24 hours like this (more or less)
8:00 a.m. During the day, the sun heats the land more easily than the sea due to thermal inertia. The pressure rises in the upper layers and the winds carry the clouds towards the coast. That's why the sun tap dances directly on my eyelids. We are at some maritime point not far from Rotterdam, where we left yesterday, and the first thing I learn from my day on a cruise ship is that here is everything premeditated , like those heavy and opaque curtains that I forgot to draw last night.
8:30 a.m. With my new haggard look on this floating parallel universe I get out of bed to take a good look at the mini suite. A table less desk than auxiliary, elongated and half covered by brochures, with a coffee pot and a couple of bottles of water. A flat screen on a shelf and, under it, a locked mini bar. The prices of two euros for the Coke and five for the beer are added to the open bar so that you decide not to ask for the key. There is a comfortable and good size bed (King-size). A wardrobe with light chipboard doors painted with a wood effect. It is designed to withstand the breeze, the sun and all that incessant succession of guests embarking on 88 cruises and packing and unpacking, on their way to the Caribbean or New York.
There is also a bathroom with a step that I trip on every time despite the warning sign. The shower has a shower head with a rain effect and a column with hydromassage jets. And at the end of the room, the jewel of a cruise ship: the terrace with sea views. With two resistant chairs made of light material, from them, from the bed, from the whole room you access the star amenities: the Atlantic Ocean, which now returns a soft reflection and orange juice from the sun that will soon become blinding and by the night in a theatrical background, with the full moon creating a beam of light and a lighthouse blinking in the distance. Orange juice. We go to breakfast.
9:00 a.m. You talk to a cruise passenger who tells you about his last vacation and, invariably, the subject of food ends up becoming the star. It is estimated that passengers pass by the restaurants about 10 times a day . There are more than 12 here, but the breakfast buffet, the ship's buffet, located on deck 15, is a huge room arranged around a circular display that repeats the same food twice on its way. It is necessary to feed up to 4,028 newly awakened passengers, which turns breakfast into an almost military task of planning and execution. Even so, the queues are not going to be the usual except for the crepes, which take a while. Or to hamburgers, which have their public. I get my chocolate crepe and nibble on it in front of an omnipresent sea that almost enters your plate through the huge windows. I think it is at breakfast, the appetizer of the main plan (eat and look at the sea) when life on board begins to hook you.
10:00 a.m. Leaving the buffet you come across the SpongeBob SquarePants play area and, right after, two swimming pools and four Jacuzzis next to a bar and surrounded by sun loungers. It is the headquarters, the place where you can smoke, drink, bathe or watch those who bathe. All this, activities that may be reprehensible at home, but that are essential on a cruise . Since it's not time to drink, I look at the empty pool with lust and I run away for my swimsuit. When I return, there is a little more activity, one of the hot tubs has filled with a group of noisy young Russian girls drinking glasses of champagne inside. Now it is the jacuzzi that attracts my eyes from before. I dive.
11:30 a.m. They have opened the bar. They have a perennially smiling staff. A bit like the whole ship. They ask me where I'm from, “from Spain”, and they recite “Gassol, Barça, Messi” and so on. I ask them where they are from, even though it says so on the badge. "Philippines" (like half the staff at the bars) . I don't know what to say, I can think of "The last of the Philippines" and "Gil de Biedma lived there" , but I opt for an enigmatic Tagalog, no. They have premium brands, Gray Goose vodka, colored gins, but everything has an extra charge, except soft drinks, beers and wine. They have a coffee liqueur from Starbucks that I have never seen before. Technically it's like having a cup of coffee, so it's already hours.
12:00 p.m. When only the ice is left, I go to the buffet and eat a sausage. There are many people doing something similar and the tables are more than half full. I see a Slav with a mustache hard to ignore who was also at breakfast. He hasn't gotten out of here anyway.
1:00 p.m. I get out of the alluring black hole of the pool and buffet area at once, somewhat reluctantly, and go up one floor. Here they are called covers. I stumble upon the sports complex, which has a 40-element outdoor ropes course, the longest on a ship, I'm told. There's a jogging track that wraps around the deck, a rock-climbing wall, and a fitness center that overlooks the sea. I pretend I'm going to do some somersaults on the ropes and I approach the entrance of the Aqua Park.
1:30 p.m. To make use of the wet bathing suit and the terry towel that they left me in the cabin, I jump from one of the slides. There are five of them and I choose the ones from The Whip, two intertwined falls that take you up and then make you fall again, like a passive-aggressive girlfriend in a Woody Allen movie . It is not a roller coaster, of course, but the feeling is dizzying because there is nothing to hold you or stop you. When I get downstairs I find it sad that I have to go up two decks again to retrieve my towel. I need company. Maybe that's not so difficult on a cruise ship that has an entire interior area dedicated to singles, with its own bar and its own entrance, just for them. A creative way to group single cabins. So I head across deck 16 to an adults-only beach club I've been told about.
