Imagine a 14 storey building, around 300 meters long, floating on the ocean full of 2000 people, pushing down the earth with 70000 tons (Which is equivalent to around 70000 cars). How long is a car, around 5m? Let's say you put all those cars in front of each other and you will get a 350 km long queue of cars. Impressive, isn't it. What is more interesting is that this 70000 ton which is emerges around 25 meters above the water only sinks 8 meters into the water.
So I was fortunate (it is a bit mystified - It rather happened by working my ass off for years) to spend 7 days with the family on a cruise on Pacific Ocean. I've never even seen a ship so huge before only on TV, so when I arrived at the port I couldn't believe my eyes, that the 14 storey high building in front of me is actually the ship. It is massive. It is ginormous. Getting onto it is the same as boarding an airplane, with security checks, custom officers, baggage check-in and walking through long corridors.
The ship has heaps of facilities, bar, shops, restaurants, gym, pool, theatre, lots of deck chairs and the best thing, childcare. I was looking forward to leave my 3 kids in this facility and enjoy at least a few hours of uninterrupted quality time with my wife when we could have a cocktail, maybe a decent meal, or have a nap on one of those nice deck chairs. We really needed a break after 3 years constant babysitting.
With the kids, we preferred the buffet style eating, which gave us plenty of options to choose from and to please the kids. It was a bit of an adventure to take the two 3 years olds and the little 1 year old to the restaurant, hold their hands while try to balance 2 trays each with 3 plates and around 20 types of food on it including the dessert. The staff was really helpful and that was good.
Second day we shoved the kids into the childcare centre and they were really excited about the playground and the lots of toys. Until we told them we need to go for a while, but we will be back shortly. They said they needed to go as well and started to put their shoes on. Okay, okay. Let's spend a bit more time together in the playground and by the time they will get into the heat of the games, won't notice our departure. They did, and put the toys back neatly and started to put their shoes on.
We tried it in the next 2 days then we gave up.
Seven days past very quickly. We were up at 5:30am, we tried to entertain the kids with some books and toys while we were half asleep. So it was around 6:15 by the time we hit the restaurant. After the breakfast we walked around the ship and got back to the cabin by 8:30 Those days when we stayed on the ship, first 2 days and the last 2 days, we walked around the ship, watched the never ending entertainment, ate, then watched some show, then ate, then tried the swimming pool then ate then had a short nap then ate then watched a show, then dinner then sleep. Watching a show really meant that we walked in with 3 kids, they sat down, they enjoyed themselves, then after around 7 to 11 minutes they lost interest and started to crawl around. So we were collecting the kids under the chairs, make sure they don’t get addicted to bubble gums found under the chairs. So after 5 minutes crawling on all fours in front of the seats and apologizing to almost half of the audience, who were smiling and tagged the kids as cute, we left the theater and we had look for some other entertainment for the kids. We took them to the lifts, to the front, to the back, to the top deck, to the pool, to the nightclub (strictly during the day when it was quiet and it looked like a normal restaurant with beautiful view to the front.) However the view was almost the same in every direction, water and water and more water. It was a full day exercise, it was more like a boot-camp with Fleurs-de-Lis, so we were so tired at the end of the day, that we fall asleep earlier than the kids.
At least we holidayed together, serving their every wish and needs and they enjoyed it, like a king. We enjoyed it too, especially the afternoon nap.
March 2011
