Today we travelled to Venice to pick up the boat for the Geek Cruise. I keep calling it a boat, but it’s probably a ship.
All of the Perl speakers from the Italian Code Jam were also going on the cruise so Randal Schwartz and Allison Randal travelled on the same train as Dan and me. From the railway station we got a taxi to the cruise terminal, checking in our luggage and went to the waiting room to… well… wait.
We waited about four hours before we could board. In that time we picked a handful of other Perl geeks who were coming on the cruise with us. As we boarded the boat we had our first experience of what was to become a bit of a recurring theme over the following week – people wanting to take our photograph and then charging us large sums of money for prints. Needless to say we didn’t buy any of them.
Dan and I were a little surprised to find that our cabin contained what seemed to be a double bed, but our steward assured us that he could convert it to two singles while we were at dinner.
The boat was amazing. It was probably ten times the size of one I was on for the Nile cruise. And it had been decorated by someone who thought that Las Vegas was the epitome of taste. Check the photos if you don’t believe me.
One downside of the cruise for me waas that the geek party had all been assigned to the second sitting for dinner. This meant that we didn’t get to sit down for dinner until 9:30pm every night and usually didn’t finish until after 11:00pm. This meant that I usually needed a substantial “snack” at about 7:30pm. Of coruse I could have skipped the formal dinners, but that’s part of the whole cruise experience.