If you guessed the Caribbean or New York you'd be wrong. I'm at home. I left the cruise ship after two days of being unrelentingly, miserably ill. The ongoing problem with my ear might be the culprit, or else it was something I ate in Nassau. Either way, I was unhappy from the moment I boarded the Norwegian Sea until I left it. It's such a shame! I was really looking forward to the cruise, and my sojourn in New York afterwards.

I did get quite a valuable experience as far as understanding the cruise market. It's not really my kind of vacation, I suspect, even were I not in the position of feeling like death warmed over for most of it. It's all about group fun, and I'm not a group person despite my love of science fiction conventions. In fact, I think it would be ideal for a science fiction convention. You have your food prepaid, and it's available 24/7. It's perfectly all right to wander all over the place at any hour of day or night, and noise is never an issue. Costumes? No problemo. Some of the things people wear in the fond belief that resort wear is not subject to normal rules of good taste has to be seen to be believed.

There are always people ready to serve you alcohol, get a conga line going, set up a beach barbeque on a private island, take you on shore excursions, and clean your room twice a day. You don't have to guess on tipping, the cruise lines leaves you a list of suggested gratuities along with some handy envelopes. It's ideal for the kind of person who loves an impromptu get together in a piano bar to sing karaoke or drink some jello shooters and then enter a limbo contest. There are lots of these kinds of people. They take two, three, four cruises a year. Cruises are addicting. I saw plenty of evidence of that.

But I don't know if I'll ever try one again.

Past Life The Index Next Incarnation