Saturday, March 24, 2012

Sailing, Sailing, la la la la, la laaaa

By now, you will have figured out that you can't click on the cruise video in the previous installment, because THERE WAS NO CRUISE. At least not much of one to speak of.
It all started out well enough. After weeks of planning, hives and other assorted things, the girls met at the airport and wound our way to beautiful Puerto Rico, to board our 115,000 ton or so ship, the "Caribbean Princess." I must say, from the outside, she is magnificent. I have never been on such a large liner in my life. One of 3200 heads of cattle passengers ponying up to the feed trough buffet most mornings for a bale of hay delightful repast of eggs covered with congealed hollandaise benedict, and every other sort of egg imaginable. Waddling Rolling Wheel barrowing Sashaying ever so nimbly between other bloated porky
The goats couldn't compete when the cattle filed off the ship
fat fellow cruisers who were eating more like Elephants Draught horses They had never seen food before they were feeling at home on this soon to be broken down tub resplendent floating hotel.
Once aboard, we were shown to our postage stamp broom closets cozy staterooms, where we proceeded to throw our belongings about unpack, and check things out. Like the shower with the handle grab bar, in case we hit a rock and tipped over rough waters while cleaning up or just wanted to get kinky. It too wasn't big enough for my fat arse, or anyone else's huge, but if you didn't mind spraying more water than Niagara Falls all over the place mopping up a bit afterwards, it was  woefully inadequate adequate.
Which way to St. Lucia?
We set sail at 2300 Sunday evening, we were to awaken to the island of St. Maarten right outside our scuttle worthy  ship. Instead we awoke to that bloody awful ship's noise that announces whatever disaster is awaiting you  the captain announcing that we wouldn't be arriving to St. Maarten until July 14, 2013 later on that afternoon. The port propeller was shot to hell  not functioning properly. We would have technicians aboard that afternoon to tell us why the propeller was shot to hell   not functioning properly and that  we would be on the cruise to no where  when repairs could be ineffectively effectively carried out. By the time we girls whirled around the island on our Segway tour moving much faster than the boat, it had been decided that the first set of technicians was incompetent more assessing was needed, so another set of people who didn't know what they were doing  technicians was needed. So we spent the next day in St. Lucia  St. Maarten. By Tuesday evening we knew that we were screwed returning to Grenada  Puerto Rico the following day for more useless drivel assessing by folks who didn't have a clue as to how to fix the damned boat would be able to possibly have us on our way. By mid Wednesday, it was all over except for the raping and pillaging, we would be fighting with other cruise liners for excursions moored in San Juan with the offer of a cruise refund and a spit diddly squat WTF  whopping  useless insignificant piss poor generous 25% off our next Princess cruise to be taken not when the hell we would like it by the end of next week  of next year.
It wasn't all bad, except for the chunk in the speedo.
Fortunately not captured on camera.
By our second day in San Juan, Princess had finally shown some balls and arranged our shuttle into Old San Juan thoughtfully provided us with transport to the City. A list of about 2  available excursions came through so we could plan our escape  days off the ship. We hired taxis and even rented a car one day since the excursions were woefully inadequate not quite what we wanted to do, especially when we wanted to be in Bonaire, anywhere but here  somewhat active. But we had a great time in spite of Princess and the debilitated barge all the unfortunate circumstances. Had we not had 1st class flight tickets on the way home, we would have been screwed again missed our flights as Princess had the same useless techs working on the disembarkation process neglected to give the disembarkation list to the Customs folks, who only had the cast of Two and a Half Men- 4 people to prod the cattle clear all of us. We didn't take the pre arranged livestock transport shuttle back to the airport as we would have become murderers  arrived in the next millenium  too late to check in. Fortunately for 1st class, we were able to avoid the long pointed horns of the crushing herds  economy class line and we sailed through just in time for our flight.
It's all better with Bacardi.
Which left Air Canada and the almost 4 hour delay to our flight from Newark to Toronto, on top of the 3 hour layover. This was because the stupid pilots called in sick and Air Canada sucks  there was no one who could fly the plane  crew available. Three of us managed to get on the earlier flight, and poor, poor Eunice, because they were woefully inadequate could not find her luggage even though we had already been there for 2 hours, had to count nose hairs  eat airport slop  count Hare Krishna amuse herself until a pilot had the decency to show up for work crew could be bribed into working  found.
And that was the week that was.

2 comments:

  1. Oh gosh...what a bad thing!! I think they should totally reimburse you for that trip!! That is nothing like what you were expecting!! Better luck next time!!

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  2. Oh wow! I'm sorry you guys didn't have a better trip. I loved the blog post, though! :)

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