ILENE is sitting on her mooring while we are cruising from Amsterdam to St. Petersburg and back on the Celebrity Constellation along with our brother and sister in law, Mike and Linda, and 2030 other folks, the boat being filled to capacity -- plus near 1000 crew. She is 965 feet long; her beam is 105 and her draft is 26. And she outweighs ILENE 9100 to 1.
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| Our cabin, though on starboard, was third deck, the second row of large round portholes (just below the life rafts, about three forward of the very large ones portholes under the enclosed exterior black elevators. |
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| Roger, Mike, Lene and Linda with cast on her arm |
This is our sixth cruise -- almost all with my brother and or Lenes, and their wives. The pleasure of behemoth cruising pales compared with cruising ILENE. The big advantage of the big boats is they go to places that we will never otherwise get to and the hotel is moved at night while you sleep with no watches to stand or navigation issues to resolve and there is no packing, unpacking and getting to and from airports or railroad stations. Food is prepared and served, the room is professionally cleaned by our smiling steward who remembers my name and there are countless and varied shipboard entertainments.
We have missed about half of the evening night club-like shows. This is partly because we are day people to which night clubs are less of an attraction and partly due to our proximity to the land of the midnight sun. One night we got to the theater after dinner and saw that the show was wrapping up. "Well stay for the second show," said I. "This is the second show" was the response. But while it was almost 11 PM, it was still light outside, creating the illusion of 7:30. The traditional "sailors midnight", i.e., sundown, gets thrown out the window here.
The food, while good, has never again achieved the dazzling excellence that we recall from our first such cruise of the Eastern Caribbean on a Princess ship about fifteen years ago. The excellence of that first time experience may be a creation in my mind, and back then I ate like a pig while now I am conscious of a desire to limit the number of pounds that this vacation will add to my personal tonnage. (Actually, my first weighing after returning home showed a gain of seven pounds.) Mercifully, the "midnight buffet" is a thing of the past, a victim of both cost cutting and peoples increasing consciousness of the perils of extreme obesity. But the buffet is open about twenty hours per day.
This boat was built twelve years ago but was recently refurbished and looks pristine. Newer ones have larger gyms to accommodate a greater percentage of health conscious cruisers. We took in a stretch class almost every morning and worked out in the gym and visited to the sauna or steam room almost every day.
Too many of the "entertainments" are infomercials for the products and services that the ship is forever trying to sell. I have a personal prejudice against being "sold". When I want something, Ill ask for the help of the salespersons suggestion. But unsolicited sales help makes me less likely to buy the advertised product or service. On the boat they have art lectures to try to sell you art, gaming lessons to try to increase their casino business, tours of the galley to try to get you to dine, for additional fees, in the several specialty dining rooms which used to be free, and lectures on wines and liquors to induce sales of drinking cards. We are very poor customers in the eleven different bars because the two women do not drink at all and Mike and I have only a very occasional beer or glass of wine. And we have not patronized the mall of shops. And the ships land excursions are very heavily promoted too, and not a good value. I learned from my brother, Allen, years ago, that especially when you have a group (we are four) you can do better with your own locally sourced tour guide or taxi driver than with the expensive tours that the boat pushes. This lesson was driven home in Amsterdams airport, where we met a Celebrity greeter who told us that their special private direct shuttle to the boat cost only $38.00 per person. But Mike told us the better way. The local railroad station runs under the airport and for $4.00 you get a ticket to Amsterdams central station with only a beautiful fifteen minute waterfront walk to the boat.
My three companions love to play cards and are quite good at this; they like to play with me because I am a good loser. Lindas arm was in a sling this whole trip and I became her "card holder".
The best thing about cruising the sailing vessel ILENE is that we can make our own schedule. If we like a place we can stay a while. If storms threaten, we stay put. Before I was retired I did not have the benefit of almost unlimited time. Neither does Constellation. She is on an extremely rigid fixed schedule with one "day" in each port except two in St. Petersburg and this cruise has four "at sea" days among the twelve. Many people do not like these "at sea" days but as long as I have my book and good companions, they are fine by me. And we will end up having visited seven nations, six of which are new for me.
The exception is Germany, birthplace of my father, in which, during a Danube River cruise a few years ago, we visited Regensburg and Nuremburg, in the southeast. This voyage included a lengthy fifteen hour visit to the seaside resort town of Warnemunde, near the ancient Hanseatic League port of Rostock, in the northeast. That day our dockside visit extended to midnight to accommodate more than half of the passengers who took a seven hour round trip bus ride costing about $200 per person in order to spend a few hours in Berlin. We took a ferry from our dock in Warnemunde to the heart of Rostock for $10, and after several hours of wandering among the churches,
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| Huge organ above clock |
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| Clock with 135 year calendar |
gates to the ancient city,
They reverse our "red, right returning" rule in the placement of the buoys in the Baltic.
This is the former communist East Germany but the spirit of capitalism is thriving with innumerable food, lodging, clothing, novelty, souvenir and every other type of store. The volume of the shipping traffic past our boat including both freight and passenger boats plus many sailboats from marinas in this port was very heavy. This and the next picture are from the top of the old lighthouse |
Warnemunde is a beachfront resort. I just liked the looks of this Dutch style gaff-rigged low-aspect ratio sloop with her brown leeboards up (instead of a keel). |
