We celebrated Thanksgiving with Amy‘s folks up in New Jersey, and there was significant culinary awesomeness: classic Thanksgiving turkey and trimmings for Thursday night, and Bavarian bratwurst (from Union Pork Store) with latkes and spitzel on Friday night.
On Saturday we went on a trip to the Tenement Museum in New York, inspired by a recent reading of 97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement (which had also inspired Friday night’s Bavarian sausage feast). Entry into the tenement is only allowed with an official guided tour group, at a standard ticket cost of $20 adult ($15 for students and seniors), and photos are not allowed inside the building, so this was as good as I could get:
The talks provided some insightful vignettes into immigrant life in New York tenements of the 19th to early 20th Centuries. As an added plus, right outside the rear museum exit, Congee Village presented itself as a timely lunch opportunity, with congee, dimsum, and garlic-sauteed snow pea leaves.
And here is a parting shot of New York from the Lincoln Tunnel helix across the river to close out the weekend:
In September of 2010 my brother Francis married his longtime girlfriend Ayna, over in the Philippines, so we took two weeks off from work to hop over to Manila and be at the wedding, with a few days in Hong Kong en route. It was an eventful trip.
(By the way, I don’t recommend getting the Bloody Mary Mix in lieu of tomato juice on United domestic flights. One cup had the sodium content of several gallons of seawater and with additional sodium in later airline meals, I got a massive headache.)
Chicago
The fun began on our layover at O’Hare: 6 hour delay on the flight to Hong Kong. Ive been to Chicago and we’re both pretty transit-savvy, so rather than wait around the airport, we hopped on the “L” to drop by the Art Institute and view some art: the Thorne Miniature Rooms, and of course drop by American Gothic and Nighthawks.
ORD to HKG
We returned to the airport with an hour of delay left, and boarded without incident. Our seats, the rearmost passenger seats on a 747-400, were grouped in two rather than three due to the narrowing fuselage, avoiding the trouble of a middle seat. That, combined with lots of Angry Birds, made the 16.5 hour flight just a bit more tolerable.
Despite the delayed late night arrival, Airport Express and MTR were running fine, and we got Octopus cards before heading into the city. As before, we stayed at Ibis North Point, hotel of tiny rooms, cheap rates, decent harbour views, and MTR-accessible location.
Hong Kong, Day 1
First day was warm and overcast. First stop: Admiralty, to FedEx some wedding documentation to my brother. Then, Victoria Peak via Central, across various elevated walkways to the requisite funicular tram ride. At the top, we skipped the tourist-trappy Peak Tower and crossed the road to the more classic Peak Lookout for an early lunch of Hainan chicken.
From there we hiked up twisty streets to see Victoria Peak Garden and all the nature around it: Plants! Ferns! Butterflies! Snails!
Afterward, a tram ride back down and a sweaty hike partway back uphill to Hong Kong Zoological and Botanical Gardens for more flora, fauna, and a historic gazebo and statue of King George VI.
With twilight falling we MTR’d to Mong Kok to stroll around the Ladies Market. Amy shopped a bit while I amused myself with reading Engrish kitsch.
We had planned to have dinner at Yung Kee, the famous roast goose restaurant in Lan Kwai Fong, but our lunch had been so filling that we opted instead for a quicker, cheaper, lighter meal of dim sum and stir fry at the Tsim Sha Tsui Sogo food court before returning to the hotel. I slept poorly, bothered by jet lag and a splitting migraine. (Sodium. Ow.)
Hong Kong, Day 2
It dawned gray and rainy but we planned to spend the day mostly under one kind of roof or another: Star Ferry from Wan Chai to Kowloon, morning in the Art Museum, lunch at the Sogo food court again (cheap and near!), afternoon in the History Museum, and for a break from Chinese food, an Italian dinner at Fat Angelo’s. It was a very big Italian dinner.
Here was the cloudy, rainy view of Hong Kong from the Art Museum (looking south across the harbour to Hong Kong Island):
Hong Kong, Day 3
Our flight to Manila was in the afternoon but we had a good bit of day before hotel checkout time to breakfast at the Causeway Bay Starbucks (behind the Hotel Excelsior). From there we rode the Hong Kong tram to Tai Koo so we could shop around the Kornhill Jusko for little moon cakes and other pasalubong-able snacks. On the MTR back to the hotel we noted charity volunteers at Tai Koo and North Point stations with sheets of stickers; when you wear the sticker after giving, other volunteers no longer approach you for donations. With another hour left before checkout time we browsed a North Point street market, finding it cheaper and less tourist-trappy than Mong Kok. (Though the hair clip Amy bought at this street market was of somewhat poorer quality than the one she had bought at the Ladies Market earlier.)
