In my family, we are nautical people. We have the sea in our veins. I do not speak metaphorically: Sometimes we find actual eels in our underpants. That’s how nautical we are.
And so a few weeks ago, we set out on a voyage from Ft. Lauderdale, knowing that it would be five days, and roughly 153 meals (included), before we would reach our destination: Ft. Lauderdale.
We sailed aboard a cruise ship, which had one of those cruise-ship names, like the Majestic Vagabond Restaurant of the Seas. She is a fine vessel, a tad larger than Connecticut, boasting (really) an onboard shopping mall. Leaving port, she weighed 75,000 tons, at least half of which was food. Here’s a log of our voyage:
DAY ONE: We arrive at the ship and meet our fellow voyagers, most of whom are wearing brand-new sneakers, as though they’re about to compete in the decathlon, as opposed to spending the next five days chewing.
We begin our cruise with a lifeboat drill, lining up in neat rows wearing our lifejackets, calmly awaiting instructions. In a real emergency, of course, we’d fight for the lifeboats like wild dogs battling for meat. We have all seen “Titanic.”
Speaking of meat: It’s time for dinner! In the dining room, we engage in sparkling intellectual repartee with our fellow voyagers (“What are you having?” “I’m having the salmon.” “Really? That’s what I’m having!” “Really?” etc.).
After dinner, it’s time to engage in the vast array of shipboard activities, by which I mean: drinking, gambling and shopping. By midnight, everyone is weary from a long partial day at sea, and it’s time to: Eat more! There’s a midnight buffet. Plus, if you pay a little extra, your cabin attendant will come around and stuff food into your mouth while you sleep.
DAY TWO: When we wake up, the Restaurant of the Seas has docked at the exotic island of Key West. This is four hours from our house by car. By ship, we made it in just 13 hours.
Before going ashore, we eat a buffet-style breakfast. We are issued enormous plates; they look like small wading pools. It is not easy to cover every square foot of plates this size with food. But we manage, because we know we must soon cross, on foot, several hundred feet of barren, commerce-free no-man’s-land between the ship and the Key West shopping district.
Carrying our purchases, we return to the ship in time for more intellectual give-and-take (“Really? I’m having the prime rib too!”). In our cabin, we find chocolates on our pillows. Clearly, they want us dead.
DAY THREE: We arrive in Cozumel, Mexico. After a hearty breakfast, we go ashore and experience Mexico, which consists of souvenir stores and restaurants where everyone speaks English and accepts dollars. Travel is a good way to learn about other cultures.
That night, back on the ship, we go to a piano bar, where the piano player gets everybody in a festive mood by playing–I am not making this up–“The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” Party time!
DAY FOUR: The ocean is rough. At breakfast, there’s a moment when I’m watching maybe two dozen cruisers going through the buffet line, each holding a wading pool heaped with food. The deck shifts, and the cruisers, in perfect unison, all lurch to the right, then back to the left. Nobody drops so much as a waffle. I am damned proud to be serving with this outfit.
DAY FIVE: We arrive, at last, in Ft. Lauderdale. We are tired, but we are also, because of this experience, something more: fat. We vow to go on the South Beach Diet, or even just the Beach Diet, where all you eat is sand. But some day we will return to the sea, because we know that there are many more adventures awaiting us on the vastness of the ocean.
For example, we have yet to try the shrimp scampi.
