Love Boat - The Real Story. Seetag

Tag 4. Ahoy!

The morning pulls me outside and I go for a pre-breakfast walk on deck. There is already coffee for the early birds at the Anytime Bar. I'm greeting the loafing smokers while passing them. Armoured with book and covered in blankets I occupy a beach sofa on deck 11 after breakfast. It is windy, cloudy, somehow nice but still quite cold.

The 'Yellow Blankets' are demonstrating for more relaxing and better weather

The weather is getting worse and so I'm looking for a quiet place inside in the early afternoon. This proposition turns out to be not as easy but the AIDA bar is slowly becoming a regular residence. I am so inactive that I skip lunch. Also I'm getting a bit petulant. In the afternoon there is finally some edutainment to attend and I book the excursion to the Nordkapp.

A tourist does what a tourist has to do.

More weather

Our ship is accompanied by two low-pressure areas. A high-pressure area over central Europe causes spring-like temperatures in the German homeland but also a huge airmass exchange between these three meteorological phenoma. As a bonus the low-pressure area over Iceland is greeting us with foaming waves over the Atlantic ocean.

Short: We are caught in a storm with some respectable swell. A lot of it.

What's also there a lot of: much space at the dinner restaurants and the bars. One prancels through the familiar, staggering ship. The evening entertainment programme was delayed to the next day and the decks 6 and 11 are completely closed for safety reasons.

Anybody who isn't seasick spends the time playing games and chilling in the bars while dreaming of tomorrow's shore leave Bodø.

Orga

A not so very polite opportunity to spend your time on a staggering ship is to watch the staff work.

After a few days you notice some patterns: they always work (12+ hours) and mostly at the same positions. Going for a walk or run in the morning you recognize the guy open the pool bar. The same guy makes you a coffee three hours later and a beer in the evening. I bet this real nice Indian guy does a shift at the crew night club afterwords. Maybe this guy is a vampire...? Same for the restaurant staff. The guys you are greeting at breakfast, you are greeting at dinner again.

And all of them are so damn kind all of the time. I really hope they are getting paid appropriately, otherwise I could not go on a journey like this again...

Daily staff carousel of the star-shaped AIDA Bar