Cruisin'

W took a cruise last week; actually a 9 night cruise, from October 27th to November 5th. We left out of Baltimore on the Granduer of the Seas on a tour of the western Carribean. One of the first things we did was scope out the places to dance on board.

We did most of our dancing in the Centrum. This is an atrium in the middle of the ship that extends from the 4th deck all the way through the 10th deck to a skylight. There is a white marble staircase between the 4th and 5th decks. Built into the staircase are circular marble stages. These stages are large enough (barely) for a cha-cha or rhumba. The Metroline Quartet played lots of rhumbas with an occasional swing or cha-cha thrown in. Moving dances like a waltz were a challenge especially if more than one couple occupied a stage. We did get them to play a couple of tangos during the cruise.

Near the stern was the South Pacific Lounge which had a dance floor. A rock band called Riptide played there. They played classic rock and we did some swings and cha-chas. This lounge was also where they had their dance lessons. The first dance lesson we went to was country line dancing. The instructor was pretty good. It seems like a lot of people like country line dancing, because it got real crowded on the dance floor. The second lesson that we went to was an introduction to Swing. They had a couple of young ladies from the evening show trying to teach Swing. It showed that just because you know how to do a dance, it doesn't mean you know how to teach it.

We also went up to the Viking Crown Lounge which had a DJ in the evenings. He played modern music and disco tunes. This dance floor got real crowded in the evenings, but was pretty much deserted during the daytime. We took our IPOD and had a couple of good practice sessions up there.

At the poolside the Hot Spices played Carribean music. They had a beat that didn't fit with any of the dance styles we know and all of their songs had the same beat. It was like listening to the same song all week long. It got old pretty quickly and since they played directly over our stateroom, we couldn't get away from it.

The weather was very nice except for the second day out. That day we had 40 knot winds and 20 foot seas. Dancing was out of the question since it was the ship itself doing the rock and roll. It also showed a problem with having a skylight on a ship. They tend to leak. At least it was leaking at the top of the ship and not the bottom.