Cruising Is The Way To Go

This is the swimming pool on Deck 10 at the bow of our cruise ship.

If you look carefully along the right side of the pool, you can see several senior citizens who have obviously dropped dead. It was nice that the other sunbathers didn't panic and seemed content to finish their swim and sunbathing before calling for the ship's doctor. It looks like maybe the survivors might have even propped up a body or two into a sitting position so other sunbathers won't be upset.

Just some of the interesting stuff you see on a cruise, I guess.

Tragedy of Typographic Proportions In The Caribbean

We're docked in the Barbados port of Bridgetown, along with a Carnival cruise ship named Carnival Victory.

Sweet Swan of Avon! I've never seen typographic butchery on the side of a cruise ship as bad as this. OK, I know it's not easy to cut letters out of metal, but if it can be cut perfectly in 6-point type, why can't it be cut out semi-decently in letters 15-feet tall?

Or maybe the new Carnival corporate identity is a grunge font that uses different weights and fonts. Ugly fonts. Is it just me, or was the "n" ripped off another cruise ship and welded onto the Carnival ship?

I could go on, but that might make it look like I'm a typography complainer/whiner. And I'm not. No way. HEY! Is that an "inch" sign being used for quotation marks in the Noordam daily newsletter?! AARRRGGGH!

Barbados

Founded in 1629, Barbados became a self-governing democracy in 1966.

Graves are unmarked, because of the Quaker proviso that only God should know one's final resting place.

Local authorities prohibit the wearing of any type of camouflage clothing. Anyone wearing camouflage is not allowed ashore.

At 8 AM we took a shuttle to the dock area, then hopped on a bus to Atlantis Submarine headquarters in the same area. A 10-15 minute boat ride took us to the 36-seat submarine bobbing on the surface.

The water was fairly murky, but we saw tons of fish and plant life, and a sunken ship. The best shots I took are on video, but I did grab a few still shots (below).


The Atlantis pilot sits in the nose of the sub. The red depth indicator says 121 feet.


Some of the other crew members.


Not a very good fish photo, but I have some pretty good video clips.