Reluctant Cruiser Is Safe but Sorry on a No-Risk Alaska Vacation

You’ve heard that hundreds of thousands of Americans decided not to go to Europe this year, and you’ve heard that they decided to travel to less exotic places closer to home. Now it’s time for a question:

Did they have a good time?

This is the tale of one such traveler. You might call it the Saga of the Reluctant Cruiser.

I bought tickets to Milan early this spring, and planned to thread my way down to Sicily, ferrying across to Tunis and flying onward to Djerba, Homer’s Land of the Lotus Eaters. My wife and kids were going too. By May, all my wife’s friends who had never been east of Needles had convinced her that we were going to be dumped into the Mediterranean by terrorists, and my wife came up with a plan of her own: We were going to cruise to Alaska.

The ship was a beauty, Holland America Line’s Noordam, less than 2 years old and sparkling clean.

‘A Night at the Opera’

My first surprise was the size of our room. We had paid extra for what the brochure called a “large” cabin, and cruise buffs had told us that Holland America’s cabins are bigger than most. Nonetheless, as we dressed for our first night’s dinner, I discovered that I couldn’t put on a jacket without punching a family member. I felt like Groucho Marx in the stateroom scene from “A Night at the Opera.”

We headed up the stairs to the Amsterdam Dining Room. I walked in front, based on instincts gained from leading my family through what I had considered more dangerous places, such as the Amazon jungle. This was my first mistake. Passengers emerged from the bars and began to fall on me. They all had the same clever excuse: “Haven’t gotten my sea legs yet.”

We were still in port.

I shielded my family as best I could and seated them at our assigned table. The band was playing “Beautiful Ohio.” The couple beside us was shouting. They weren’t angry at each other; they simply didn’t hear well. In fact we quickly noticed that nearly everyone in the dining room was shouting.

The sommelier asked the couple if they were the Petersons of Akron, Ohio. He repeated it a few times and they finally said yes, they were. He then whipped out a bottle of Chardonnay and said it was a gift to them from some friends. They pointed to the glasses of milk beside their plates and said to the sommelier, “No, thanks. You keep it for yourself.”

And the Band Played On

Give it to me, I thought. But instead, I asked the Petersons, “Are they playing ‘Beautiful Ohio’ in your honor?”

“Eh?” asked Mr. Peterson.

“Eh?” asked Mrs. Peterson.

“Beautiful Ohio,” I shouted.

They smiled brightly, and Mr. Peterson asked our waiter to ask the bandleader if he knew “Beautiful Ohio.” And the band played it again.

Quickly I discovered that the main activity on cruise ships is eating. At one lunch, I sat across from a woman who devoured a huge bowl of cherries, then downed full entrees of tagliatelle bolognese, chicken teriyaki and beef stroganoff, and finally raced over to the buffet for tacos. I wanted to shout, “Glutton!” But I refrained, as she was my wife.

I began to miss the sounds of foreign languages that normally accompany my travels, so I headed over to the Silver Bar to chat with the bar stewards, who were Filipino and Indonesian. OK, OK, and I knocked off a few vodkas too. I heard no foreign languages, but at least I got to hear my name mispronounced in a number of exotic ways. In fact, by the time I got off the Noordam, every bar steward was addressing me by name.

You might think that the focus of life on a cruise ship would be the ports of call. No way, I learned. The cruise director himself suggested on closed-circuit TV that Ketchikan, Sitka and Juneau were not much, and that if we were wise we would sign up for some very expensive shore excursions. Glacier Bay was pretty, but eight hours is a long time to spend staring at ice cubes. Unless they are in your glass.

Trapped in the Bunk

Each evening I went to sleep later and later, delaying the moment when I would have to hole up for the night in my cabin. Once the ladders to the top bunks were in place, I was trapped in my little itty-bitty bunk like a rat. I couldn’t get out of bed without knocking down a ladder and waking up everybody in the cabin.

Obviously I roused the cabin steward too, because every time I got out of bed I returned to find my bed made.

And was my wife enjoying herself? Yes, she was in heaven. Once upon a time, she liked to jump on and off moving trains all over Europe, but by now her favorite form of recreation was a coma.

The kids were happy too. Natasha, 10, won first prize in the masquerade, and Alexander, 9, came in third. They were picked to help the teacher in the shipboard computer class, they won prizes in the art contest and the scavenger hunt, and they sang and mimed their way through a glorious Talent Night.

I was staring at the calendar and moping. Today we would have been at Palio in Siena. Or sitting under a Cinzano umbrella, sipping Campari. Or dining on couscous at El Minzah.

In the evening there was always the show at the Admiral’s Lounge to look forward to, spirited singing and dancing Las Vegas style, but my heart was over the Arno, the moon high in the sky and me with a belly full of gnocchi.

At the sixth supper of our seven-supper cruise, my wife said to me, “You’re welcome to drink my champagne.”

I thanked her and said, “When we get to Seattle, we’ll have to take a harbor cruise,” and she said, “Very funny, you creep.”

Stroke of Poetic Justice

In a stroke of poetic justice, my intrepid fellow-traveler had become seasick.

By the last night, we experienced some excitement at last. Mr. Peterson spilled his milk.

The head dining room steward presented the kids with origami animals and farewell scrolls paying tribute in beautiful calligraphy to their Talent Night performances.

As we disembarked early the next morning, my daughter had a tear in her eye, my son had a lump in his throat and my wife had a dragon in her stomach.

For me, it was free at last! Free at last!