After checking out of the hotel we got on the Tung Chung MTR to Ngong Ping, left our heavy suitcases in a locker at the cable car terminal, and rode a glass-bottom cable car to Ngong Ping Village. There, up in the mountains, we lunched on kim chi and chicken noodles (studiously avoiding the Subway and Starbucks there), passed by a “wish tree” (which appeared to be made of fiberglass) had a nice view of their giant Buddha (but didn’t climb the stairs to it), and watched people give alms and pray at Po Lin Monastery amidst clouds of incense and sculpted dragon pillars.
The glass-bottom cable car ride back turned out even more scenic as we passed directly over hikers, boaters, fishermen and kayaks. Back at the terminal we grabbed our bags from the locker and got a taxi to take us to the airport, which was right nearby, for our Cebu Pacific flight to Manila. By evening we were waiting for Mom to pick us up at NAIA Terminal 3. My head wasn’t feeling so great.
Greenhills
As before, we stayed in Elan Hotel, close to my family, close to food and shopping, with a nice view, decent accommodation and a giant (and wonderfully greasy) breakfast buffet all for cheap. In fact, aside from the wedding, we spent most of our time in Manila cooped up in the hotel watching TV (or rather, Deep Space Nine episodes on the iPad hooked up to the TV with a cable) while eating food from nearby restaurants, because I got…
The Shingles! (Skip over this section if you don’t like gross stuff. I will spare you the photos of my lesions in this entry but here are the closeup shingles photos if you really want to see them.)
The second night of our visit to Manila, the left side of my head was feeling rather sore and sensitive, and at dinner time spots began to appear on my lip and chin. This was definitely Not a Good Sign. I was pretty sure the one-sided head pain indicated trigeminal nerve inflammation, and the sores appearing on my skin traced a branch of that nerve down from ear to chin.
Fortunately my brother’s wedding was the very next day and at least two of my cousins in attendance were doctors, one of whom had just finished a paper on the Varicella zoster virus, or herpes zoster, AKA The Shingles — which was what I had. Manifesting earlier in life as chicken pox (which I had suffered at 13), the zoster virus can later resurge during times of stress or immunocompromisation. In this case, the 16 hour flight, sleepless Hong Kong nights, and general travel stress had revived the zoster virus along the mandbular (V3) branch of my trigeminal nerve, causing sores and severe nerve pain, made worse by the fact that this was happening on my face. Eating and sleeping were difficult and mostly the rest of this trip I had to take it easy, stay indoors, and sleep a lot — which was actually kind of nice, if not for the excruciating bursts of left-side facial pain.
Still, well before this, my cousin Ted (MD) diagnosed me, and my cousin Lia (MD) prescribed me some Aciclovir (an awesome antiviral drug of recent development) and I was on that for the rest of the trip, which made the course of the disease much shorter and less painful than it could have been left untreated. I made it a point to avoid children and pregnant women for the next couple of weeks, but anyone who had already had chicken pox was safe (until they get shingles from stress too! Mwahaha).
The Wedding
The wedding itself went well, considering how much fell together at the very last minute — especially with regard to some very strict documentation requirements the parish had levied on my brother (some of which I had collected from a church in New Jersey and sent from Hong Kong, hence the earlier FedEx stop). For the mass itself, at Della Strada in Loyola Heights, I was lector (the priest not particularly minding that I am Baptist), dictating sits and stands from a hastily printed missalette whose order was not exactly right in places (they wanted a homily before their vows, oops), but all went swimmingly otherwise.
A reception followed at The Glass Garden, in which, I, as Best Man, delivered a rambling toast drawing upon the happy couple’s long history of competitive network Starcraft:
As they sometimes say, if the two of you can make it through the wedding preparations, you can make it together through anything, and here you are, husband and wife, Mr and Mrs X Jhocson Ordoprime Esq. I remember the days that these two were very, very long distance. How did they keep the flame alive through those long days that were nights and nights that were days? The secret is two words: Star Craft.
Pasyensya po to the non-gamers in the crowd, some of this might sound unintelligible. If you have any questions itanong mo kay Francis.
Really, marriage is not that much different from the realm of real-time science fiction strategy gaming. There’s the gradual gathering of precious resources, to build a strong and impregnable home base, in which the noble players can plot out their missions, and also lay thousands of larval egg pods from which will spawn swarms of offspring. Not to mention the adventure to discover heretofore unknown emission sources of noxious gas.
