Cruise entertainment

As you can see from my prior post, there are lots and lots of entertainment options available on a cruise.  You can literally run yourself ragged trying to do it all. For me, this was my 26th cruise.  I am not fussy about cha-cha class, ice carving, port talks, etc.  But I do still like to get out and do stuff.  So I try to balance it with rest time.

I took 2 books on my cruise.  One was "Gulp".  It was written by Mary Roach who also wrote "Stiff" which I read a few years ago and STILL talk about it.  So I was excited to read her next book.  This one is about your digestive track and all that entails (yes Poop too!).  I really dove into it the first sea day while sitting on the Waterfront area. I continued through the cruise as it became a daily event for me to wander to the waterfront and read. I also read in the cabin, the restaurant, etc.

One day, I was in Margaritaville eating my huge order of Volcano nachos, burger and fries, and pie while reading about gorging and what it takes to explode a stomach (for most, it is a gallon of liquid, and I assume food) when eating or drinking.  I found that ironic and I admit, reading about that did make me less hungry and decided to leave 3/4 of my nachos and 1/2 my burger and fries behind.  I also read about how the muscles and sphincters work and ultimately, about rectal cancer.  I found it a little discerning to read all this stuff while relaxing on a cruise where over eating and drinking is standard.  Haha.  I did finish the book on the flight home and was happy to send it back to Mom at the end of the trip.  I never did get to my other book which was a book about sisters who are estranged but one gets cancer and needs an organ transplant from her sister, requiring them to try to rekindle their relationship.  What the hell was I thinking when I picked out these books for the week????  (I will read this book next.)

I also watched movies in the Atrium area. This area has a screen 2 stories high and the width of 1/2 the boat.  It is huge.  I didn't really care what the movie was because 1) I have no control  2) they were shown in the afternoon which is a great time to stop and "movie" 3) I could have a cocktail or two while I watched.  I saw Mamma Mia, Grease, and 1/2 of Hotel Transylvania (I left early when I started feeling a nap was a better idea).  Surprising enough, there were lots of people that watched the movies too.  Because the area is open, there was lots of noise so they turned on the closed captioning so you could read what you couldn't hear.

There are also movies in the back of the ship in the open deck known as H2O.  But they were often at night starting later than I care to be out for movies (11 pm) and there were other things to do.  Plus you could really feel the movement of the boat on deck 16 in the back (there were 17 decks on the boat) and it is open with different levels so it isn't very mobility friendly for me.  So I didn't do those.

In addition, each room has a TV in it.  The programming is served up by the ship and often recorded or interrupted by the loss of satellite signal.  There were 5-6 ship stations.  They show things like the bridge cam, videos of games and activities already past, the safety station showing the safety video in a 24 hour loop, the shopping channel for the ship, and even a shore excursion channel even when we have past the particular stop.  Then there is several news stations like BBC, FOXNews, and CNN.  Unfortunately, it was Kavanaugh's confirmation hearing so that was about all I ever saw except the BBC where they talked about how stupid American politics are.  Then there was 1 "Shows we love" station that played the same episodes of a variety of shows on loop.  I saw 2 Broke Girls (2 episodes that rounded and rounded and rounded), Suits, Mom, The Good Place, Instinct, and other shows I never knew what they were called.  Because there was no commercials, the shows lasted either 21 minutes or 43 minutes.  And finally, there was a movie station but no guide or no knowledge of what was on when.  I caught pieces and portions of many movies.....some I had no idea what they were.  The was a teen movie based on The Little Mermaid, Elizabeth and Abdul, Home Again, Beauty and the Beast, and a few others I either didn't want to watch or remember what they were.  Frankly, it got irritating. Not that you should spend the cruise watching TV but there are times you want to just rest and have something to entertain you.  I wanted my pants off and my feet up.  I wanted to peel off my makeup and put my hair in a ponytail in the comfort of my own cabin.  I found it funny how these inputs are thrust upon us without any control.

It is really interesting because you are literally cut off from the world for the week on the ship unless you pay a few hundred dollars for terrible internet service.  I admit I was given 250 minutes of internet for the week as part of my package.  But I couldn't use my comcast email and it wasn't strong enough to stream content.  Facebook hogged the data (it was secretly 250 minute and/or 200 mb of data...which isn't much).  So I used it to send emails to Mom to make sure she was doing okay as she was staying at my house and checking my flight and checking in.

I don't mind disconnecting. It is one of the reasons I enjoy cruising.  I do need to consider downloading shows on my IPad and think more seriously about my books I bring.  Maybe a RomCom genre.  You know...the Fabio books you see in the check out line at the grocery store (Nah....just kidding) or something that isn't about blowing up tummies and how your intestines handle poop...and famous people that died from poop (Elvis Presley).  That way, I can escape to my great book instead of watching TV as often.  Regardless, it was all done while looking at the ocean enjoying the calm breeze and sunshine.  Can't bitch too much about that!!