip.  How long do they expect us to survive in the Norwegian Sea bobbing around?  I don't think that I really need my sleeping pills for the 30 or so minutes I'll survive in the freezing water.

All in all, a fantastic honeymoon and one that has kickstarted in me a desire to go on more cruises!

Schindler's Lift.  It seemed funny at the time.

A waterfall.  If you like mountains and waterfalls, Norway has lots.

That would be Geiranger village right down there.

We thought that this was the Seven Sisters, but now that I've looked at pictures of the Seven Sisters I don't know if they just weren't on form when we passed, or if we've photographed an entirely different and less impressive set of waterfalls instead.

My pudding one evening.

And the view from our balcony on the way home.

Honeymoon - Part 1 of More Than 1...

Regular readers can't help but to have noticed (hopefully) a good number of guest posts on this blog over the last 6 or so weeks - well, this has been due to me getting married last month, and since then going away on honeymoon, only returning home yesterday.

We went to Norway for a week on a cruise, which was absolutely awesome.  While I was away I did do a bit of writing (thanks to my nice new keyboard that, with a bit of jiggery pokery, plugs into my phone) so I wanted to run through some of the highlights and interesting bits.

On the way down to Southampton we stopped at a service station, and went and grabbed a Starbucks coffee.  As virtually the entire worlds population has been in a Starbucks at one point or another, I'll assume that you're aware that they sell snacks, which are named, and so for simplicity Starbucks puts up a little sign next to the snack so that people know what to order (i.e. "Can I have a Venti Mocha Frappucino and a Cinnamon Swirl please?").  One of the signs caught my attention:

Thank goodness they told me.  I am extremely bad at identifying fruit, I do admit.

Yes, they put a "banana" sign next to the bananas.  I was disappointed to see that there was no "coffee cup" sign next to the stack of coffee cups, and indeed I had to use entirely my own judgement as to what was a chair and what was a table.

The ship we sailed on was the P&O Cruise Ship Azura, which is one of  P&O's bigger ships and has tons of facilities.

View from the ship, somewhere near Southampton.

The first full day was a day at sea as we headed for Norway, we started off with a lovely breakfast delivered to our cabin, and then we ventured out to experience a number of the many talks and events taking place on board.  Basically at any time during the day there is at least three or four different events of some sort going on for you to take part in (if you want).

While my wife went to learn how to work a digital camera, I went to a session on Acupuncture.  I've had acupuncture once, quite a few years ago when I was in a hotel on the outskirts of Dublin and decided to drink my way into the city centre.  I don't know if you're familiar with Dublin, but there are quite a few pubs in Dublin, and by the time I got into the centre I had experienced quite a few of them, making an experiment in Chinese medicine seem like a good idea.  At any rate, the session onboard was interesting and gave some good insights into Chinese medicine as a whole.

After that we met up and went to a raffle in the gym, (which we didn't win) but got to hear about all of the treatments available onboard. the treatments do sound great although I think you need to be prepared to spend money if you do want them.

After the raffle we stayed in the gym for a talk on toxins and detoxifying your body.  Now, I must admit that I had to take this one with a pinch of salt - at one point they started talking about the "bus of success", where the word BUS is a three letter acronym for something healthy - apparently "B" stands for "belief" and not a swear word as first came to mind.  The talk covered the importance of cleansing your liver as the organ responsible for filtering impurities (yes, good, fully agree with that), and mentioned an interesting point about how that you wouldn't eat sun cream, yet by spreading it on the skin it is then absorbed through the skin and basically ends up in your bloodstream as if you had eaten it (not that you should take this as a reason not to use sun block).  I did note however that one of the approaches recommended to handle the detoxification of your body was to book various spa treatments that happened to be available onboard.

That said, I did end up having one treatment myself, namely a hair cut, and they did do a good job.

On the second day of the cruise we visited Stavanger, one of Norway's cities.  It was wet and a bit cold and awesome - we got a CitySightseeing hop-on hop-off bus that took us round the city (and came with free wifi - after an entire 36 or so hours without an internet connection, my phone froze in delight as all of its many apps swallowed updates and data) which told us a lot about the city and about Norway in general.

Stavanger.  Well, a bit of it anyway.

Trolls are very popular in Norway.  So are moose, but I don't have a photo of one of them.

Compared to the UK things are expensive in Norway, but salaries are comparatively higher to take account of this.  I didn't realise that Norway traditionally was quite a poor country, but in the last century they found significant oil reserves and that has generated prosperity for them.

Part 2 to follow!

Going Away

As I write this, in about two and a half hours I'll (hopefully) be getting on a coach to take me and my wife off on holiday!  The blog has had quite a few guest bloggers (thank you all that have donated works) recently while we've prepared for a wedding, had the wedding, and then recovered from it, and I've got more guest blogs lined up while we're away for our honeymoon.