It’s been a long road getting from there to here, and I raise a glass to you in congratulations and joy. May your base always have power, may your geysers always be full of vespene gas, and may you spawn exactly as many children as you desire. To love, life, and joy. Mabuhay ang mga bagong kasal.
It was also at the wedding reception that I managed to speak to my two doctor-cousins and get a prescription for shingles medication. At this point the pain wasn’t so bad yet and I was able to eat and even participate in a parlor game — badly. I also asked the wedding photogapher (an old colleague from my Ateneo days) to only get the right side of my face when doing group shots.
Boracay
A couple of days after the wedding we got on a Cebu Pacific ATR 72-500 to Caticlan, to transfer to a bus, and then to a boat, to arrive at Boracay. Mom had 3 nights of unused hotel credit with a resort there, and generously let us use it for some island fun. I don’t even remember the name of the resort anymore, but they had a nice, quiet location fronting the far end of White Beach, a decent complimentary breakfast, and lots and lots of ants.
Since the shingles infection had me mostly incapacitated from pain and fatigue, we spent the entire trip either soaking in the seawater in front of the resort, or getting takeout from various eateries at “D’Mall” to bring back to our hotel room, where we watched Star Trek DS9 reruns. It was just the restful idleness I needed. The saltwater was especially soothing for my zoster lesions, so I had no qualms about “making babad” (as they say in Taglish) till dusk. At some point we even spotted this crab out for a sunset walk in the shallows:
The beaches in Boracay are lovely, with miles of smooth white sand — though too featureless to make for any exciting snorkeling. We tried wading over to “Willy’s Rock,” a formation with a Marian grotto just off the beach, but beyond a few small fish there was little else to see. The beach itself, while relatively clean and unspoiled for such a heavily developed resort town, was thick with pushy vendors and panhandling children — par for the course anywhere in the touristy parts of the Philippines, but especially pronounced on this beach in particular. Still, the vendors sold Amy an okay hat, and we enjoyed the beach outside of the standard hitches of third world poverty.
On the return to Manila, Amy got her first ride on a Filipino tricycle (motorcycle with a large covered sidecar, often crowded to capacity and driven recklessly). She found it an alarming experience.
Enderun
My younger brother Javier is going through a culinary arts program at Enderun for his postgraduate studies, so after Boracay, we dropped by the school’s restaurant — manned, of course, by hospitality and culinary students — and enjoyed some very delicious grilled barramundi, served at a discount for family of students.
Return Home
In the throes of my shingles pain I was thoroughly convinced I was in no condition to fly home and would probably be quarantined on the HKG layover, so I cancelled part of my plane ticket, telling Amy she should go home on her own while I recuperated for another week back in the Philippines.
At a final appointment, however, the doctor (another one apart from my cousins) said I was fine to travel as long as I avoided stress — and stayed away from the immunocompromised. Wanting to get back home on time, I called the airlines and was able to un-cancel the United HKG-DCA leg — but my seat for the Cebu Pacific MNL-HKG leg had already gone to another waitlisted passenger. The Cathay Pacific flight was sold out too, but Philippine Airlines still had seats — I just had to show up in person to get the ticket.
So the morning of our return trip was a bit dicey as we dropped off Amy at one MNL terminal for her Cebu Pacific flight, and I got off at another terminal to buy a PAL ticket (and undergo some security scrutiny for getting a one-way ticket, but I had my transfer tickets too). My flight left about fifteen minutes after Amy’s, and on landing at Hong Kong I even saw her Cebu Pacific plane on the tarmac ahead of mine, which was pretty awesome. We met up in the HKG concourse with plenty of time to shop for some dried huamei treats at the Wing Wah before getting on our United flight back to the US.
Return View
We got a couple of cool views on the final leg of our flight home from ORD to DCA. First, around the start of descent, we flew right over Dulles (IAD):
Shortly after, we were treated to the famous river approach to DC National (DCA) Runway 19, which affords a lovely view of Washington, DC from Beltway to National Mall — for those sitting on the left side of the aircraft.
The plane landed at DCA just as the sun was setting, and we took a taxi home to avoid rush hour on Metro.
It took me about another four days to recover from the shingles and get back to work. Light scars and blemishes remain on the left side of my face and chin to this day. Still, pain and disease notwithstanding, we got to do a lot of stuff in Hong Kong, see my brother get married, and relax for a few days in Boracay, so it was a pretty great trip.
