Monday, October 18, 2010

A really nice boat, but...

The MSC line has a romantic name for each of their ships, MSC Magnifica, MSC Splendida, MSC Fantasia, MSC Poesia and so on. Our incarceration was on the Poesia - Italian for Poetry - and each deck was named after a famous Italian poet. Famous Italian poet! - there's an oxymoron if ever there was one.

The Poesia was commissioned in May, 2008, and, at eighteen months old, was in first class condition. No complaints in that department. Unfortunately, that is the entire list of positive attributes I can come up with. The rest of the "package" was a recurring horror.
American based cruise lines have long since moved away from fixed seating dining - a regimen wherein there is normally two dinner times, 6:30 and 9:00pm for example, and the hapless inmates choose one or the other for the duration of their sentence. They are then assigned to a table seating from two to as many as 10 people - the same 10 people for dinner every night of the trip! Woe was us.
Assigned to a table for eight, we were cell mates with a pleasant couple from Antibes, in France, he German, she French along with four caricatures of everything bad about herd traveling. Two obnoxious sisters from Texas vulgarly flaunting their inheritance from Daddy and a veterinarian from the backwoods of Canada with ill fitting teeth complete with matching wife.

For my taste, give me meat and potatoes and 15 minutes, and I'm ready to move on. Not so for these excruciating waterbourne soirees.
Nothing was ever quite right for the Texan mamas. Hot tea was required with every course and its delivery never failed to elicit an imperious "Where is the honey?". The wine was corked, cloudy, too hot, too cold, veggies not cooked or overcooked - it was always something.
The hayseed animal molester was equally aggravating. Having left the epicenter of culture back in Calgary or wherever, these hicks were determined to get value for their money. They ordered every course - all six of them - at every meal but only after prolonged interrogation of the poor waiter over each dish, as they struggled to understand what it actually was. Whenever they had any doubt about what might turn up they simply ordered a second, different dish as a standby.

Now the restaurants open promptly at 6:30pm and purport to shutter their doors at 6:45pm to discourage latecomers. Our schedule thus was boxed in: beginning at 6:45, we endured a 45 minute pantomime while our companions haggled and argued over their selections. Then, waiting
patiently(?), while the Cheese and Fruit course was chomped to oblivion by the horse-dentured vetinerarian. Next up, with unabashed lethargy, he and his spouse would pick their way round the salad course which, once completed, was followed by soup which they slurped and dribbled through with the finesse of large Labrador dogs. Hooray - if all went smoothly, by 8:15 the main course arrived and five minutes later we had eaten and left. Can't think how we denied ourselves the experience of dessert, cheese plate, coffee and after dinner drinks, but we did.
Two nights of this were enough, and we determined to dine at the buffet instead. Error! Unlike every other cruise ship wherein the buffett is a 24 hour-a-day affair, seamlessly morphing from breakfast, to lunch, to afternoon tea to dinner to early morning pastries and back to breakfast, all the time maintaining a fresh fruit selection, desserts, beverages, ice cream, pies, custards etc., the MSC buffet closes completely at 4pm and then reopens one section from 8 to 11pm to serve - Pizza? No contest. Faced with more time at the trough with the sassy sisters and the dozy doc, the pizza won hands down. But wait! Obviously the Italians have never been to Papa John's or Pizza Hut to sample real pizza - here they were making genuine Italian pizza (as if there is such a thing ;o) ) that would be too far severe even for Weight Watchers. Oh well.

Breakfast was another daily debacle, no matter where one hid on the ship. At 9:30am sharp an abrasively plangent female read the ship's daily newsletter over the public address system at a volume ensuring that it could not be missed. Although this recitation took only 4 or 5 minutes to complete, that was just the Italian version.
The entire missive was then repeated five more times in German, French, Dutch, Spanish and English. Totaly exhausting.
As for the food, we skirmished with the chaos of the formal restaurants two or three times for breakfast and lunch - couldn't get cold milk for cereal, did get cold coffee; couldn't get crispy bacon, did get crispy egg - you get the idea. So as self-exiled dining room outcasts we were doomed to the buffet. Reminiscent of POWs in WWII movies, we quickly discovered the secret of restarting the beverage machine after it had been shut down by the guards, learned exactly when to strike at the pastry counter to snag the edible ones and even found the back door to the gelato machine. Eventually we even managed to bribe the jackbooted Maitre d' of the second main restaurant and were awarded a private table for two for the rest of the trip. Not too shabby.

When the ship finally entered US waters, the FDA swarmed on board, - well, maybe not swarmed, more sort of lumbered - inspected the facilities, promptly shut down all the kitchens and revoked landing permission in Charlotte Amilie. Pretty much everything came to a halt at this point for 12 hours or so while every crew member that wasn't dead or mortally moribund, scrubbed, polished, swept and sterilized every nook and cranny on the ship. Beyond smelling like a hospital for the next day or so, not much else seemed different but the redoubtable G-Men were satisfied.
Cleaning up the ship unfortunately, did nothing for the shameful condition of the two Unincorporated Organized Territories - possessions of the USA - that we were to visit next. These shabby communities presented a shameful introduction to America for the 2,000 Europeans on board.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

remind us never to take a cruise!