The Boat, She is Good

I have no idea how I'm at work today after last night. The cruise was a lot of fun. If you'd like to see a bunch of pictures, check out Sarah's blog.

Getting to Rowe's Wharf was very simple. Since I'm such an anal geek, I checked our route twice via mbta.com and google earth before I left the office. Oh yes, the geek theme will be carried throughout the evening. I got to use the Charlie Ticket system for the first time and it was quite an adventure! The North Quincy station's ticket readers don't feed the ticket through and open the gate, you're just supposed to insert and pull it out. If you don't, a horrible moron buzzer sound goes off. Conversely, the South station ticket reader machine does eat the ticket and spit it out while opening the gate. System standardization in Boston? Surely, you jest!

The Odyssey is gorgeous and the staff were attentive. We were seated on the Horizon deck for a meal that consisted of passed hors d'ouevres, two courses and dessert. Plus, there was an open bar. I was really impressed with their martini list, the wine list was pretty limited. Throughout the night, I had one glass of wine and 3 martinis. The marketing liason took us on a tour of the ship before launch. They have several decks that can accomodate parties of different sizes. My favorite deck was the Horizon. The live band was pretty good but I had giggle fits over the fact that the trombonist worked in trombone solos in every single song regardless of whether the song called for it.

I can't gush enough about the food. In my opinion, if you're on a ship, you should have something with fish. It's apropos. We got to go up front and meet the captain. In the cockpit (wrong word but I can't think of a right one), he had a couple sonar screens which I thought was exceedingly cool. Hitting Shamu would put a definite downer on the evening. Since the group of us were functioning on alcohol and rich food, we basically joked around about gambling and getting two desserts.

Towards the end of the night, I found out our waiter was from Albania. Since I'm a history and obscure trivia geek, I was pretty excited. How did I convey this excitement? I asked him about the genocide in his country. The conversation got pretty good and weird after that. I say weird because we wound up praising Ataturk as the ship was docking.

All in all, even though I got home after 11 and only had 3 hours of sleep, the night was good fun and an excellent research opporunity for the company's holiday party. Also, I guess I don't work in the Production dept. I work for Operations. You learn new things every day, huh?