Tuesday, October 20. No Lunch With The Publisher. The Norwegian Jewel. Tom's Martini Club Reforms. Dinner In The Tsar's Palace. Another beautiful but cool day in Manhattan. I grabbed some juice and coffee from the awful breakfast buffet downstairs, and pounded out a newsletter. While I did that, a message arrived from Leslie Stoker that she had a meeting in the late morning and could not lunch with me until well after noon. But I have to be on the ship by three at the latest, with my three big bags. I begged off; her reply seemed relieved. One of these days, I will be able to write this sentence here: "Yeah, I was in New York having lunch with my publisher."
I decided to forgo lunch, finish all my work, and head over to the ship at one o'clock. An enormous mob of people snaked through the fenced-in line. And there, by lucky coincidence, were Wick and Susan Howard. They sneaked me into the line--although just a dozen people from the end, and several hundred from the beginning. Boarding had begin at one--an hour after they told us. It moved pretty fast, and I was on the ship by a shade before two. Without my two big bags, though. I usually carry them up with me, to avoid the delay and possibility of their getting lost. But the terminal authorities nixed that idea, and threw them on top of the luggage carts with all the rest of them.
The Norwegian Jewel came on line in 2005, during a spate of new shipbuilding throughout the cruise industry. It was at a time when Norwegian deployed what has become the most advanced new idea in cruising in a long time. They abandoned many traditional cruise-ship practices, and tried to make everything work the way people were accustomed to. Instead of an enormous dining room where nearly everyone ate at the same time and at ther same table with the same people every day, they have ten or more smaller, specialized restaurants. They're still working some bugs out of this idea, but most passengers love it--myself included. They also lightened up almost everything else, and constantly remind you that you can do whatever you want, all the time.
This ship is also up with the trends in having bigger-than-average staterooms. Mine was ridiculously large for a solo traveler, as I am. The Marys would have loved it, though. It has a balcony, of course. I wondered whether I would go out there at any point, especially after the really cold weather we're supposed to find up the line showed up.
I went up to the boofay for a quick lunch. Pizza, a sandwich that vaguely resembled a muffuletta, and a dessert that vaguely resembled bread pudding would hold me until dinner.
That done, it was out to the outer deck. The sun shone brilliantly in a blue sky. It was still a bit chilly, but not enough to keep me from watching us depart from New York. There is no more inspiring sailaway than that. As we backed out of the slip, we saw a retired Concorde parked on an adjacent dock, along with a number of other aircraft. What's that doing there? But the skyline of New York stole my attention. With the sun shining on it full front, the city gleamed. The ship floated down the Hudson River, passing one landmark after another. The buildings got lower as we passed the part of Manhattan where the schist doesn't rise to the surface. The towers rose again as we approached the financial district. And then we were looking at the now-familiar buildings around the pit where the World Trade towers once stood. A gigantic crane marked the spot. Nobody needed to be reminded of any of this.
Past the tip on Manhattan, we entered the channel, described by clanging bell buoys. Two orange Staten Island ferries passed each other in the space between the ship and the Brooklyn Bridge. Lady Liberty, farther away than we would have liked but close enough, pulled the population of the open deck from one side of the ship to the other. The last act of this show was our passing under the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. I climbed to the highest deck under the ship's funnel and shot a series of pictures as we ducked under the highest point of the bridge. The clearance looked to be less than ten feet.
We are on our way! Time for a toast. Back in February, when we took another cruise on Norwegian, I discovered a terrific place to get together for cocktails before dinner. It's a horseshoe-shaped bar with windows three-quarters of the way around. It's above the captain's bridge, and so is way up there, with an unobstructed view of the sunset. Very inviting.
The Spinnaker Bar solves a big problem created by Norwegian's Freestyle dining plan. Here we can meet as a group every evening. I like being the host of this party, but it serves another function. It gives everyone in the group who wants to hang with me the chance to do so.
This time, I tried an experiment. I told the waiter to put everybody's drinks on my tab. I buy a lot of drinks throughout the cruise anyway, but never before all at once. Well, that worked. Everybody was pleasantly surprised. It cost me $350, but as I write this four days later, I have not had to buy myself another drink at our nightly parties, and attendance has been strong.
The Martini Club adjourned to dinner at eight in the Tsar's Palace. That's the main dining room in the stern of the ship, with a wall of windows looking back into the prop wash. The designers indeed did capture the look of a Russian potentate's digs. The food was another matter. It's typical for the first night's menu to be something less than thrilling.
I began with an onion soup made in the style of consomme. The entree was a sirloin strip steak with peppercorn sauce. For some reason, that is on the menu on the first night on every cruise ship, regardless of line. I always get it. I noticed a vegetarian dish of Indian thises and thats; I ordered one as a side dish. It was so appealing that everybody wanted some. I sent it around, and we got another one. Indian food on a cruise ship is always a safe bet. Most cruise ship chefs are Indians.
When I was barely inside the ship earlier, I was offered the opportunity to buy ten bottles of wine at a twenty percent discount. It seemed a reasonable deal, so I signed up. I ordered the first of these tonight, a South African Shiraz blend called Goats Do Roam in Villages. Chris Conway was of the opinion that the wine had a volatile acidity problem, and was undrinkable. I had noticed something off with it myself, but that tore it. I told the waitress that I wanted to exchange it for something else. Then the manager came over and began an argument with me about the wine. He asked if we'd tasted and approved it. No, we hadn't. The waitress wasn't around, and everybody at the table was ready for more wine. It was a screw-cap bottle, so I opened and poured it. Aha! said the manager, as the tiff got worse. We finally got him to agree to take the thing back, but it was an unpleasant ordeal, and very unusual among the typically accommodating service staff.
Dinner ended around ten. I walked around looking for a bar with my kind of music, but found nothing. I went back to the room, did a little writing, then a little reading, then went to bed. I had a dream about teaching high school students about the ins and outs of insurance. Where did that come from?