So as I said in my cruise entry, while in Nassau I wanted to do a Saturday morning dive without missing our afternoon snorkeling excursion — which left me a four hour window after docking. I called Paradise Dive Charters, Stuart Cove, and Bahama Divers to check their dive schedules: Stuart Cove couldn’t accommodate my schedule, Paradise had a “discover” (entry-level) dive, but Bahama Divers had two morning dives that fit my needs perfectly — as long as I could get to the dive center within ten minutes of docking time. This was doable by taxi — though as mentioned a bribe was needed to grease the wheels a bit.
Bahama Divers’ shop is just a few minutes’ drive down Bay Street from Prince George’s Wharf. On arrival I signed a liability release form and rented gear, then went out back to the dive boat, Dreadnought VI. (No word on where Dreadnoughts I to V are) There were about ten other divers on board: a Floridian family on a yachting vacation, some couples from around the US, and a World Bank worker from right here in DC — whom I was of course buddied up with. The divemaster was a hardy Bahamian veteran who concluded every pre-dive spiel with a trademark witticism: “The pool is now open.”
Dive #87: Lost Blue Hole
Max depth: 90ft
Dive time: 45 mins
Air used: 2250psi
From Nassau it was about a 45 minute ride across choppy waters to Lost Blue Hole, possibly named for the difficulty finding any nearby landmarks with which to mark its mostly nondescript location, some miles east of New Providence Island.
After entry we descended about 50 feet to a flat sandy field, in the middle of which was the Blue Hole itself, a cavernous tunnel about 80 feet wide, going straight down to over 200 feet, its bottom well beyond the visibility of the water that day. The water got darker and colder the deeper into the hole I went, but I saw much more life — fish and coral — along the walls than amidst the featureless sand above.
Circling the void at the center of the Hole there were dozens of sharks, small to medium sized. There was no danger; we had been specifically warned by the divemaster to stick to the wall and not venture into the center of the Hole — not for our safety, but to avoid scaring the sharks away. Nonetheless the sharks themselves were somewhat curious and cheeky, swimming close to check me out before deciding I was too large and unappetizing.
A giant leatherback sea turtle made an appearance, though I saw it only briefly as it burst out from the coral and retreated to the depths, a single remora hanging on to the back of its shell. The dive shop cameraman managed to chase the turtle down past 100 feet, but I wasn’t feeling quite as bold. We also spotted a young stingray nestling in the sand just outside the hole as we were ascending back out. Cute thing.
Despite its name I saw no barracudas at the next dive site. Most of the sea life was unremarkable; just the standard coral and small to medium sized fish. Near the end of the dive, however, we did see a very, very large lobster sitting immobile under a rock.
I also very nearly lost my camera, when the strap slipped off my wetsuit without my noticing. When I realized it was no longer on my arm I frantically searched the reef for about two minutes before I remembered that the camera housing floats. Sure enough, when I turned my eyes up there was the camera floating just above me. This was a shallow reef (about 20 feet) so a brief surfacing to retrieve the camera was not too disruptive to my dive profile.
Post-dive, the dive shop offered a tape of dive video taken that morning — set to bad reggae covers of pop songs. I opted out, though I wish now I hadn’t: the video of the leatherback turtle at Lost Blue Hole was quite a sight.
One final note: they gave me a ride back to the cruise ship pier, which I appreciated greatly, especially since I could chat even more with the divemaster. An excellent morning of diving, and I got back to the ship with time to have lunch with Amy before heading out again to go snorkeling.
I was resistant to the concept of a luxury cruise at first; my family’s nautical upbringing had conditioned in me a kind of disdain for the idea of experiencing the sea from the comfort of a floating hotel with amenities. Then I realized that I was being silly, and at a good price, a comfortable floating hotel with amenities makes for a great vacation. Plus, I had read David Foster Wallace’s Shipping Out [PDF], and far from repelling me from the idea, I was fascinated with the travel subculture oriented around the cruise industry — a fascination further fed by conversations in IRC and browsing CruiseCritic Boards.
So we booked a 3-night cruise on NCL’s Norwegian Sky (through Cruise.com) to the Bahamas in late June as a wedding anniversary gift to ourselves (over a weekend, of course, to minimize days of leave from work). Cruise cost was a bit over $200 per person for an oceanview cabin. The itinerary went thus:
Day 1: Fly to Miami, depart from Port
Day 2: Nassau, Bahamas
Day 3: Great Stirrup Cay
Day 4: Return to Port, hang out in Miami for a day, then fly back to DC.
Airport to Port
To start, I made the amateur mistake of booking our flight through the cruise line, resulting in an itinerary with a needless ATL transfer for a higher price than if we had booked it ourselves. Even after I had canceled the cruise line’s booking, paid a cancellation penalty, and booked a direct trip independently, the total cost was still cheaper than the cruise line’s itinerary. The catch: longer wait times in Miami between port and plane on departure and arrival — which was fine with us; we would fill the gap with something to do.
