Yesterday was a bit frustrating. It was boarding day, so the ship is already fairly chaotic in terms of guest needs, but we were unable to raise anyone on the phone (guest services, room service, etc.). They phoned us at about 2 pm to ask if we had ordered lunch and we informed them we had no idea how (we thought they were providing us a menu with options and none came) and we had tried calling room service and no one answered.
Lunch came and was okay. We ate at our tiny little end table on our balcony, as there is nowhere else to sit and eat together (there’s a desk, but it’s obviously for one). The afternoon was quiet and passengers boarded the ship and made their way around. The ship sat at the cruise terminal in Amsterdam for the day as forklifts banged and clanged as the ship was reprovisioned and luggage was hoisted aboard.
We played games, attempted to contact guest services for basic things like water and snacks for Laura, and watched pedestrians. As afternoon rolled into evening and we set sail, we awaited our phone call for dinner, but none came. We started a movie and continued to sit on hold with guest services and room service, to no avail. Finally, around 7:45 pm, room service answered and a very frustrated Laura placed our dinner order. As we waited for room service, guest services finally answered after about 30 minutes. They apologized, saying there was only one person working guest services line (I don’t know if that means one person for covid quarantine guests or all guests) and I sternly stated we had been waiting seven hours or more for water and internet access. Eventually, dinner arrived, a case of water was provided, one small bottle of San Pellegrino arrived, and two comforters were added to pad our concrete hard mattress.
Before we went to sleep we peeked out of our room down the hall in both directions. The hallway was lined with room service trays, set out in the hall. We counted at least a dozen such piles to either side of us, and can clearly hear the dry, hallow coughs of Covid to either side of us. Laura pointed out we had been told on previous cruises to not leave room service outside the room because it violates maritime safety. Clearly, with quarantine, those restrictions are out the window.
Our onboard app stopped working. We do not have room keys. We have not been informed where our muster station is. We are ghosts with room service.
Today, the Captain announced that guests are recommended to wear their masks while out of their cabins, and masks are required in the Theater. This is a change from our previous 12 days at sea where they didn’t seem to care. Something is clearly amiss.
When we went to bed last night we hung our room service breakfast order on the door, unsure if that was even a thing on our covid cruise, and requested on the form a time for our order to be delivered. And guess what? Our breakfast showed up as ordered and on schedule! What a relief!
We called room service for lunch and got connected right away! Big changes over yesterday! Placed our order, requested a beer and a cider with lunch. The attendant offered two beers and two ciders. Why not? When lunch arrived this is what we received:
We learned they had run out of cider on the entire ship. This was the last bottle. What we didn’t have in our new stateroom was a bottle opener. Laura aaaaalmost took the opener from our old room, but didn’t at the last second, sure we would have one in our new room. I shouted down the hallway after the guy who delivered our lunch, “We don’t have a bottle opener!” He made mumbles about looking for one. The soup Laura ordered with our lunch was forgotten, so I called room service to let them know, and asked for a bottle opener. The soup arrived—long after we finished lunch—but there was no bottle opener. 20 minutes later Laura’s soup arrived—again—and this time there still was no bottle opener.
Long after lunch was complete, I called room service again to ask for a bottle opener. “You did not get one?” she asked. “Not yet,” I informed her. (As of this writing it is 3:30 pm local time and the bottle opener still hasn’t arrived as we stare longingly at the Heineken and Strongbow, a sick joke.)
The door knocked a few minutes ago. Each time there’s a knock at the door I holler, “Coming!” and fumble for my mask to the answer the door. There was no one there, but someone was placing notes in the doors going down the hall. I pulled the printed piece of paper from the slot to our room expecting some new and insightful communication and instead found a xeroxed dinner menu. The room service menu is highly limited. Literally only three starters and three basic mains (one would assume to not encourage in-room dining on regular cruises) so the idea had occurred to us that spaghetti, hamburger, or caesar salad would not get us through ten days. Fortunately, the menu offered a wider selection of standard and nightly entrees from the restaurant upstairs where the unstick and uninfected dine in splendor. Very exciting.
Things might be looking up. (And isn’t it amazing how quickly one adapts to new parameters and things seen as a nuisance or limited suddenly because exciting new opportunities for betterment.)
Dinnertime rolled around and we were hoping to get a cocktail. I called room service and ordered a Red Bull and vodka for Laura and a negroni, which I had to spell for the order taker. A little later, what arrived was exactly what Laura wanted, but the negroni tasted more like grapefruit juice and vodka. It was definitely pulpy and there was no Campari or sweet vermouth in it.
We then phoned to order dinner. We both wanted the tournedos of beef but learned the menu was wrong. I had the Steak Diane, but Laura doesn’t care for that and “panic ordered” the vegetarian option, a “stuffed portobello mushroom.” We also asked for some wine to accompany our dinner. The lady stated that room service would only provide one glass per person. I said we often will have more than that. She had the Cellar Master call us. I stated the situation and she said she’d take care of us. She also said she’d make a standing order for each day we were on the ship so we wouldn’t have to call every day and she wouldn’t have to take our call every day.
Our dinner arrived with an opened bottle of Malbec and our dinners. Our salads were quite good. As far as entrees, mine was delicious, but Laura’s mushroom was stuffed with piped feta and sautéed spinach on an indeterminate orange sauce. It was not her favorite. I think, mostly, we were happy to have the wine.
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Baby spinach and treviso salad, tomato watermelon salad |
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Literally one of the best crab cakes we've ever eaten. |
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Steak Diane |
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The unloved Stuffed Portobello Mushroom with unidentifiable orange sauce. |
After our “semi-al fresco” dinner I set about to attempt to get the bottle opener we’d requested dozens of times and had been promised an equal number of times. We found out room service would only send someone who had their own bottle opener to let us use in the moment, which I explained was a problem for us and for them because we had multiple bottles accumulated at this point and neither we nor they would want us to have to call each time we wanted to open a beer or a cider. They agreed that was only a short-term solution. Guest services called Housekeeping who stated they had none.
Finally, a random person (I don’t really know which department) came to the door with his personal bottle opener and offered to let me use it. Once again, I stated the problem with “single-use” and he agreed, and said “I will take care of this” when I said I would buy one from the gift shop if only someone would go get it for us since we were stuck in our cabin. A few minutes later, he proudly returned with a bottle opener and I slipped him 20 pounds.
Having achieved my goal for the day, we settled onto the bed with my laptop to watch TV shows we had painstakingly downloaded via phone hotspot while in port in Amsterdam.
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