Life Aboard the MSC Magnifica: Chapter 3

One of our favorite things to do at the end of the day is grab a cocktail, head to the aft deck, and watch as we pull away from the harbor. We love to see the cities we visit from the vantage point of the water, usually with the sun setting overhead. However, our drink package allows us only to drink at certain times of the day. Namely 12:00 pm - 4:00 pm and 6:00 pm - 9:00 pm. Of course it’s happy hour that is not included in the drink package, which seems counterintuitive to me. Our options in the drink package are Heineken, red wine, white wine, or rosé. It’s nice to be friends with the bartenders at the time of day, we just wait until one of our buddies is around and order from him. When it’s the right hour, they’re not shy about giving it away. They’ll give us a whole bottle poured in a carafe, but sometimes we don’t even finish it because the wine is so terrible. We had our suspicions that the wine and beer they serve is below normal ABV, and we confirm that notion any time we drink off the ship.

 However, we don’t get to watch the sunset everyday, because our dinner seating is at 6:00pm so sometimes we get cleaned up and eat in the restaurant. We have a designated table in the restaurant for dinner or we can choose to skip that and eat in the buffet. We’ve learned there are pros and cons to eating in the restaurant and the buffet. It is nice to sit with our friends at our dinner table and catch up on what they did during the day, but eating in the dining room can take quite a while, and there is less of a food selection. The menu offers 4-5 selections each for an appetizer, dinner, and dessert, but sometimes the descriptions are a bit misleading. We have a designated waiter, and he’s not going to be making Employee of the Month anytime soon. He’s always got a nice smile on, but he’s not too sharp when remembering what we ordered. He’s either got a hearing problem or an understanding-English-problem, which would be understandable considering it’s not his first language. Either way, we’ve learned that pointing to the menu is our best bet.

Many days we have to be back on the ship at 5:30pm, and our dinner time is at 6:00. It’s not enough time for us to get cleaned up without rushing so we often skip our dining room dinner and head to the buffet. The good news at the buffet is that there is a lot of variety compared to the restaurant, and we can get in and out fairly quickly compared to the dining room. However, the major drawback to eating in the buffet is navigating through the pushy, hangry, cane-wielding, gray heads that we share this ship with. I’d estimate about 65% of the passengers fall into this category. The other 35% are perfectly decent human beings. The term gray heads was given to us by our Czech friend who likes to sit down with us for English lessons. He explained them masterfully when he said, “The gray heads march all over the ship and knock people over,” he stuck his elbows out and mimed speed walking, “But then they’ll take a taxi 500 meters from one end of the pier to the other.” We’ve fondly adopted the term. Having gray hair alone does not qualify one to be a gray head. It comes along with a certain aggravated entitled attitude. Also, one does not need to literally have gray hair to be considered a gray head. One lady started this trip with close cropped white hair, and she paid a visit to the salon to get bright green hair. A few days ago she went back for bright red; her head is now a maraschino cherry. 

The buffet is very large, but when the lunch rush comes through you do not want to find yourself in the middle of it. A gang of sharks in a feeding frenzy have more etiquette than can be found in this buffet. There is no such thing as a line, and people will cut directly in front of you and even take a serving utensil right out of your hand if it pleases them. And if you dare get in their way be prepared for exasperated hands being thrown in the air like, “how could you be so rude as to get in my way?” The other day I was dishing up some eggplant on my plate and a woman came up next to me and pressed her entire chest and body into my arm that I was using to serve myself food. The eggplant went tumbling off the serving spoon, and I slowly glared over my shoulder at the encroacher as she breathed heavily on me. She apparently didn’t even notice me as she continued to salivate about the eggplant. Yesterday I watched a man walk directly into Ashley as she was standing still and he shook his head and grumbled at her like it was her fault that he walked into her. This is a regular occurrence.

