Transatlantic Cruise, Part 5: The Atlantic Ocean

Day 499 (November 9, 2019) – The Atlantic Ocean

We had a full week of sailing on the Atlantic to get from the Azores to Florida. I wouldn’t say that we were bored during that time, but the repetition in our daily routine was very noticeable. We were content having nothing to do anyway. We spent a lot of time lounging around, reading books, and eating. Probably too much and too frequently on that last activity. We met a lot of nice people too, although it was difficult to really find any new friends to hang out with since, as I mentioned before, we were perhaps the youngest onboard by at least a couple decades. But we were glad to have chosen the slow boat home rather than a flight. We were eased back into being home with each passing day. It was much more enjoyable than what I imagine would have been the jarring sensation of walking off an airplane and suddenly being back again.

Catching up on some reading.

We had more than enough time to get acquainted with the layout of the ship. We were still getting turned around and questioning which floor something was on during the first week, but during the second week we always knew were to go. We also picked up on some the strange quirks of the boat, like the fact that one can’t actually walk in a full circle around the entire top deck because it was broken up in a couple places. We also learned where the pinch points were for people trying to get from one end of the ship to the other, where there was only one narrow corridor that everyone had to pass through. After a while, the boat started to feel more compartmentalized compared to other ships we had been on. I certainly wouldn’t describe it as having an open floor plan. Still, the Nieuw Statendam was nonetheless a very nice ship. It was relatively new and comfortable. Our cabin was roomier than I expected, and we appreciated that because we ended up spending a lot of time in there.

Our table mates, who we met for dinner every night of our two week cruise. We were also looking spiffy wearing the second hand button down shirt we picked up in Zagreb a while back.

We didn't even discover this until the last few days of the cruise, but they served a very fancy afternoon tea in the dining room every day. It's probably a good thing we didn't know about it because otherwise it would have turned into yet another meal that we ate every day. 

The main pool, with a retractable roof overhead. 

The pool in the back of the ship is were we usually took our lunch or spent the afternoon reading.

Unlike most of our trip, we were actually eating breakfast every day. We had to walk all the way up to the buffet area to get a cup of coffee, so we usually picked up something else to eat too. We would return to the same place later in the day for lunch. We tried to eat a bit later if we could because our dinner reservation wasn’t until 8 pm. It always felt strange to be having such a fancy meal every night. A three or four course dinner with glasses of wine, a dozen sets of silverware to work through, and a hundred waiters and waitresses running around the dining room in black and white uniforms. It was far higher class that any meal we had on this trip previously. We had some nice table mates too, and it was great to get to know them over the two weeks we spent together.

Our cabin during our time on board.

Travis did a ton of research to find this room. It was one of only four room on the ship to have a floor-to-ceiling window like this. It was almost like having a balcony but not. 

We always found a new towel animal on the bed every night. 

There was plenty of entertainment and live music all over the ship. It was fun the first week, but by the second week it was feeling repetitive. There was a piano bar where we spent most our time in the evenings. That and one of the bars where they had a team trivia game every night. The other reason for going to trivia was that the drinks were buy one get one free during that hour, so it was also a chance to save a few bucks on our bar bill. We also frequented the casino. Travis taught me how to play blackjack. Well, I knew how to play the game, but not how to properly bet on it. But we had plenty of time to practice and we spent many nights in our cabin playing practice hands of blackjack. When we played for real down at the casino, I didn’t do all that bad. I was up over $200 one night and when I left the cruise, I was still up $100. Spending that kind of money on something so frivolous didn’t come easy. I had a hard time letting go of my built-up aversion to spending money on anything so unnecessary. But we had fun in the end.

The main auditorium. We went to a few talks here about the history and geography of the port stops.

One of the four main music venues. 

We lucked out with the weather. It was really quite nice out the entire week. Every day seemed to get just a little bit warmer. We usually sat outside in the shade, either on one of the couches or in lounge chairs. I had big plans to knock out a dozen blog posts during that week, but the motion from the rocking of the boat usually bothered me just a little bit too much to want to focus on my computer screen for very long periods of time. It was really quite unfortunate, having so much time yet not really having the ability to catch up on it. But I didn’t have any problems reading my books, which is what I ended up doing most of the time, or just taking a nap.

A game of shuffleboard.

Attempting to work on the blog one afternoon. 

As we got closer to Florida, the captain had made a few comments about an upcoming area of high wind and rain that he was keeping track of. They even increased the ship's speed during the last few days in an effort to get out ahead of it, but we weren’t going quite fast enough. That last day was rough. The morning started out a little choppy and by the afternoon there was some serious wind and ocean swells. The ship was rolling around in a huge circle like a spinning top about to tumble. It wasn’t raining that much, but the wind was intense enough to create five-meter seas, which makes for a seriously large mass of water to be smashing into the boat every few seconds. They closed everything down and told everyone to head back to their rooms. We sat in our cabin for a few hours as the boat made its continuous rolling motions. At least we had a window to see what was going on outside. I’m sure these cruise ships have encountered far worse, but for us it was the roughest it had even been when we were out on the water. Fortunately, by the early evening we had reached the Bahamas. We cut around behind an island and it blocked the worst of the weather coming in from the Atlantic. It was even calm enough at that point for us to make it to dinner. Still a bit rocky for fine dining, but we managed.

The morning of our last day was a bit choppy, but manageable. 

The afternoon got a lot rougher. The waves were more intimidating in person than the picture seems to suggest, but there's no reference points out there to gauge how big they really are. 

After our transatlantic cruise, I think we decided that two weeks on a boat might be a little bit too much. But we still enjoyed ourselves and it got us where we needed to go. And for a cruise, it really wasn’t all that expensive, with the cruise lines offering deals to fill up these repositioning itineraries. The strangest thing about the whole experience was feeling (or perhaps not feeling) like a “real person” again. It was too hard to leave our backpacking mentality behind. We were so used to roughing it everywhere that I felt out of place in such a fancy establishment. We still only had a couple pairs of clothes to wear and a single pair of dirty shoes, although we managing to clean our laundry in the bathroom sink a few times. We were also still scrutinizing our expenses, trying to avoid spending a fortune at the bar, which could be difficult to do at times. But we still enjoyed the experience, and we will certainly remember that week we had at sea.