My views do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer.
In February 2003 I was living in New York, going to acting school and working about 3 part time jobs. The one I hated the most was at the NBC Experience — the NBC gift shop at Rockefeller Center. Yes, it was cool to walk through the same doors as the people who were in Saturday Night Live and 30 Rock, but it is also where I learned that I hate retail. And I had the best retail job– I helped people film pretending to do the news or be on the Tonight Show with a green screen and a pre-recorded taped thing. But mostly I hated standing for hours doing nothing. It was always cold and it smelled like chocolate– my station was right next to the fill-up-your-bag candy section. Plus there was a thing that played the same snippets of songs on a 2 minute loop. So one day a week, I spent the whole day thinking about chocolate and how miserable I was. The week before I went to Hawaii for a family vacation I went in to the office to give them my 2 weeks notice. Since I was already going to be off for vacation for the next 2 weeks, could this be my last day? It was. We spent a week in Maui, which was the opposite of New York. New Yorkers moved fast, Hawaiians were in no hurry. It was winter in New York and warm in Hawaii. The food was amazing, we went to the beach every day and we went on an epic helicopter ride where we saw whales jumping around in the ocean. One day, on the front page of the Honolulu Star Bulletin was a picture of snow piled up to the street light, right in front of Rockefeller Center. A massive snow storm had covered the East Coast while I was in paradise. I framed that newspaper, but I hadn’t been back since.
After four days at sea and one In Port Manning day, it was time for a weekend! I had traded with Micah– he worked part of my IPM day in San Francsico so I could hang out with my aunt and uncle for a little bit, and I did Micah’s morning activities so he could get off the ship. Matt (my Entertainment Director and former Cruise Director) LOVES sushi. I also love sushi, but apparently I’m spoiled because there is lots of good sushi in the US, so I could get it whenever I wanted. Matt is from the UK where the sushi is not as prevalent or as good. Once he figured out I was a fellow sushi lover, he would often bribe me with sushi. Every time we had sushi he would compare it to his favorite place in Honolulu. In spite of my extremely high expectations, I was impressed. I can’t tell you what made it unique, but the sushi was SO GOOD. There was also an eggplant (another one of my weaknesses) appetizer that melted in my mouth. I mean, usually whenever I see something with eggplant on a menu, that is what I order, but from that point on, I have not found an eggplant as surprisingly delicious. We also had cloudy cold saki. I am not picky when it comes to saki, but Matt is and this stuff was why. It was so good. One of the things I love about sushi is you can eat as much as you want but you don’t feel so heavy and full afterward that you feel like you’re going to explode. Unfortunately, Matt has no self control. He orders twice as much as we can eat and then looks around and asks what anyone else wants to order. Suffice it to say it was the biggest sushi feast I had had outside of Saint Thomas, and it lived up to everything I wanted it to be. We rolled away happy.
Matt had to go back to the ship to do some things for his important job, so I set off to go shopping. After all, this could be our last stop in civilization. I found a Target AND a Walmart. They had giant bags of my favorite Bark Thins– dark chocolate with Pretzels, the chocolate covered blueberries I had been craving, and cherry seltzer water. I loaded up my backpack with these last stashes of my favorite snacks and headed back through the afternoon Hawaiian rain to the ship.
That’s right. We were at this port so long that I had time to work in the morning and then set out for TWO outings. Matt and Jarred and I headed out to meet everyone else who was off at Waikiki Beach (I think). We found Rhea on the beach. She had signed off and been taken to the airport. She had a late flight, so she checked her bags and then came back to the beach. The sand was white and silky, the sea was perfect, so we ordered a round of tropical drinks.
We sat around a table, taking bites of food other people ordered, and talked about how awesome our lives were over the loud speakers booming live Hawaiian music. As the sun started to set, I remembered to go out and grab some pictures.
As we were leaving for our next destination, we ran into a group of the entertainment crew. They had been out on a boat and the lead singer from the party band had just proposed to one of the production singers. She was showing off her ring. At that point, I barely knew who they were, but I got to know them over the next few months. They left a cruise before I did. We headed across the street to a tall tower with a rotating dining room at the top where you could see the whole island. Matt had taken his grandma there and she tried to leave without tipping because it was so expensive. The story is funnier when Matt does the impression of his grandma trying to run away on the rotating floor.
We tried to stay out longer. We went to a brewery. But we were so full and tired that we headed an hour or two before all aboard.
Trying to savor these last moments of a long day off, I took a moment to appreciate that we were off the ship at night. On the Caribbean, I only saw the ship at night during Wet dock. We would have a couple surprise overnights on this contract, so I would get to be on land in the dark again.