Before the house awakens and a frantic bout of last minute activity such as getting breakfasts, tidying up, collating a packed lunch etc takes place however, I popped on the computer.

I had an email from Tesco, my car insurance firm, saying that my latest insurance documents could be downloaded.  Whilst this wasn't an area of huge concern for me, I thought that it might be worth taking a quick look, mainly to see if they mentioned what I'd be paying for my insurance when it gets renewed in a few weeks

Unfortunately I was told "Sorry, but we are experiencing a very busy period right now".  So I didn't get them.

Man, I hated those 4.15am rushes for car insurance documentation, that's why I got out of the insurance industry.

See you all soon!

Learning Norwegian

Hei!

Image courtesy of Kurious via a CC0 Public Domain license

I had an interesting conversation a couple of weekends with a group of friends about languages, two of the people there (both non-British) were talking in depth about different languages and their particular idiosyncrasies, and I noted that I am just rubbish at any languages apart from English (and even English isn't my strongest subject!)

This isn't an unusual thing about people from the UK, we're apparently one of the countries in the EU most likely not to speak a foreign language - 61% of us don't speak a second language at all (and if you had said it was 70% or even 80% I would have believed you) and only 14% of UK residents speak a second language well enough to hold a conversation in it.

I suspect that this is down to the prevalence of English - it's one of the most common second languages learned in other countries, and I just don't think that we have the urge to learn other languages because there are good odds that when we do speak to people from another country that they'll be able to understand us.  (For the avoidance of doubt - I don't necessarily think that this is a good thing)

Anyway, ahead of my honeymoon next month when we're cruising around the Norwegian Fjords (not long to go - I can't wait!), I'm attempting to learn a small amount of Norwegian - I do feel that it's important to try to learn at least a few words, at the very least I'd like to be able to say hello and ask people if they can speak English before launching into, what is for them, a foreign language.

To this end, I've been immersing myself in a variety of YouTube videos and channels, and I've been having a great time learning the basics.  I've got a few weeks before I go away and I hope to be able to at least politely introduce myself, buy stuff, thank people and say goodbye by the time I go away (or failing that at least ask them if they speak English in their own language!)

The YouTube channels I've been watching are below, I do particularly recommend "Learn Norwegian with NorwegianClass101", their videos are very good, but they're all well worth a watch.

Learn Norwegian with NorwegianClass101 - https://www.youtube.com/user/NorwegianClass101

AMERiNORGE - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC45P0GbBpqc07OtETS0Hh2w

ThatNorwegianGuy - https://www.youtube.com/user/ThatNorwegianTv
MazzaazzK - https://www.youtube.com/user/MazzazzK
Michelle Alexandra - https://www.youtube.com/user/MichelleAlexandra1

Ha det bra!

The Wedding

So, I got married last Saturday.

It was an awesome, awesome day, absolutely perfect - we were married at Lazaat hotel in Cottingham, which was a great venue and the staff there were really helpful.  My wife undertook a huge amount of planning for the big day, which made it run like clockwork and I just have to say really could not have gone better!  A lovely ceremony, brilliant food (the hotels' handmade profiteroles are worth a mention - generally hotels buy in ready made profiteroles, but these guys make literally hundreds of them), great guests - thank you to all the family and friends that made it on the day or sent their congratulations, I got to do a speech (I do love being the centre of attention), my wife is wonderful and looked even more amazing than she normally does, my son looked very cute in his suit, so many people came and helped doing stuff on the day too... it was just a brilliant day.

Plus, I keep discovering new bits about the evening celebrations, mainly due to the fact that I drank far too much on the night, and whenever anyone says to me "Hey Mike, do you remember when xxx happened?" only then do the memories start to come back - there was a lot of dancing going on that evening.

My mum wrote a brilliant blog about the wedding, if you want check it out at http://ravenmagical.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/a-wedding-to-remember.html

In other news, I slept with socks on.

For some reason for the last week or two the skin on my hands has been really dry, no matter how much skin cream I keep putting on, so my wife hit on the idea of literally coating my hands in cream, and put socks on to allow it to soak in.  My hands are actually healing a bit now so that's a good sign.

The good news is that the guest posts will be continuing for the near future, supplemented by the odd post by myself - we're going away on honeymoon at the start of July (a weeks cruise around the Norwegian Fjords) so fortunately the stack of guest posts people have kindly provided will keep the blog going in my absence.  Feel free to send me more! :)

And finally I heard today that one of my travelling books (#tbook18)is headed for Chicago, it's really nice to hear that they are on the move!  For more Travelling Book Project stuff go to the website - http://www.travellingbook.eu/, I might take the opportunity to distribute the last couple of travelling books I have when I go away next month.