Photo Credit: Falco Negenman
Foolishness persists when wisdom fails. It’s the same as back home: people ride the elevator up to the gym on the ninth deck, then get on the stairclimber to work out. Yesterday I explored around the vessel, finding where everything is. The gym facilities are on the ninth deck, with all the apparatus you find in a gym. The middle of the deck is open to the sky and holds the swimming pool, so you can swim in the sun. Swarms of people bask beside the pool. This brings to mind the Tourist Tree, so named by the people in Belize. It has bark that turns red in the sun and then peels off.
Also I signed up for a bunch of internet minutes. The ship maintains a satellite link. Irony of ironies, the techie helping old people register for access could not access the net. Her computer crashed. She crawled under her desk checking plugs, tried rebooting, did all the magic such folks can muster, and nothing. Meanwhile, we 80-year-olds standing in the long line for her assistance got right on. And nearly all complained, “I wish my kid were here. [He] [she] could fix this in a minute.”
I have signed up for shore adventures and, curiously, the ones that have filled up already are not the ones I want. Either I have exquisite tastes or I’m an out-of-it goofus. Or both.
The medical facilities, which I hope never to visit, are on the bottom deck, below sea level. So are the living quarters for the staff. I don’t go there either.
Queen Victoria has a two deck library connected by a corkscrew staircase
Ah, but the library! The Queen Victoria’s public library is on the second and third decks, right in the middle, and it looks like an old, sedate library. It is all in aged, varnished wood and wood paneling, like you think a library ought to look. A corkscrew staircase connects the decks, and it too is wood with iron railings, just gorgeous. The book selection is old—British literary classics—and new, with quite a few current titles. Most are fiction, especially mystery fiction. A number of people boarded in Britain, and no doubt they spent the long, open journey across the Atlantic reading Agatha Christie or some such.
Two story library
There are two librarians, but their hours are limited. Mostly, you sit down at a computer and find the title you want yourself. This is, after all, the modern age and human beings are no longer necessary.
There is a theatre on the second and third decks forward. Like the library, it calls up an earlier, classic time, gilded, ornate, vast, and the theatre seats are all red plush. It is also the emergency muster station for the front third of the vessel. If the ship’s alarm goes off, you grab your life vest and hie yourself to the theatre. By law, the crew must hold an emergency drill before the ship leaves port. So at four thirty we all sat down in the theatre as the crew demonstrated safety equipment and the captain sternly warned us not to drown (well, not in so many words, but…). Attendance was compulsory no matter how often you sailed on the QV.
“Boring but important” is a news column in the magazine The Week. The life vest drill is boring. But important. And so far, it’s been the only boring thing on the whole journey. Life is good.