We left DCA in the dark of early morning and had a peaceful morning flight on AA with lovely views of DC and the Florida coast — no problems or delays. On landing early at MIA, we passed the interval at Top of the Port Restaurant, breakfasting on eggs benedict and bagels with lox while watching planes take off and land. Then, a taxi to the Port of Miami — 20 minute ride, flat rate of $24 — with lovely views of the city skyline.
Embarkation
At Port, before entering the NCL terminal we were greeted with the option to check bags through to our room. Knowing we wouldn’t have access to our room for a few hours after boarding I opted to keep the bags with us — which turned out to be a mistake, since we didn’t really need anything in those bags for the next few hours, and we would be stuck dragging them around for a time.
On entry, we had to pause at a table to fill out a disclaimer form affirming we had no serious communicable diseases, then go through a security checkpoint (which also had me wishing we’d checked our bags through), and finally arrive at the check-in desk, where we were given our cruise keycards. Still being an hour early, there was little else to do but sit around under the white canopy of the terminal, watching others arrive and check in.
I was quite amused that the boarding announcement was done with pep rally-ish music and a sportscaster-like welcome voiceover. En route to the ship all passengers were required to pass through a photo studio setup, standing before a background of simulated fireworks to be photographed before continuing across the gangway to the ship itself — one of many photo ops that would occur on the cruise. Once on board, the queues continued, this time for a spray of hand sanitizer by a crewmember, and a quick digital photo for the cruise card.
On Board the Sky
From there, we entered into the ship’s promenade deck and cabaret, where various ship’s restaurants and shops had set up a kind of bazaar showcasing their products and services. The bar area had been converted into a bag check, at which we thankfully deposited the suitcases we had not checked through to our cabin earlier. Breezing past the rest of the tables, we walked around the perimeter jogging track a bit to watch a small thunderstorm pass over Miami, and meant to check out the lounge at the upper front of the ship, but it was closed for a wedding party.
About an hour after boarding, cabins were announced open. We fetched our bags from the bar, dropped them in the room, and joined the mandatory “muster drill” for a safety briefing back on the promenade deck. Upstairs we met up with Tom and Cheryl, very active members on Cruise Critic, who were nice enough to show us around their luxurious balcony suite at the stern of the ship. We talked at length about cruise culture, Florida life and other things.
Then it was back up to the pool deck for a barbeque buffet lunch, and we found a table in the Garden Cafe, right by the window, just in time to watch our ship leave port and head out to sea.
Stateroom
Our stateroom was #5001, a G-Category Oceanview, consisting of a large porthole, a small loveseat, and two joined double beds. We were situated far forward on the “Atlantic Deck,” near the Atrium and one of the main dining rooms. Like most cabins on the Sky, ours was fairly small (not more than 150 square feet), but we had cabinets and underbed storage. Bathroom was tiny but manageable, with a small round shower stall and an exhaust vent that echoed with the hum of far-off turbines.
A small TV sat on the shelf above the work desk with various cable channels (none of which we watched) plus some video loops of shipboard and emergency info, but the best channel for me carried live CCTV video from a camera at the front of of the ship, with a view ahead of the bow. Of course, we had a porthole, but if we had gotten an interior cabin the front-view channel would have been on all the time. As it was, we spent much of our at-sea room time glued to the porthole, watching the waves roll past by day, and distant lightning storms by night.
On entry into the room we were greeted with a covered plate of chocolate-dipped strawberries and a bottle of fizzy wine, each tagged with a little card: “Sometimes it’s better to receive.” Unsure as to whether consuming the strawberries or wine would result in an exorbitant room charge, we left them alone for housekeeping to take away. They were never taken away, but fortunately the strawberries never stunk up the room since the lid kept the smell in.
Ship
Hard to believe the Sky is one of the smaller ships in NCL’s fleet. 848 feet long at 77,000 tons with capacity for 2,002 passengers, the ship takes about ten minutes to walk from bow to stern at a leisurely pace. Such a walk can go through mazes of corridors and stairs, a giant atrium with glass elevators, a jogging track circling the Promenade Deck, multiple restaurants and lounges, and the requisite cruise ship casino and show stage. Staircases fore and aft ascend through all decks, and hallway carpets are patterned with fish swimming towards the bow so one can orient oneself with a look at the floor. Personally I was prepared for tacky bright colors and tacky architecture, but decor-wise the ship was quite inoffensive in its practicality.