A theme we’ve found is that there is no concept of personal space with these gray heads. If they can physically fit their body somewhere, they will do it. It doesn’t matter that you are there. There is no assumption of a personal bubble around you. That includes sitting down at our table without asking. About 5 or 6 times so far people have sat down at our table while we’re eating. I understand the idea that a buffet is somewhat communal, but there are plenty of spaces to sit. Sometimes they’ll speak English and we’ll chat with them, other times there are no shared languages and we only share confused looks with each other. The other day a man and woman came up to our table speaking French gesturing if they could sit at our table. I had my computer, bag, and lunch spread out on the table so there was not a lot of space on the surface of the table. He gestured around with his hand as if to say, “there’s no where else to sit.” We looked at him and shrugged our shoulders as if to say, “You can sit here if you need to,” He sat down at our table and motioned for his wife to do the same, but she kept walking into the next room - probably looking for a table that wasn’t already occupied. He sat and angrily stabbed at his salad. Ashley got up to get a drink and came back to confirm that there were indeed numerous empty tables throughout the buffet. Finally after about five minutes he realized his wife wasn’t coming back to sit down, so he got up and left to presumably find her sitting at her vary own table. 

Most of the time we can laugh at all of this buffet madness, but sometimes it gets the better of us. One night we were sitting outside on the back of the ship enjoying the sunset, and Ashley wasn’t ready to wrestle with the gray heads yet so we decided to wait out the rush. However we ended up missing dinner entirely and found them putting the food away at 9:00 with only pizza left to eat. It happened to be Latin night and Ashley was eagerly awaiting some Latin food. When I informed her we had missed the food, she was crestfallen. If you know Ashley, you’ll know that her FOMO of food is a real thing. She had been having a rough day already and this blow was enough to bring on the tears. I tried to cheer her up by bringing her a plate of the last desserts I could find. Of course the only thing left after the ravenous sharks descended on the buffet were the reject desserts, which were not to her liking. I told her, “Sometimes throwing things makes me feel better. Would you like to throw this crusty cake overboard?” She chucked the cake overboard and sure enough it did elicit a smile. 

A few days after missing Latin Night it was Mexican night as we were cruising out of Cabo San Lucas. There is a themed night once or twice a week depending on where we are. We planned to go early and get all the Mexican food we could handle, there would be no missing out this time. We showed up hungry and took a lap of the buffet to see what there was before filling our plates. This was Mexican Night? There was no guacamole, no salsa, no sour cream. There was a dish of refried beans and right before I could get a spoonful, the guy behind the counter poured olive oil all over the top of them!? We headed to the station where they were making quesadillas. We watched the chef dish up some sautéed shrimp onto a tortilla, and we were suspicious when we didn’t see any cheese nearby. He then folded up the tortilla like an envelope without any cheese and put it in a skillet for about 15 seconds on each side and then slid it onto my plate. I stared blankly at him. This guy had never made a quesadilla in his life. There is no shortage of cheese on this ship, but there was none to be found on Mexican Night. I wanted to inform him, this is not how you make a quesadilla, but I didn’t have the heart. It felt ironic that we were in Mexico eating the worst “Mexican food” prepared by Indonesian chefs. We decided maybe we didn’t miss much on Latin Night after all.   

There is some really good food to be found at the buffet, but there are also some disgusting things, and some complete mysteries. It’s interesting to see the selection of food given the fact that they’re catering to so many different nationalities. For breakfast they do pretty American fare. There are scrambled eggs, omelets, hashbrown tri-taters, about 4 different types of sausage and bacon. They have some European breakfast items like smoked herring, cured meats, cheeses, and olives. There are a lot of muffins and fresh breads, yogurt, cereal, granola, and the infamous fruit bar. In the beginning of the cruise they had apples, bananas, mangoes, pineapple, watermelon, cantaloupe. However, people were too greedy with the pineapple, mango, and bananas. They began cutting the banana tops off so you had to eat them right away rather than stash them for later, and they hid the pineapple and mangoes all together. Now, if you want pineapple or mango you have to ask for it. They keep it in a special refrigerator below the fruit bar so people don’t take all of it. A few days ago there was an actual fight at the fruit bar; watermelon was thrown.

