Eclipse Trip Diary 4
Friday in Transition
After dinner on Thursday night, we returned to the apartment. There was a message from my host, Jay, about an ambiguity over the hour of check-out between him at 10 a.m. and AirBnB’s head office at 11 a.m., plus a clarification about where to leave the keys. For me, all of this activity marked the end of our brief and pleasant stay in the apartment. Rita and I moved our clothes from the closet into the luggage with the exception of the outfits that we were going to wear the next day. We went to bed early and were out of the apartment just before 10 AM. We stopped for breakfast in the Terrace Café… one last time. Sadly, the nice lady who worked behind the counter was gone, on vacation with her husband, the cook. I ordered scrambled eggs on toast, a less exuberant meal which matched my mood, and once again, the absence of our usual server was another harbinger marking the end of our time in Portsmouth.
After breakfast, Rita and I rolled our luggage over the concrete and cobblestones, across the municipal plaza and into the main hall of the train station. We were not strolling through town; I had a cruise ship boarding reservation of 1:30 p.m., and I didn’t want to be late. After all the complication that I had gone through to buy the train ticket from Gatwick Airport to Portsmouth, the passage from Portsmouth to Southampton, where the cruiser was boarding, almost seemed like an anticlimax. Rita watched the luggage, while I went on line at the ticket wicket. I bought two passages for Southampton for a total of 27 pounds 60 pence, about the same price as breakfast. The train was arriving within the hour, and we waited comfortably on the platform. The trip took a little more than an hour, and we alighted in the relatively large and modern central station at Southampton.
I knew that the train station in Southampton was minutes away from the cruise terminal by foot. When we arrived at the station, there was a flurry of activity, with passengers boarding and alighting. There were taxis and buses. I saw a number of people with luggage getting into a taxi and assumed that they were going to the ship. I asked for directions and one woman in particular confirmed that the ship was incredibly close. Following the woman’s instructions, we rolled uphill on a small street in front of the station and getting to the top, we saw the boat looming in front of us.
I had a strange mix of feelings at that point. I was sad to see our time in Portsmouth come to a close. As well, seeing the ship, I was relieved that we had almost made it to the Horizon Cruise Terminal with time to spare. Rolling our bags to the pier, I was a little anxious that perhaps they wouldn’t admit people on foot… maybe that’s why there were the buses and taxis… but there was no such impediment. We rolled past the little booth at the entry to the port area and across the vast parking lot of the terminal, got in line, had our luggage tags checked and proceeded to the ship.
Cruise terminals are very special building types. They sit empty for long periods of time and then handle hundreds of people who are looking to get on or off a ship in as short a time as possible. We elected to check only our large piece of luggage and to roll our two small carry-on bags from the airplane onto the ship ourselves on the exceedingly rare chance that the luggage could be lost. I guess it’s good to take precautions, but our large bag was in our room’s hallway, not at our door, by the time that we were allowed to go to our rooms.
So, we’re rolling our luggage through the convoluted boarding trajectory of the terminal and finally arrive at the ‘gangplank’ corridor and find ourselves on the ship. I remember the first time that we took a cruiser in 2010. It was on the Navigator of the Seas, another Royal Caribbean ship. After what seemed like endless wandering through the cruiseport in Miami, we finally walked onto the ship and emerged in the grandeur of the Royal Promenade, the grand main street of the ship. I was wowed.
This time, we boarded on Deck 4, outside. We saw a demonstration of how to muster in case of emergency with about thirty other people crowding around us. We then went inside the ship on Deck 4 into a bank of elevators. I knew that the Royal Promenade was on Deck 5 and took the elevator there, dragging our luggage behind us. There were tables dispensing drinks. I had heard that you were charged for the drinks on earlier cruises, but I guess Royal Caribbean had abandoned that tactic in a genuine gesture of greeting.
Drinks in hand, Rita and I wandered the Royal Promenade. All Royal Caribbean ships have similar shops and restaurants and theaters, so once you’ve been on a few cruises, getting yourself oriented is pretty easy. We finally made our way to the Schooner Bar, the scene of many trivia competitions in cruises gone by on other ships. We were in a grouping of four. The other couple sitting there, Angie and Sherban, were from Peterborough, Ontario. We talked awhile. I didn’t realize it at the time, but we would spend a lot of time with them during the cruise. The announcement that we could go to our rooms finally came over the loudspeakers. The four of us waited a bit before getting out of our chairs to allow the crowds to thin; we exchanged coordinates on the Royal app, which allowed one to make phone calls to other passengers, and wheeled our luggage to our room.
I was not disappointed in our room. It was on Deck Six, one level above the Royal Promenade. An interior cabin, it was cheaper than an exterior cabin or a balcony cabin, but it did have a window, a beautiful bay window with a cozy window seat, which gave onto the Royal Promenade. I would spend quite a lot of time stretched out on the window seat, reading the Ken Follett book that I had bought in Portsmouth and watching people walking the promenade one floor below.
The cabin was snug, but very well designed. It was filled with storage closets and cabinets. I almost cried when I saw the North American standard electrical outlets. The bed was deliciously comfortable, particularly after the thin lumpy mattress that we had had in Portsmouth. There were lights everywhere and two tasteful framed prints that lent an air of design to the whole. A feature that I liked a lot was the night light, mounted at the bottom of the closet across from the door to the bathroom. When you went to the bathroom at night, our little night light was motion-activated and would turn on to guide our way. An aspect of the room that Rita came to dislike was that our window on the Royal Promenade meant that it was daylight bright all night outside our room. We had blackout shades, but Rita was disturbed by the bright lights nonetheless. I was not disturbed at all.
Our luggage stowed in the room, we changed into dinner clothes from what we could find in our bags. We would later unpack completely so that our room really felt like where we lived for the short time that we were there. The ample storage space made clothes management and choice very convenient. Once we walked out the door, I was ready to relax and felt like the cruise had really begun.
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