Dearest Rachel –
This has been an unusual trip, and I have to say that I kind of like it. I know that you always wanted to go on a transoceanic sailing in order to actually feel the ocean beneath your feet – the relatively self-contained bodies of water like the Mediterranean and the Caribbean just didn’t quite do it for you – and to be fair, the ship has rocked a bit more than I recall it doing in the middle of the Pacific, so you may have onto something there. But there’s another aspect entirely to this trip that’s made it a little more like a vacation than I’d have expected.
You see, in places like the Caribbean or on either side of the European continent (just as an example or two), you don’t have to go all that far to get from one port to another. Indeed, it’s part of what I’ve always claimed to be the appeal of cruising in the first place; you unpack once when you get aboard, and let the ‘hotel’ that the ship is take you from place to place. But there’s another aspect to this that one doesn’t always consider, because an alternate option isn’t necessarily presented to the potential traveler. The thing is, those places are generally near enough to each other that literally every day is a new destination; every day offers a new city to dive into and squeeze every last bit of enjoyment out of before getting back to the ship, and repeating the process yet again the next day. When you think about it, it’s rather exhausting.
On this trip, however, we’ve spread out the destinations so as to allow ourselves a chance to recover a bit between stops. Every port visit thus far has been followed up by a sea day; we’re not running at full throttle throughout the entirety of the trip. We have days like today to catch our breath, followed by a day in port for us to tackle, having gotten both well-rested (and maybe slightly restless) for us to attack the next destination with renewed energy. Then, after having drained our batteries in port, we get another day of rest before taking on the next location.
And you know, I think I kind of like it this way. After rushing through various Underground stations to get to our hotel in London (through a pouring rain, in particular, and with a broken handle on my suitcase), we were in need of a day of rest. We didn’t get it in the moment – although we didn’t go full-tilt through London once the rain let up, we felt like we had to do something while we were there – but once aboard the ship, we could recover for a day on our way to Glasgow. To be sure, each stop has had us running less ragged than the one before (with the exception of Qaqortoq-to-Nuuk; it still amuses me that, for all the walking around, we didn’t clear ten thousand steps that day), so we haven’t needed as much recovery time, but what of it? It’s still been pleasant to take things so easily, and not have that nagging sense of responsibility to go and do something every day.
Even at the moment, I’m elsewhere on the ship, working on this letter to you while Daniel listens to his regular Tuesday podcast. He’s always apologetic about my vacating the cabin (but as I have this to write to you, it’s just as well; each of us needs to be in our own worlds for a couple of hours), but I’m just happy he basically has the day off to do what he wants. If this was happening on a shore day, I’d be annoyed, he’d be defensive, and neither of us would be having a good time. But as it is, each Tuesday has been a sea day, and while it’s not as if the ship schedules itself around our schedule, the fact that it’s worked out like this has allowed us to maintain harmony between us.
The same thing applies to Sunday ‘morning’ services, and our attempts to stream them for ourselves. The off-again-on-again schedule means that, as Tuesday goes, so goes Sunday. Granted, we’re tuning in during our afternoons, but it still works out for us. So these alternating days of down time allow us to keep to certain patterns from home; it’s unusual for so many of the cruises we used to take.
To be sure, that’s about to be upset slightly over the next few days; our trip from Greenland to Nova Scotia is going to take two whole days at sea, followed by two straight days in one port and another. But it’s not as if they’re going to be full-tilt days, either; I honestly couldn’t find an excursion that appealed to me for either of the two Canadian stops (and if they didn’t strike my fancy, I can guarantee that Daniel wouldn’t be interested), so even the port days are likely to be fairly relaxed in terms of their pace – unless I pressure myself to do research on either location, which at the moment, I don’t see happening.
There’s one more reason why I’m pleased about the relatively languid pace of this trip, though; one that’s just coming to light over the last day or two. The symptoms are arriving too soon for me to have just picked it up in the chill and damp of Nuuk, but I’m sensing that raw tickle in the back on the throat that signals the onset of yet another cold (and here I thought that having one just before taking off would pre-empt this from happening while we were out, too). So you can understand why I really have been appreciating this staggered schedule, rather than having to go fast every single day. There’s something to be said for a vacation in which you spend as much time doing nothing as something.
Still, if you could keep an eye on the both of us, and wish us health over the next week or so, it would be appreciated, too. After all, we’re still going to need it.
Letters to Rachel 