2:15 p.m. And here it is, the Spice H2O, the seafaring cousin of an Ibizan club. The loungers make a semicircle around a dance floor with a giant screen, dance music and surrounded by two Jacuzzis. At night it gets even better. To demystify: here there is a successful atmosphere, of laziness in Marbella during the day, of an early drink in Ibiza at night . There's a freckled, sharp German woman leaning on the bar and looking out at the immensity of the sea, which is like looking at a fire, but in reverse. Where the latter turns you inward, the former takes your thoughts to the horizon and you have broader visions. I point around us, at this little beach club that by now is filled with laughter and flushed skin, and ask him if he likes it. He tells me in English that she doesn't understand me, that she is German. I asked him in German. Or so I thought. In any case, there is a smile behind this shot into the water, all the time there will be smiles here and there. Because you get it from Asian staff or because there is no smile that does not appear with a well-stocked buffet and an open bar with sea views.
3:00 p.m. As in the Garden Cafe, the breakfast buffet bar. They have three brands of beer, only one fish dish, and plenty of free space by the stern windows. Eating at the extreme Spanish time has that advantage, that other world people with reasonable hours are already retired. Everything is reasonably good, the pasta, the high-calorie dressing on my salad, the meat with raisins.
4:15 p.m. Nap. Siesta, which with that invaluable rocking of flan with a lot of egg tastes a bit like a nap in mom's arms. Siesta, so that later the sea looks bluer.
5:30 p.m. Half past five is the time when everything that wasn't open starts to open. There are a few attractions that can be viewed on the 50 large touch screens located throughout the ship. Dinner can be reserved and the screen will show you the availability of seats.
5:45 p.m. I decide to start with the ice bar, where they give me a thermal jumpsuit and access the sculptures of New York that fill it with an atmosphere similar to that of the submerged city in Spielberg's film, Artificial Intelligence. There are more things from New York on the ship, such as the Blue Sea restaurant by Geoffrey Zakarian, a successful chef in the Big Apple, or the three New York-style hot dog stalls that will be installed in a few months in passing places .
6:20 p.m. The lobby communicates three floors crossed by backlit stairs, crowned by a glass lamp, surrounded by the reflection of the transparent railings, the lights of the slot machines in the casino, the jewels on women's necks. A relentless shine that is part of the show. Do you really have to dress up to go to a show? My seatmate in the theater will ask me later. Yes, you have to dress up, you have to make a brilliant game with the emerald green of the stairs, because the most enduring of spectacles, on a cruise ship, we are ourselves backlit for all these footlights that create a made-to-measure world of fiction where we can live for a week as if we were going to stay forever.
7:00 p.m. I watch Rock of Ages, a Broadway musical with five Tony nominations. He could have also chosen the Spiegel Tent, a circus ring and restaurant where everything revolves around “Cirque Dreams: Jungle fantasy”, a nomadic show that has traveled to more than 200 cities. But since my roll is rock, I sit down to watch that guitar show, lewd within an order, with the wine that the waiter has brought me to my seat.
9:00 p.m. I have chosen Churrascaria, the Brazilian restaurant, where the meat continually appears on large skewers that are served to you again and again. I combat not very ineffectively the consequences of excess with a walk along the Waterfront, one of the most successful novelties of the ship. It is a promenade with a wooden walkway that runs between bars and restaurants, with outdoor terraces. The place, of course, from where a Spanish cruise passenger would not move during the entire journey. While I'm smoking and looking for an ashtray, an employee appears out of nowhere and offers me, with a sincere smile, to take care of my butt when I'm done. By now, the friendliness of everyone on board has gone from heartwarming to disarming. We chat and he offers me one of the keys to understanding that inescapable lax well-being: “here you can't stop being on vacation at any time, even if you want to. You leave the cabin and you find yourself immersed in the holidays.”
10:00 p.m. NCL's CEO compares the cruise ship and its atmosphere to that of a Las Vegas resort. Nightclubs, shows and more than a dozen restaurants. I whip up a Red Bull vodka and head to the Spice H2O. My intuition had not failed me: here is a big party: There is a lot of desire to dance. Videos, a diyei that doesn't leave out a classic disco and fireworks, of course, this is a celebration. 23.00 There is a queue at the other nightclub on the ship. The lines of the cruise ships (which from what I'm seeing may be a myth except for the crepes) are bad. But on the other hand, in the disco it is a good sign. On an empty track you can do the travolta, but on a full track you can make friends.
01:00 hours. After two hours dancing in front of a wall of bluish LEDs and at the feet of a DJ with a fixation for the most recognizable disco music, I leave for my room
1:10 a.m. I stop to smoke at the Casino. There is a smoking room in some bar, in the casino and of course you can smoke on the decks. On the high seas, national laws do not apply and things like this are left to the discretion of the cruise company.
1:20 a.m. I stand in the boat's Irish-style sports bar. I eat some chicken wings and order a hamburger to take back to my stateroom.
1:50 a.m. I walk down a corridor on Deck 6 that has been converted into an art gallery. It's not around here.
02:25 hours. I find myself at the door of The Haven, the upscale area of the ship. It has 42 suites and Family Villas in which Jacuzzis with direct windows to the sea, dining rooms, kitchens and semicircular dressing rooms are numerous. The villas have two bedrooms and two bathrooms. Sleeping with your partner in one of the best suites can cost you around 30,000 euros, but of course you have everything included and nobody is going to ask you for your card to cover an extra charge. It's not here either.
02:50 hours. I manage to locate my room. Nothing gives me spin despite having eaten and drunk in such an unreasonable way. The hamburger has already cooled down, but what does it matter when beyond the terrace awaits an Atlantic Ocean torn by the full moon, which creates a white wick that splits its restful night in half. In the background, the flashing lights of a lighthouse finish draw the illusion that this, precisely this, is life.