Sun chairs abound all up and down the pool and sports deck, with quiet areas toward the bow to get away from occasional drunk revelers and screaming children. The pools themselves are a modest affair, however, with only two small saltwater swimming pools, one deep and one shallow, with four hot tubs between them; and this was just fine since this was a short cruise with an island port each day, so access to open water was readily available via excursions. We managed to swim a bit in the deeper pool but it was a short dip as it was rather crowded.
We didn’t spend much time in the bars, casino, or show stage, but we did check out the shops, and wandered around the sports deck a bit to watch passengers play basketball and shuffleboard. We also spent a lot of time sunning ourselves on beach chairs in the forward quiet area, or enjoying the Garden Cafe’s aft deck view. One spot on the ship I thought I would see more of but didn’t was the “Outrigger Lounge” and adjacent forward viewing deck, but as it was reserved for a private party on the first day we forgot about checking it out again till we were headed back to Florida. It was nice, though.
The ship has a library, which I thought might be a nice place to pass time, but it turned out to be a rather small, windowless interior room with a few chairs and a selection of aged hardcovers.
Crew
Crew areas were clearly marked no-access on passenger decks, and whole lower decks were crew-only. The ship positively vibrated with a fascinating hum of behind-the-scenes activity, and I was fairly impressed with the level of service and courtesy afforded to us. None of the incessant, hovering micromanagement that David Foster Wallace had wryly observed on his cruise, just friendly faces at places where you need them, from food service to shore excursion advice to a spray of hand sanitizer on the boarding gangway.
One source of warm fuzzies to me was the number of Filipino crew members on board. The Philippines is very much a nation of migrant workers, many of whom work in maritime industries, and cruise lines are no exception. From conversations with various staff members I gleaned that Filipinos on board probably accounted for about half the crew. Friendly people all around.
I must reserve special mention for Orlando of the shore excursions desk. When our excursion tickets hit us with an unexpected schedule change that conflicted with my morning scuba reservations, he was on the ball at all times, calling the errant excursion provider in Nassau to get us back on our original schedule, and staying in communication with us through stateroom phone and even my cellphone to keep us updated so I could tell whether or not to cancel my scheduled dive trip before the refund threshold. We got our original schedule back, and I didn’t need to cancel the morning dive. That level of service was enough to erase my outrage at the threat of disruption.
Nassau
First port of call was Nassau, The Bahamas. Saturday, 8AM on the dot, the ship docked at Prince George’s Wharf, while we breakfasted in the Garden Cafe, viewing over bacon and eggs the townscape of buildings and houses both colorful and ramshackle, contrasting with the unabashedly pink opulence of The Atlantis Resort across the channel.
I had booked a dive trip for the morning (just me; Amy preferred to explore town rather than go scuba but was kind enough to let me indulge for a morning) but I had booked it independently of the cruise and needed to take a taxi to the dive center. Down the ship’s forward stairs, out the gangway, up the pier and through the still-closed tourist-trap mini-mall of souvenir stands, I approached the taxi desk and asked for a lift to Bahama Divers. Dispatcher told me to wait. I waited around the mostly empty welcome center for ten minutes, asked about the taxi again, and was told that if I wanted a taxi by myself I’d have to pay more.
Coming from a third world country I recognize a bribe when presented with the opportunity to pay one, and as I was running late for the dive appointment, I ponied up $20 for a ride on a van to a dive shop just ten minutes away.
Fortunately after the dive, Bahama Divers gave me a ride back, and I got to the ship just in time to meet Amy for lunch, then head back down to the pier for our afternoon shore excursion:
Athol Island Snorkeling
On the pier, passengers from our ship and other cruise ships had gathered for a short walk down the wharf to a large catamaran, equipped with bench seating for a multitude, a wet bar serving “Bahama Mamas,” large barrels full of rental snorkeling gear in various sizes, and a talky tour guide whose English had somehow taken on a strong Midwestern US accent.
It was a 45 minute ride to Athol Island, a slender, uninhabited, mound of sand and grass sticking out of the Atlantic near Nassau. The actual snorkeling venue, called Coral Gardens, was a few hundred feet off the shore, a shallow reef of patchy coral and sand about 10-15 feet deep, lightly scattered with small reef fish. The water was delightfully warm, though I chafed at the required precautionary life vests all snorkelers had to wear. (I kinda got yelled at for jumping in without a vest. Probably for the best.) We stayed out for about two hours, and found a bag of someone else’s leftover fish food, so we even got to feed a few fish before getting back on the boat.
On the trip back, the guide pointed out various celebrities’ mansions, from Oprah to Tiger Woods to Michael Jackson to Elvis.
