Here in Alicante the climate is virtually identical to that of Los Angeles, as is the population, assuming the year is 1912. That was when the City of Angels last matched present-day Alicante’s count of only 350,000 souls.
Possibly the idea of living in 1912 Los Angeles appeals to you. However, modern Alicante is not the same as turn-of-the-20th-century Southern California. Alicante today has faster and more reliable cars, for example, and way better Wi-Fi.
As much as we love it here, there is, to quote the great philosopher Dorothy Gale, no place like home. Once in a while we must return to the Motherland to see siblings and children.
This year my generous and beautiful sister, Patty, offered us the miles she had accumulated using her American Airlines credit card. Of course we were too proud to take advantage of Patty’s generosity.
Ha Ha! That was a lie! We snapped up that offer like it was the last tequila shot before rehab.
We learned, however, that American Airlines was going to charge us $250 each, even if we used Patty’s miles. Denise, who does all our online ticket buying, looked up from her computer and said, “You know, for only a couple hundred dollars more we can book a ‘repositioning cruise,’ and take a ship from Barcelona to New York, or maybe Tampa or Miami.”
“That’s a terrible idea,” I said, thinking that a repositioning cruise probably involves yoga classes.
Denise said, “I’ll look into it.” I knew then we would be taking a boat somewhere. I wondered if Amazon sells yoga pants.
The next day Denise gave me a list of five ships that the cruise lines were “repositioning” from the Mediterranean to the Caribbean, which they do this time every year. The rates on these cruises are really low because nobody in their right mind wants to sail the North Atlantic in November.
I know what you are thinking. You are thinking, “Dan, no matter the price, these cruise ships are just floating Petrie dishes with more mutating viruses than a Wuhan wet market.” You are absolutely correct. But you know where else a body can catch a virus? At the airport. Also during the ten hour flight when you and your fellow passengers will be packed like sardines, assuming the sardines are packed while sitting in narrow uncomfortable chairs, but somehow can just barely manage to squeeze past each other on the way to the bathroom.
The airline industry assures us that the planes all have super-duper ventilation systems hoovering up the viruses and locking them in a Ghostbuster-like containment system, making you perfectly safe. But according to polling that I am sure somebody has done somewhere, nobody actually believes that line of crap.
Soon after committing to the idea of sea travel we read the fine print. We learned that the cruise lines are tricky bastards. While the cheapest ticket prices range from $450 to $500, the fine print revealed a “mandatory gratuity” of between $15 and $20 per person, per day, sometimes more than doubling the actual cost. If, by the way, you think “mandatory gratuity” is an oxymoron, congratulations! You speak English!
The next paragraph is for those who enjoy Recreational Tax Law Musings. Skip ahead two paragraphs if that is not your cup of tea.
I presume the “gratuity” subterfuge has tax benefits. If the cruise lines simply doubled their fares they would have to pay taxes on the extra income. Because your “gratuity” goes directly to the employees, the bosses avoid that tax liability, and probably some additional payroll taxes as well.
Wasn’t that fun? I bet you feel sorry for the people who skipped ahead!
I did the research and added each ship’s “mandatory gratuities” to the published fares. As I did I examined ship photographs. Each boat looked like a giant apartment building had fallen on its side. Rather than right the toppled tenements, the owners pushed them out to sea and constructed cheesy amusement parks on the new tops. “Each one of these,” I said to Denise, “looks like a slightly different version of hell.”
Denise still has the joyous heart of a teenager who has not yet learned that she is becoming kind of sexy, and that boys are pigs. She likes water slides and cheesy amusement parks. However, I was determined to put my foot down, by which I mean I would firmly voice my objections before doing whatever my wife said.
To my surprise, Denise offered a compromise. “Look at this,” she said, handing me her computer. It was open to a picture of the Queen Mary 2, which bills itself as the only true transatlantic ocean liner. The hull is designed for speed, which also reduces wave-induced movement (less sea sickness), and there are no climbing walls or water slides on the deck. It caters to people who want to travel in comfort and style between New York and England, without suffering jet lag.
The Queen Mary’s cheapest ticket is a couple hundred dollars more than the theme park ships, but the per diem “gratuity” is less, and it makes the voyage in seven days, instead of twelve to fourteen. The net cost, therefore, is not much more than that charged by the floating circuses. “Book it!” I said.
We soon learned, however, that not sailing with the hoi polloi has a hidden cost. If you are cruising, but not with hoi polloi, you probably are sailing with the hoity toity. I’m not sure which is worse.
I have been retired for nearly five years. In that time I have not worn a suit. If I wore a jacket it was to keep warm, not to mix with the “business casual” set. I swear I own a pair of black dress shoes but I can’t find them. That is concerning because we just learned that the better Queen Mary 2 dining rooms and lounges require a suit jacket, and some require a tie.
I know what you are thinking. You are thinking, “Dan, how will you tolerate the stifling horror of, for about a week, having to dress like someone who doesn’t live under a bridge?”
You are, of course, being sarcastic, and I like that about you. But what you do not know is that the hoity toitiness does not stop there. The ship will host at least two “gala nights.” These functions are black tie! Not only must I buy dress shoes, I have to acquire a tuxedo!
To be sure, the cruise line FAQs make clear that passengers do not need to attend the gala nights. We don’t need to play dress up and order martinis that are shaken, not stirred.
What a load of crap! No married man will dare suggest to his wife that they should stay in their tiny room and watch TV while other women, dressed in beautiful gowns, are dancing with suave husbands and drinking martinis that have been shaken and not stirred. No sir, not if they want to wake up with all their most important parts still firmly attached.
I, for one, believe in the importance of bodily integrity. I will buy a cheap tuxedo. But I will stage a silent protest signifying my alignment with the working man, that I am not one of those blue blood hoity toity snobs. No sir.
My martini will be stirred, not shaken.