For lunch and dinner there are staples like pizza which is delicious, and the salad bar with a great selection of fresh veggies. We try to not eat pizza at every meal, but some days the scent of pizza is stronger than our self control. The majority of the cooks are Indonesian, Indian, and Italian. They make really good vegetable curries and lentil soup. They make some excellent pastas, there’s a very good boeuf bourguignon. There are always plenty of French fries and white rice. Unfortunately they consistently miss the mark with the seafood. It’s a tragedy that we’re in such close proximity to the freshest seafood daily, and no one around here can cook it correctly. We have had some delicious seafood off the ship. We’ve also sworn off the ground meat. I don’t know what it is, but it is far from the grade A beef we’re accustomed to. Despite those issues, we find plenty of good food to eat, and we are far from starving.

We’re amazed at how much food, wine, and water they have on this ship for our five day stretches at sea. They are feeding about 3000 people daily. I keep wondering how many tomatoes, or pounds of cheese, or bottles of wine are kept on board. I’m beginning to see why they ration the pineapple. 

There is an outdoor seating area at the back of the ship where you can enjoy the fresh air and the sound of the ocean. Everyone and their teddy bear wants to sit there during lunch on a nice day. I do mean literal teddy bears. There are at least two people on this ship who have brought teddy bears and luggage filled with clothes for their teddy bears on this vacation. We were approached by one man and he asked us out of the blue, “do you like teddy bears?” Caught off guard I said, “Sure, yeah.” To be clear, I don’t like teddy bears, I think of them as children’s toys. When I hear about adults lugging them and their accessories around the world I want to keep my distance from those people. This man asked me if he could pull up a facebook page on my computer. He was quite insistent so I let him. He took me to his teddy bear’s facebook page who has over 5000 followers. He said, “He likes likes and followers.” Oh does he? Then he looked at me as if waiting for me to click the like button. At first I didn’t want to make the guy feel bad, but I draw the line at liking teddy bears’ pages. He did not seem to feel bad for soliciting likes for his teddy bear. To be honest I was little deflated by seeing how many more followers this teddy bear had compared to me. Now I’m letting teddy bears threaten my self worth; I like them even less.

We’ve experienced a healthy amount of ageism on the ship. We are assumed to be part of the entertainment crew by both passengers and other crew members on a daily basis. It’s as if many of the older passengers feel like we don’t deserve to be on this voyage as much as they do. We get a lot of blank stares and downright scowls from people, which still flummoxes Ashley, who is as smiley as they come. Even the staff don’t seem to offer as high of a level of service to us compared to some other passengers. It’s the squeaky wheels that get the grease around here, which brings me to the French. 

First of all, I don’t dislike all French people, and I don’t like to make sweeping generalizations, but the French passengers on board this ship have proven to be unpleasant. I cannot say that every single French person on this ship is a rude curmudgeon. But I can say that every time Ashley or I have had an unpleasant exchange with another passenger, it’s always a French person. The very fact that Ashley is capable of having an unpleasant exchange with another individual is surprising, but leave it to the French. There’s a lot of cutting in line, walking directly into the elevator before we have a chance to get out, stealing of chairs, and grumbling at our general existence. I’m beginning to think many of them attempt to keep others at a distance with their lack of hygiene. I’m not exaggerating when I say a man just walked by me about 15 feet away, and I could smell his body odor for about 30 seconds after he was out of sight. That is a stink cloud that takes some dedication. I’m about to run out of deodorant, and I think it will make me fit in better if I don’t wear any. Ashley thinks I should locate and purchase some immediately. She says, “On a scale of 1 to French you’re a 3.” Sounds like a passing grade to me. 

This ship is an interesting social experiment full of people of different nationalities, ages, and customs. It’s a floating United Nations. It requires an open mind, some patience, and some laughter. But the French seem to have none of those on hand. The people who planned the dining seating arrangements did a very detailed job of seating people together who speak the same language. We learned recently that many of the French speaking tables have had to be re-arranged because the Parisians are getting in fights with the northern French guests who are getting in fights with the southern French guests. They’re running out of places to seat them. 

I had better be careful about waxing on about how rude the French are, one just walked up to us asking if he could interview us for the book he’s writing. Of course that was after he asked us in what capacity we work for the ship. We’re writing about each other; I suppose we have something in common after all.

We really have been enjoying our time on the ship, and every day brings us new things to laugh at and new things to roll our eyes at. It has proven to be a unique way to travel the world, and we’re getting to know some interesting people and beautiful places. Until next time, au revior!