We take our time with breakfast and then
sign the kids into the kids’ club. Even though we’re docking soon, they’ll be
such a crush of humanity trying to get off the ship all at once that we plan to
stay until after lunch. Sarah and I go back to our room and watch music videos
for, like, a really long time. We discuss whether we should do one of the
ship’s activities, but literally the only thing available at the moment is Picture Trivia: Name That Mammal (I
couldn’t make this shit up if I tried). We hang out, then get the kids, have
lunch, and leave the ship to explore Alicante.
There’s a courtesy shuttle bus that takes
us from the port to somewhere nearer to the city centre, and the journey lasts
the length of one Jon Secada song. Our plan is to find a way to Castillo Santa
Marina, which is a Moorish castle that overlooks the city from the top of a
mountain. We meander toward it, looking for some kind of bus or maybe a cable
car. There are shops on one side of the road and a beach on the other, and the
kids beg us to go souvenir shopping and play on playgrounds that they’ve
spotted along the way, but we tell them we’ll get to it after the castle.
Eventually, we find an elevator that’ll take us up, but there’s a pretty big
line. It’s 30 or 40 minutes until we finally get in. The kids are a little on
the crazy impatient side. Once at the top, it’s amazing and well worth the
wait, but with the kids belly-aching over being tired/hungry/souvenir-deficient
it ends up being a pretty shallow experience from a cultural perspective. It’s
just where does this staircase go? Let’s
take a picture off the city below. Let’s take a picture of that suit of armor. Let’s
take a picture of each other taking pictures. I do not know a single thing
about why that castle exists or any of its history. I only described it as a
Moorish castle about because I literally heard someone describe it that way on
the shuttle bus over.
Once on the ground again, we get some
souvenirs. One of our kids (who’ll remain nameless) throws an absolute tantum
when she’s not allowed to purchase some weird, soiled stuffy from a sketchy
shop just off the beach, and it’s the last straw for us. We get everyone back on
board the ship and Sarah lays into them. She points out all the not-cool
behavior – the tantrums, the complaining, the begging for souvenirs. She tells
them that it’s hard work figuring out an excursion in a foreign city that will
make kids happy, and how the adults almost always forego what they actually
want to do. She tells them we were planning to take them to an aquarium in
Valencia, but now maybe we won’t because it’s too expensive a thing to do if everyone’s
just going to complain about it the whole damn time. Following this exchange, we
all take some cool down time – drinks for some, cartoons for others – and after
a dinnertime powwow, we’re all on the same page again. The aquarium trip is
back on. We promise the kids that they’ll get to do whatever they most desire
(buy a souvenir, see a dolphin do a backflip, whatevs). As long as they tell us
at the start we’ll make it happen, but they have to trust us and not badger us
about it a million times.
The kids are tired and almost skip kids’
club that night, but then word gets out that it’s Pirate Night and suddenly
it’s the can’t miss event of the cruise. Sarah and I try our luck at gambling.
Sarah enters with $20 and leaves with $20.02. I enter with $20 and leave with
smoker’s lung.
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