New England/Canada Cruise. Day 1. I like culture.

Well, here we are, on another adventure. A cruise, which is an adventure of the seas, which is also the name of our cruise ship. Yup, it’s gonna be one of those blogs.

Hallie woke us up way too early Friday morning. We stayed in bed for a little bit, then got up, finished doing some packing, and then went out to do some last minute errands, which of course included a stop at Toddy’s where we had coffee, a muffin for Hallie, and a chat with Jay.

Our driver was supposed to arrive at 1030, but he was 12 minutes early. Somehow we managed to leave 20 minutes late. Our cruise was set to leave out of Bayonne, NJ, which was about an hour and a half drive. Hallie fell asleep 10 minutes in, so she got in a great nap. Tzvi also got in a nap. I did not. I think the worst traffic we hit was actually once we made it into the cruise port – it took at least 15 minutes to get from the entrance to the port to the curb where we unloaded.

My parents were in another car. They got to the cruise before us, and had checked in online, printed their bag tags ahead of time, and made it onto the ship real quick. Tzvi’s been too busy to deal with anything, so when we unloaded and they asked us for our bag tags or stateroom number, we just had nothing. Tzvi went searching through emails and found the cabin number and they wrote us bag tags. No big deal. Then we went inside, went through security, check in, took our obligatory cruise photo and then headed onto the ship. Hallie was very excited. She’s been talking all week about how she’s going on a ship, and how they have pizza and ice cream and fruit and salmon every day on the ship.

no, I cannot stop eating Cheerios every time you want to take a selfie

We got on the ship and headed to our room on deck 6 near the rear of the ship. We have a connecting room with my parents and Austin is across the hall in an inside cabin (though Pop Pop says he thought Austin had a balcony too). Our room is nice, but small and old. This whole ship is small and old. It’s not a bad thing, it just shows its age. This ship is roughly 20 years old, and although it’s been recently renovated, it still feels old.

We left the room and went for our first buffet at Windjammer (the buffet). First thing we did was get Hallie a plate of pizza, French fries and corn. She enjoyed the French fries and corn but wasn’t crazy about the pizza. Tzvi got off to a good start – a taco, some vegetable ragout dish and some cream sauce pasta. I had a salad and found tuna. Pop pop didn’t get tuna because it said “contains seafood.” I was pretty sure that just meant it was fish. I was right.

After lunch we had our muster drill. Our muster station is outside right underneath a lifeboat (as opposed to in the dining room or something), so if anything happens we’re in good shape. From there we checked out the boat a bit, saw the pools and the kids club. Unfortunately Hallie is too young to be dropped off and left at the kids club. At some point during our walking around the ship left port. They didn’t even make an announcement. We just looked out the window and saw that we were moving. So much for a nice photo under the Verrazano.

Around 4 o’clock we went back to the room to unpack, shower and change for dinner. Unfortunately, our luggage still had not arrived. Tzvi called the operator and they said that was normal, luggage can arrive up until 8 pm. Oy. We waited a bit longer, until eventually (around an hour later) Tzvi found some stewards out in the hall and had them take him to the service area where they keep bags until they’re delivered. He pointed out the bags and made them bring them out.

where are we supposed to put all of this stuff?

We started unpacking and then moved on to the next challenge. We had requested a crib for Hallie, but it hadn’t arrived yet, so again, we found a steward and had them bring one. Except they brought a pack n play, which would have been fine, except it was a travel pack n play for small children. Like babies. Like tiny babies. Like Hallie would’ve done well in this thing when she was still too young to go on a cruise. Hallie tried to lay down but in order to fit she had to have her legs sticking up against the side of the pack n play. She actually loved playing in it, though I’m sure she would’ve woken up very cramped if she tried to sleep in it. We told Joseph our cabin attendant that it was too small. He smiled, said sorry, and then said there was nothing he could do. We asked if they could bring a larger crib. No, they don’t have larger cribs. We asked if he could make up the couch into a bed. No, it doesn’t open into a bed.

So we went to guest services. Guest services wasn’t much more helpful. The woman actually didn’t even apologize – she just said the crib is not for a two year old. It actually doesn’t make a lot of sense – kids stay in cribs until two, so what are they thinking? I was like give me someone who can help me brainstorm a solution here. I can’t believe they were just going to say ‘too bad.’ I said what, should I stick her on the floor with a blanket? They ended up getting the deck attendant on the phone, who said they would bring a mattress to put on the floor. Awesome.

Around 7:15 we went into the dining room for dinner, with still about an hour to go until Shabbos.

We were seated at a nice table near a window. We started by quietly singing shalom alechem and eishet chayil. We had them open our bottle of Jeunesse and we all stood for kiddush. Then we dipped our hands in our water glasses and made motzi over zomicks challah rolls we brought in. After that we ate the bread basket with butter. Before ordering the kosher food we ordered two dairy desserts off the regular menu – a sugar free plum crumble (not great) and a chocolate hazelnut cake (not great).

We ordered a bunch of food off the kosher menu, which for Tzvi would be dinner number 2. While we waited for the kosher food to come, Tzvi ordered a cream of mushroom soup (he really liked it), a Caesar salad (standard cruise Caesar salad, we’ll probably have at least one a day here), a couple of fruit plates (why is there a fruit plate on the appetizer menu) and a polenta entrée with grilled vegetables and cheese (a very interesting dish). Dinner was very pleasant, Tzvi enjoyed his food and we waited for the kosher food to come.

Eventually food started coming. We started with a completely frozen humus appetizer (frozen, taste of ice), lukewarm chicken soup (kind of what you’d imagine if someone took tepid water and dipped a live chicken in for a few seconds), and then wine braised beef (just think of braised meat – soft, tender, falling apart – and then think of the exact opposite thing). Tzvi had ordered a wine braised beef, but he took one bite and had to spit it out into a napkin, then five minutes later he grabbed the same napkin to wipe Hallie and chewed up meat fell all over the floor.

When we were just about finished eating, a man came over to our table. He had white hair that stood up and was flat on the top. He just sort of stood there for about ten seconds before he said, “hello.” We said hello, and then he said with a southern drawl, “I like culture.” That’s when we knew we were in for a good one. He started asking Pop Pop about the book he was reading from. “Now, is that different from the Torah?” Then he wanted to know about standing to drink the wine. I don’t know what they said after that but it was something about Christians not knowing when the real Sabbath is. He was a Christian. We didn’t get his name, but we’ll call him Gene.

Hallie had fun at dinner but it was getting pretty late so it was time to take her back and put her to bed. She cozied into her twin bed laying in the middle of our floor. We laid in the dark trying not to make noise. Good, slightly rough first day. Let’s hope things only get better from here.