So the next day we met our steward. Steward, we came to find out, is an old Norwegian word meaning creepy Filipino guy who is somehow always outside you door except when you are looking for him. Those Norwegians have a way with words I tell ya'. OK remember the old Looney Tunes cartoons that had the mad scientist who was supposed to be Peter Lorre? There you go! Our steward! Imagine opening your door, slightly hung-over and seeing that mug. You get it now!?
Well it didn’t take us long to settle into a nice routine of eat, drink, be merry, and attend events. Now the events are a little weird, I say weird because I never imagined attending an art auction on a cruise ship. Yeah art auction. They sell art on ships. Not nice art but pretty pricey stuff! No I didn’t come home with anything for the walls but only because there was not a single Elvis on black velvet, let alone any dogs playing poker to be found! I mean how many light houses need to be painted people?!
However the biggest two card monty grift, I mean event, happening on the ship, is a thing that is referred to as a “raffle”. Now for those of you who don’t speak gypsy I will give a little background for you. It seems that in 1450, or there about, Vlad III (aka Vlad Tepes, Vlad the Impaler, Vlad the Jerk, but most commonly referred to as Mr. "Oh please your highness don’t put that stake up my backside!") decided to do away with the leash laws for the gypsies of Romania and they all got out! This lead to the gypsies opening a burgeoning trade in fleecing rubes out of their money by fun things like raffles. Don’t get me wrong a fool and their money are soon parted…but leave my money out of it! Frankly the worst part of this grift is not that I spent any money on raffle tickets it is that I wasted my time! You see you get the tickets for free most of the times, but you have to bend the laws of the universe to attend them! There are 2-3 raffles running and they are staggered about 4 minutes apart from each other, but on different decks of the ship. So when one is finishing the other has already started, and all of them require that you must be present to win. It is the perfect grift because now you are either vying for an elevator or jogging the steps to get to the raffle on time or risk not winning because you were elsewhere. This cardio workout now has the end result of your stomach growling and you need to get a bite to eat...not to mention you are thirsty so you need a cocktail, which is about 37 dollars a cup. HA HA!! There's the rub! It is all trying to get you to buy expensive booze! It is like American Alley in Crete! Luckily our crafty friends had a nice ace up their sleeve that stuck a thumb in the cocktail lounges proverbial eye. I won’t reveal the secret (statute of limitations remember!) and we paid bubkis for our booze! Take that Dracula!
Our steward
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