THE ART OF THE CRUISE
If you have just joined me now you may want to read the travel and art blog “Leaving Sydney Harbor” as this tale is the continuation. My family and I are now on the Pacific Jewel a P&O ship sailing from Sydney to New Caledonia and Vanuatu, stopping at Isle of Pines, Mystery Island, Lifou and Noumea.
Cruising holidays is the life in art!
We departed Darling Harbour and set sail under the iconic Harbour Bridge, passing the Opera house and Fort Denison before leaving the Heads in the evening twilight. The entertainment onboard was rocking and the drinks flowing as we turned into a long North-Easterly course towards New Caledonia, initially passing Nobo’s Head and Port Stephens before leaving the mainland astern.
PAINTING INSPIRATIONS
Here is a acrylic painting on canvas that I recently painted dreaming of our cruising holiday.
The Pacific Jewel has a capacity of 1915 passengers and 730 crew, it was built the same year my daughter was born 1991, and for you that loves facts and figures its length is 811ft/245 metres with a gross tonnage of 70,310 tons, draft 8.2 meters and the max speed is 20 knots. Captained by Tony Draper from Scotland and the rest of the senior officers are from England, Italy, Zambia, USA, South Africa, France, India and Bulgaria, so a rich mixture of cultures from all over the world.
The Pacific Jewel can carry the equivalent of five fully laden 747 jumbo jets and is 50% bigger than the Titanic and the same size as the Cunards Queen Elizabeth with a two story show lounge that can seat 800 people. So it is a big ship – a great ship to work on according to some of the crew who told us that they don’t have too far to go to work as compared to the Queen Mary ll where you need to get up and hour earlier just to be able to walk an hour to work each day!! Hard to imagine isn’t it.
THE ART OF BEING GREEN
Anyway after we set sail and had a little rest we dressed for dinner which the silver service restaurant required, smart casual today. Kai’s girlfriend Sam was putting on a brave face and joined us for dinner even though she was looking a little green around the gills – if that is possible for a beautiful Fijian woman! Poor baby, it wasn’t long before she had to excuse herself and retired to her room with green apples and bread rolls for dinner as prescribed by the crew to ward off seasickness.
Next call would have been the on-board Doctors seasickness injections, luckily Sam found some tablets that seemed to keep it at bay as the injections were $120 a pop we later found out. Too bad if you had a real bad case and needed a couple of shoots a day!
THE ART OF THE CHEF
The rest of us enjoyed our 3 course dinner and Hillivi and myself were in heaven – we are both Celiac (gluten intolerant) and vegetarian but that was no obstacle as a special menu was arranged and every need taken care of by our wonderful maître de Eroni Vvetibau (Fijian) and Chef Bupendra (India). It is no wonder that people put on weight on cruises, the food is absolutely magnificent, a wide choice of dishes every night to choose from, everything that you could wish for from every part of the world too. Oh Chef Bupendra I want to take you home!!
We were spoilt rotten by our waiters Rajesh Dzouza (Indian) and Nathan Legaspi (Philippine) with our every need taken care of; they were funny as a fit too with all sorts of tricks! I had no idea that so many things could be made out of serviettes – no idea at all!
THE ART OF THE DIET
There is no wonder that quite a few rather large people were on the cruise – I am not sure what came first though, if they came on the cruise because of their size and leisurely style of holiday or they put on the weight whilst on the cruise because of the wonderful food. All I know for sure is that when you get home you have to diet for a while – oh how boring I hate diets!!
Here is a quote I like by Woody Allen on the subject;
When we lose twenty pounds… we may be losing the twenty best pounds we have! We may be losing the pounds that contain our genius, our humanity, our love and honesty.”
Till next time happy painting and sculpting to you,
Love Marie xxx (c)
Why not come and have a look at Marie Jonsson-Harrison’s PAINTINGS FOR SALE, GICLEE PRINTS FOR SALE and SCULPTURES for sale or WALLBASED SCULPTURES. Enjoy an original artwork on your walls or perhaps one on your bed ARTnBED.
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