Great Stirrup Cay
Second cruise day was spent on Great Stirrup Cay, NCL’s private island. Formerly an island headquarters for Belcher Oil Company in the 70s, Great Stirrup Cay has been thoroughly converted into a simple island playground, with beaches, artificial reefs, nature trails, beach chairs, and a towering inflatable water slide. There’s no pier, so access to the island is by tender, a boat that shuttles passengers between ship and island through the day.
We woke and tendered to the island earlier than most of the hungover guests, arriving to plenty of free beach chairs in choice shady spots. A good part of the island was fenced off for what appeared to be massive improvement works, but we pretty much spent the entire day in the water anyway, snorkeling to little natural and artificial reefs in the netted area around the beach, and feeding fish with leftover bread smuggled from the previous night’s dinner.
Food was available on the island with a BBQ lunch buffet of hotdogs, hamburgers, fresh fruits, and other summery fare, plus coolers of iced tea and water. I thoroughly enjoyed being able to eat hotdogs and rice (Pinoy style, as I told the Filipino crew attending the food) while we watched a large lizard crawl along a nearby path. Afterward it was back in the water for more snorkeling and fish feeding.
We got marvelously sunburnt.
Food
One reason we chose NCL was for “Freestyle” dining: unscheduled, unassigned eating options from a choice of multiple onboard restaurants. Two main dining rooms — Palace and Crossings — provide regular a ala carte dining for “free” (that is, included in the cruise fare), while other specialty restaurants serve premiere cuisine for an extra cover charge. The Garden Cafe on the Pool Deck also had a “free” buffet at mealtimes.
We stuck to regular dining options for the whole cruise, and did not regret it at all. Breakfast buffet in the Garden Cafe had the requisite eggs, sausage, bacon, pancakes, and mushrooms. Some of it was a bit greasy but tolerable. As for the “regular” fare in the Palace main dining room, the food served was mostly above average in taste and presentation, and the ambience was much enhanced by the view of the sea out the windows. A list of our a la carte dinner orders:
Day 1: grilled mahi-mahi, lamb provençal
Day 2: lobster tail and grouper, beef wellington
Day 3: pecan-encrusted snapper, cheese tortellini
I went on a bit of a seafood bender this trip with all the fish. Pretty much my only real complaint was that the lobster tail was a bit tough from overcooking, but otherwise the food was excellent, on par with what one would expect from a land-based specialty gourmet restaurant rather than, say, a greasy spoon diner or an Olive Garden.
Water
This is something I was wondering about before we boarded; and the answer is yes, the water on the ship is safe to drink straight from the tap. I brought a plastic bottle on board and refilled it from the bathroom sink for excursions, and the water was just fine for all hydratory needs, if a bit chlorine-y after long periods in the bottle. Amy got some stomach trouble about a week after the trip, so your mileage may vary.
Internet
Satellite via wifi internet on board was about as slow as dialup and cost a bundle of money. I thought I’d be able to upload photos during meals but I only ever managed to upload one image — a screenshot of a speed test — and that took a whole lunch.
Disembarkation
The last night on board, passengers had the option of leaving their bags out in the hall with color-coded tags indicating desired time of disembarkation, so their bags would meet them at a carousel after immigration. Optionally, those who wished to walk off with their bags could do so earlier. We got the bag tags for the latest exit so we could catch more sleep.
The ship returned to the Port of Miami in the dark of early Monday morning, while I stared out the porthole of our stateroom, watching the heavy cranes and stacked containers slide past. Docking was well before waking time. We rose late, had a relaxed breakfast in the rather hectically crowded Garden Cafe, and spent the rest of the morning packing. There were a few delays with disembarking passengers before us, however, so we did spend a bit of time sitting around the atrium and browsing the photo gallery after vacating our stateroom, and after leaving the ship we faced a rather long line at immigration, but we were in no rush.
Vizcaya
Having all day before our flight to DC, we decided to check out Vizcaya for the day. First we taxi’d to the airport to drop off our bags at the left luggage counter, then took another taxi down to Vizcaya, getting our Haitian taxi driver’s cellphone number so he could pick us up afterward.
A wealthy industrialist’s winter estate, Vizcaya’s many rooms were built after various architectural themes through history, and populated with art from the corresponding eras. Outside, various gardens provided vistas and promenades, and an expansive view of Bay Biscayne backdropped a breakwater in the shape of an old stone barge. It was a hot day out, but pleasant, with many quinceñeras roaming the grounds with their photographers and entourages.
