November 28 - Post-Thanksgiving ramblings from Soggy Bermuda.

Written over a couple of days and I don’t feel like revising it.

It’s Thanksgiving; it’s calm and the sun is out.  I’m on a beautiful ship where I’m being taken care of royally. But today I’m in what I call a “blue funk.” I’ve been asking myself “how can this be” and I’ve yet to figure it out.   I’m doing some introspection and if you don’t want to read that, stop now.  

The demographics on this cruise are different from any I’ve been on and perhaps that’s part of it.  I’m not xenophobic but we have large groups from a couple of countries which aren’t English speaking.  When I’ve met and spoken with some of them individually they are very nice.  In a group they take over the bar, the dance floor and anywhere else they are. Last night when I went to the Club one tromped on my foot on the dance floor and another pair doing a wild jive without paying attention to anybody else, bumped into me without even a tacit apology.  I didn’t fall, but that made me mad.

Yesterday (Thanksgiving Eve) I had dinner with some folks I’d met a few days ago and we planned to dine together.  They are all American like me, but during the course of dinner they told me they are embarrassed to be Americans.  One lady said we’re all lazy and obnoxious. She cited as proof of this that other people learn lots of languages and we don't and we're loud.  I asked her how many languages she speaks and she told me one – English.  I wondered if she dislikes herself.  It was a depressing meal.  I know we have rude Americans, but most of the ones I know are not and I think we are the most generous country in the world which has on the whole done lots of good.  Dining with people who felt the way these three did was a definite downer.

I had Thanksgiving dinner with a zany couple of transplanted Aussies who wanted to experience a traditional American Thanksgiving.  They raised my spirits with the fun we had at the table.  We played a game which is too complicated to explain here, but it involved cards, presents and stealing the latter from each other. We did an awful lot of laughing in between eating a really good turkey dinner.  I was happy that the day ended on that note.

Two views of our fun Thanksgiving group

We docked at midday today in Bermuda.  We were supposed to dock in downtown Hamilton, but the winds were too strong to maneuver the narrow channel so here we are at the Royal Dockyard at the tip of the island.  It has been raining off and on, and ashore there’s not much but “trash and trinket” stores as Al used to call them.  So I made an executive decision to stay on the ship.  I don’t want to be drenched looking at magnets and postcards.

Not very sunny Bermuda

We’re here overnight and sail tomorrow at one in the afternoon.  It’s a shame for the crew because on overnight stays many of them are able to go ashore late in the evening after they’ve finished their work. I talked to one of the young ladies who works in Guest Services and she told me she and her friends have found there’s a nearby pub called The Frog and the Onion and they are going to try going there, but they aren’t sure it will be open late.  I wished them luck.

I’ve had a couple of interesting conversations in the last couple of days with people who tried to convince me that the first Thanksgiving was held in Plymouth in 1621.  I’m sticking to my guns though and I’ve told them they are positively wrong – every good Virginian knows the first English Thanksgiving was held on December 4, 1619 (two years before!!!) at Berkeley Plantation. Fortunately that has not been a trivia question because despite the rule that the man with the microphone running the game is always right, I would have to dispute it if credit was given to the Pilgrims.

I guess I’ve rambled enough to let it be known I’m still alive and well.  I hope everyone had a lovely Thanksgiving.  No Black Friday shopping here.  Bye for now.