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Wednesday, March 18, 2009

The Innocent Voyage: Part 4 - Pirates of the Caribbean, Johnny Depp, and rum

So our first day on the ship is spent at sea. So what do you do all day long? Well, the ship gives you a daily schedule of things to do. Everything from bingo, basketball and bocce ball (they had a lawn on the roof) to wine tastings, computer classes, photography classes, and learning how to make crepes. They also had a glass blowing show. Yes, seriously.

Or you can do like the majority of the shipmates and park your butt on a lounge chair by the pool. And drink pina coladas. And read gossip magazines. I TOTALLY think Rhianna can do WAY better than Chris Brown.

So Matt wanders off to go get beaten at Bridge by the blue-hairs and I go to a class. Yes, I'm a nerd. It was a class taught by a professor and the subject was the ocean. I learned about waves and tsunamis and gulf streams and hot and cold currents. It was pretty cool.

Then I spent the rest of the day sitting by the pool drinking pina coladas. Since the ship also has a library I found a book to read. Hoot, by Carl Haissen. It's a Young Adult novel and just wonderful. I highly recommend it. I also read another book, Lethally Blonde, which was not wonderful. It sucked. I also think it was a NYTime's bestseller, too. Whatever.

But Hoot was great. Very funny and well written.

So the next afternoon we arrive in San Juan, Puerto Rico. We have a tour scheduled. First we go to the Bacardi Rum plant, which was interesting. Bacardi is still a private, family owned company, an incredibly rich one, and we learned about how rum was transformed from a low-brow swill drink into the most popular liquor in the world. One of the Barcardis developed a way to super distill the rum and make it so light that it would "mix" with anything, which is what led to its popularity.

We watch a little movie and take a little tour and end up at a bar where the bartender shows us how to make a mojito and a Cuba libre (rum and coke). The we drink mojitos and rum and cokes.

On our way back to the ship we stop at Fort San Cristobal. There are a bunch of black cars and security blocking part of the fort. Our guide tells us that is because Walt Disney is filming a movie there. And they are waiting for Johnny Depp to arrive.

Something that sounds like pig squealing erupts from the back seat. Apparently, the 60 year-old ladies love Johnny Depp. One exclaims, "Gosh! Do you think we can meet him and get his autograph?"

Um, no. Probably not. Anyway, the fort was kind of cool. They actually used it during WWII.

After that we went back to the ship and got ready for dinner. Our one disappointment was that we weren't seated with anyone else for dinner. That meant Matt and I had to talk to each other. Boring! Dumb! I guess they didn't think we fit in well with the geriatric set. My God, but there were a lot of OLD people on this boat. I've never seen so many motorized scooters in my life...

There were some people our age, but mostly with larger families. There were a ton of British people on the ship. Probably because they're the only ones whose money is still worth anything. It must be great to be from England because everywhere you go it must seem like a bargain.

"Nigel! Good heavens! These Yanks are practically giving it away!"
"Oh Fiona, you do go on, you scallywag! Pass the salt, love."

What do you mean they don't talk like that? They do, too!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Great stuff Melinda. Enjoyed the vimeo a lot.