Home
We stayed till 4PM, then called for our taxi driver to take us to the airport, where we had a late lunch of sandwiches and conch fritters at Top of the Port, and took some photos of the Miami Airport chapel before flying home to DC.
Quite a pleasant vacation for just four days, and this first cruise left me with a nice impression of NCL and cruising in general.
Postscript: Carbon
Of course, riding a massive combustible-fuel-propelled luxury vessel releases tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, where it can trap heat and affect climate. To offset this effect I purchased carbon offsets from CarbonFund. Compensating for the impact of a 4 day cruise (plus the round trip DC-Miami flight) cost about $18, an amount that would go to programs like atmospheric methane removal and wind farms.
Pandora has lately taken to jumping up on the couch whenever we sit on it, even getting up on our laps to try and use the computer. (This is our IKEA LILLBERG, which she had previously shunned since it was not as soft as gCouch, but she’s grown to like it.)
Update: Oh look, she’s on the couch again right this very moment:
NYC locals and tour guides have recommended walking the Brooklyn Bridge and ending in Brooklyn to have pizza at Grimaldi’s, though in our case we wanted to end up in Chinatown and have dim sum. So, going against the normal tourist flow on a warm morning last month, we headed for High Street Station on the A & C to enter the bridge from Brooklyn — which itself assumes you’ll be coming from Manhattan, as evidenced by the “Welcome” map. Up some stone steps from there and the path is clear.
Walking towards Manahattan against the general flow of tourist traffic is an exercise in patience, more so considering the propensity of large groups and families to take up the entire walkway, plus a general disregard for the delineation between pedestrian and bike lanes. That aside, however, the Brooklyn Bridge is a quintessential New York experience which is quite fun and scenic in good weather. The bridge positively oozes history; every stone, girder, plank, and cable shudders with the weight of years — or perhaps the passing of cars.
At left, the Statue of Liberty; at right, Manhattan Bridge; and all around, old rusty rivets and suspension cables.
All told, the walk took about an hour at a very relaxed pace, stopping for photos every few steps. Afterward we walked over to Chinatown and had a late lunch of dim sum at Jing Fong.
Someday, we’ll try this in the Manhattan to Brooklyn direction and finally try Grimaldi’s. Maybe in winter when it’s a bit less crowded.
Good news, everyone: How Now Brownpau has returned.
It’s been a while. I had succumbed to a double-fault state of distractibility and near-burnout, collecting ideas and content but settling for posting bits and pieces on Twitter and Tumblr while my personal web space languished and my ambitions for longer-form posts withered on the vine. Finally I decided to cure my scatter-brained sense of futility with a sudden and willful flurry of activity, starting with an upgrade of Movable Type from 4.3x to 5.
That went badly, as the upgrade wiped out all my painstakingly crafted PHP-based template work, killed a bunch of page-based customization hacks, and presented me with little option other than to start from scratch once again. At that point I decided to finally go with the advice others (especially Russell) had given me, and make the switch to WordPress. (Sorry, MT, you served me well for many years, but the times I yelled “NO!” at the CMS finally outnumbered the times I yelled “YES!” and so it was time for a change.)
(Around the same time, AxisHost began offering VPS, and I jumped at the chance to finally have a server-like hosting environment on one of the best hosts in the business.)
So HNBP now runs on WordPress and a VPS. To meet a self-imposed, travel-related deadline, I’ve had to settle for minimal customization and a design from the WordPress theme library (veryplaintxt). Migration is still not done, and many things are still missing, broken, or stuck in default mode. A FriendFeed-based aggregated lifestream continues in the sidebar, and that is where most of the freshness will be for now. (I’m open to suggestions for a plugin that will take FriendFeed or other social media content and integrate it into the WordPress loop without actually importing new content as posts in the WP database.)
Summer is here. And now, so am I.
Preserving “Hello world” post here for posterity:
Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!
In the years we’ve had her, Pandora has never shown much interest in the outdoors, but that seems to have changed now that we have a sliding door to a balcony that we’ve been opening to let in some balmy spring air:
Maybe it was the gloomy weather, or the hordes of tourists that get thicker every season — exacerbated this year by unsightly barriers around the construction projects blocking the normal walking routes around the Jefferson Memorial — but cherry blossoms just seemed a bit lackluster this April. The sight was still lovely, but the experience this year was less than perfect.
The stress of traversing the Tidal Basin melted away, however, when we left the area and instead sat down on the grass under the cherry grove by the Washington Monument. There were blooming trees, but no teeming masses of tourists, and children frolicked about a gathering of pinwheels. The space was brighter and more open and generally more enjoyable than the Tidal Basin generally gets at that time of year, and we were both glad for the respite:
