Since we moved to our quarantine room on Deck 6, I have been "threatening" to call staterooms down the hall in a systematic manner to determine how many people are quarantined on this ship. Of course, anyone who knows me also knows that the likelihood of me cold-calling total strangers is about nil. (To be clear, the chances were highest on the first day of quarantine when we could not get anyone to answer the phone and we had a water shortage.) But I am still extremely curious to know how many people are quarantined on this ship, for no good reason.
We routinely see at least a dozen room service trays outside rooms up and down the hall. (We cannot see the entire length of the hallway from our door, much less the hallway on the other side of the ship.) If you've taken a cruise, you probably know that cruise lines do not like you to put the trays in the hall like you would in a hotel, because anything in the hallway is a potential hazard in case of evacuation. Cruise ship hallways are much narrower than hotel hallways. With covid quarantine, the staff is not entering our rooms, so some allowance must be made. So while I am not, as yet, making random calls up and down the hall, I am making an effort to figure out how many people are quarantined here.
Yesterday, when we stepped out to put our tray in the hallway, we saw another woman quite a distance down the hall doing the same thing. I said hello, and she said, "Oh! There are other people on this floor!" After a moment, her husband stepped out of their room as well. Both were wearing masks, as we were. She told us that they had moved down here on disembarkation day (the same day we moved). She had tested positive, but her husband tested negative. I assume she had few symptoms, because she was the one taking the tray out into the hall. We only talked for a moment because there was staff coming down the hallway. Like us, she had tested for her return flight to the US from Amsterdam.
After dinner, I spotted another woman putting out her tray without a mask on. I was unable to talk to her because the staff was rather aggressively asking her to put her mask on and go back into her room. (This is slightly odd to me, because the staff we've talked with have been largely unconcerned - one stateroom attendant even came in and made our bed when we finally got some sort of mattress topper to make the bed softer.)
As the ship pulled into Stockholm late this morning, we opened our veranda window to look out at the port as the ship docked. I noticed a traditional camera sticking out over the balcony next to us. I shouted hello until a man peeked out of his balcony at me. Initially, he seemed reluctant to talk, but when I mentioned that we were quarantined, he became very chatty.
He said he was traveling on our previous cruise with a party of six - his wife, another couple they enjoy traveling with, and his son and his son's fiance. Someone in the party got symptoms and they were all tested at some point. He is quarantining alone in his room. His wife tested negative and is enjoying a room to herself on another floor. He said she is not quarantining, but is "being very careful". (I assume this means she is wearing a mask and has been encouraged to eat in her stateroom.) The other couple both tested positive and are quarantined on this floor. His son also tested positive and is quarantined on this floor. His son's fiance tested negative and was able to leave the ship and fly home from Amsterdam. He mentioned that they had all hoped to test negative on Day 5 and fly home from Amsterdam, but that didn't work out.
In one of those "small world" moments, we learned that he was from Southern California. In fact, he grew up just half a block into Pasadena...therefore about half a block from Eagle Rock. His son still lives in the Los Angeles area. He and his wife retired to Washington. The couple they are traveling with retired to Virginia. The two couples take several vacations a year together. This was the first trip his son joined them on, which was meant to be something of an engagement gift. (I'm guessing that all the uncertainty of covid was not what the young couple was expecting.)
So that's 6 covid-positive people on this hallway (plus ourselves), and at least 7 people in quarantine.
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