Saturday

After landing in Palma, Mallorca, the first thing I noticed was that it was hot. Very hot. Europe was undergoing a heat wave at the time, but lucky for me, I like it hot. Just as long as it's not too damp, I like the hot weather.

They bussed us, from the airplane to the "Sunbird." The ship was to begin sailing later that night, but in the meantime, we were given some time to explore Palma. My family decided to go check it out, and I chose to stay in my cabin for a nap. Yes, I know, I missed out on seeing some of Palma, but I was damn tired...I had hardly slept the night before!

The Ship

The rooms themselves are pretty small, with an even smaller washroom, but you don't really spend much time in them, so I would say they were pretty comfortable. They have satellite TV in every room, which we hardly touched. Some comments about the ship itself. I felt like it was used. It was a relatively old old ship, but it was still pretty nice. I thought it was a good size and it pretty clean, but I'm not really experienced in these things. My parents said it was better than the other ships they have been on, so I guess I can't complain. I basing my judgement on the fact that we passed by other cruise ships, and they looked much more luxurious. I think the Sunbird had already been in service for a couple decades already. The company we went with billed itself as "the number one is affordable cruising." So I guess I can't expect too much. The ship itself had quite a few different areas: dining hall, crew dining hall, a cafe, can can lounge (for shows), Oklahoma Lounge (for singing and dancing), a bar with a pianist/singer, a bar ringing the smoke stack, a kids area, a "sporting deck", a casino, several small stores, small library, a small weight room (argh....they had no bench presses. I guess there's some liability issue, but still, it would have been nice to have one. No machines present either. They did have a variety of free weights and a normal bench though.), an internet cafe, two pools (very small ones, which had salt water in them...yuck) and of course a sun deck (which was complemented by multiple bars). Here are a few pictures of the ship:


The Ship



The Sun Deck with its pools (and bars)



The Can Can Lounge where they had the nightly entertainment (notice the bar in the back)



The bar in the Oklahoma Lounge. They had their own band, who would perform in various locations throughout the day, including this one.



One of the many decks. This one happens to be where we were suppose to gather in case there was a disaster.



A shot of the sun deck at night



Me in front of the Moulin Rouge in Paris...err....in front of the Moulin Rouge mural on the ship

Notice how I kept pointing out the bars? Well, they are pretty hard to miss. When we first got on board, they asked us if we would like to participate in the All Drinks Included Deal. It cost 119 pounds each (about $300 CAN), and it allowed access to unlimited alcoholic drinks. The cruise ship really tries hard to entice you buy alcohol, especially since the cheapest drink you can buy is about $5 CAN. I suppose a lot of people partake in this deal, because they plan to get plastered in the sun for a whole week. May sound enticing to some people - like Keith Mo.



Keith shows his true self on the cottaging trip

But I digress. :)

So on this first night we hurried off to dinner. The first night's dinner was held in the formal dining lounge, but it was informal. Unfortunately, I have a small complaint about a cruise, even though it's going to sound dumb, trivial and nitpicky. Everything is run on a schedule. I don't like always worrying about the time, especially when I"m on a vacation. You have to be at dinner at this time. You have to wake up to go on the excursions at this time. There will be entertainment in the lounge at this time. Photos will be taken between these times. I guess I'm making it sound worse than it actually was, but personally, I find that keeping a tight schedule a little annoying. It's something that can't be avoided though, because of the sheer logistics. For example, they serve 7000 meals a day! The Can Can Lounge can only accomodate half the passengers at a given time. The dining hall has two sittings, the early dinner and the late dinner. Which reminds me; Because I like food so much, I'll be showing a picture of the nightly dinners. And yes, it was slightly weird bringing a camera to every dinner, but I'm sure you can appreciate the sacrifices I make for my blog. j/k, =P


Spanish Paella with Squid

I have more to blog about the meals on the board, but that's for another day.

Right after dinner, we were directed to the Can Can Lounge where we had some entertainment. The first night was a comedian. Oh man, he wasn't very funny. First of all, he was British. Second of all, he was British. Third, he was really old. Quite a bit of dry wit, with hardly any dirty jokes. Did you know that a lot of British humour is based upon where in Britain you're from? So he was going on and on about this type of people from this area and on and on about people from that area of Britain. It might be funny for someone from the UK, but not me. The very young kids in the audience was heckling him quite a bit, which I found to be the most entertaintaing part of his performance. I think his act was geared towards the older audience and it had to be family friendly, so the Cruise organizers really know their audience.

Which brings me to my next point. There are a lot of old people on cruises. That isn't surprising, but it's quite noticeable. And the cruise organizers know this is their bread and butter. There were also some young families on board and honeymooning couples as well, but there were few people my age. There was a wide variety of nationalities present. Most of the people were from the U.K. or the scandanavian countries. There were some Canadians, who all kept pretty quiet, because I never saw them up on stage or participating in the contests. And there were noticeably no Americans. Actually, we met one American family from Buffalo, but it seemed like the cruise ship's customers didn't include Americans (for better or for worse). So there was quite a mix in the customers, which can be interesting when you talk to them.

So, I guess the first night is just getting acclimated to life on a ship. I could get use to this - they feed you, clean up after you, there's lot's of sun and provide entertainment. Sounds good to me :)

P.S. on an unrelated note, I just watched the semifinal between Iron Chef Chinese and Iron Chef Italian. I know they are all re-runs, but i'm now wondering who wins and becomes the King of Iron Chef.