Cruiselog: Day 7; At Sea: things I will and won't miss; also, a note from one of the service staff

This is the last cruise-related post! Even my parents (who drove to and from California) are all now home and settled, and the cruise is well and truly past; now, we all return to our normal lives. I wrote these lists while on ship; a week later, they remain true.

Saturday, Day 7, At Sea
Tomorrow we dock, get off, fly, and go back to the real world.

Things I will miss:

• A queen-sized bed with white bedding and extra pillows, spacious and cool and sweet. Mostly spacious.
  
  
• An en suite bathroom. A balcony. A whole room, also spacious, private, sunlit, ours. And it's clean.
  
  
• A vacation with Devon, with few interruptions, a fair bit of privacy, and a dearth of responsibilities for both of us.
  
  
• The complete lack of cellphones. That no one is texting instead of paying attention to the world just in front of their face. The way that time slows and patience increases when instant communication isn't in the palm of your hand.
  
  
• Francis, our dinner waiter. The guy that cleans our room, shame on me for not recalling his name. (He's the one that left the really sweet letter on the left in our room on the last day of the cruise.) All the service staff who learn our names and seem genuinely happy to work here, who are pleasant and kind. Francis has been here for thirteen years and says he doesn't even want a promotion—he loves his job. They make this stay a pleasure.
  
  
• Constant access to food. A new, good, vegetarian Indian option with each dinner. Soft-serve frozen yogurt.
  
  
• Wide, misty, low-lit views of the endless ocean. The moon rising over the sea. Flying fish. Cool breezes. (Being one of the strange few that enjoyed those cool breezes, instead of bemoaning the lost warm weather.)
  
  
• The sense of otherness, of being out of place and time, the in-between unreal state that is a vacation.

Things I will not miss:

• Second-rate food. Miserable desserts whose main component is gelatin. Spotty access to vegetarian dishes that aren't the same overcooked pasta with marinara sauce. Arbitrary room service menus and service times. The fact that if they can charge extra (specialty dining, beverages, brands): they will.
  
  
• Michael Jackson's This Is It and J.J. Abram's Star Trek on constant repeat on the movie channels. Angels and Demons and Julie and Julia to fill in the downtime. Why not spam Half-Blood Prince a dozen times in a row, instead?
  
  
• A poorly calibrated TV, making for a blurry screen. A lack of an in-room DVD drive (thank god we brought the laptop is all I'm saying). A poorly-calibrated projector that distorts and color-shifts films in the movie room. In general: insufficiently executed technology.
  
  
• Living out of a suitcase.
  
  
• The prevalence of bathing suits. A bathing suit with a shirt over it constituting "clothes." Formal eveningwear which puts sparkles and cleavage on display. Poorly supported thrust out (and falling out) breasts everywhere: swimsuits, dresses, warm-weather shirts. Copious bad perfume.
  
  
• Being called "Jess." Being touched, hugged, kissed. Being unable to correct these behaviors when they occur.
  
  
• Bad music everywhere but in the safety of our room.
  
  
• Uncomfortable sheets. Scratchy towels. The fact that despite the fact that it aims at resort, the ship only achieves hotel. Finding my toothbrush in a new location each time the housekeeper cleans the bathroom.
  
  
• The general second-rate-ness. The poor atmosphere. The out of tune performances, the idea of visiting new locations in a floating hotel, the fact that all the indulgences cost extra, the poorly-dressed and poorly-behaving vacationers, the strange strange group of retirees who take a dozen cruises a year, the stink of perfume and cologne and chlorine, the noise, the expenses spared, the onboard tacky jewelry and cheap souvenir shops, the fact that every other thing wants to make you wash your hands, go back to the room, and have a nice quiet vacation all on your own where you lie in bed, read a book, and feel the motion of the sea because this, whatever this is, makes you feel a bit icky.
  
  
• Heat. Sun. Hot humidity. Mexico.

As mentioned, our room cleaner man left the above letter in our room on the last day. I'll put a larger version below the cut, too, so it's a bit more readable. He was wonderful—we were awful, because we left the room rarely and so he only got to clean about once (rather than the usual twice) a day, and his comments about our seclusion did feel a bit like having a nanny. But I cannot overstate the wonder that was the service staff. There were regurgitated phrases and I dislike the atmosphere of course, but beneath that the staff had a simple authenticity. They were happy to work there, and happy to see us—and that they took simple pleasure in their jobs made our stay remarkably better. I do indeed actively miss Francis and his bad sense of humor and talk of home (he was from India, so we bonded over my near-steady diet of Indian food); I miss being surrounded by people that actually want to be there, and enjoy doing what they're doing.

( The letter, larger. )