Blue Planet Journey

  Caroline and I were passengers on a transatlantic cruise (Florida to Barcelona) on the Royal Caribbean ship, the Wonder of the Seas .  There's a lot of art onboard, as you might expect from a floating hotel and amusement park. Each stateroom has some artwork, of course, but there is also art in the common areas: hallways, stairwells, and places where people congregate. This blog is devoted to displaying some of the art that I saw practically every day, and usually multiple times per day, as I walked up and down the hallways and the stairs. I don't claim that this sampling is any kind of random selection. However, I was struck by this recurring theme... unsmiling, young, mostly white women. Why this selection?  Who picks out this art?  Men and older women were rarely featured.  Of course, art doesn't just get hung on walls.  I found it in the presentation of food, patterns on the carpet, and even in the playground. I don't know what the women's restrooms looked lik

Caroline and I sailed on the world's largest cruise ship, the Wonder of the Seas ( WOTS ), April 20 through May 12, 2022. The WOTS is operated by Royal Caribbean, and has  18 decks. When full, the ship has 2,300 crew members and accommodates up to 6,988 guests across its 2,867 staterooms. We were on this ship for 4 consecutive cruises (more on this later). For the first cruise, from Fort Lauderdale (FL) to Barcelona (Spain), there were "only" 3,648 passengers, which was 52% of capacity. We were on one of the last cruises in January, 2020, before the industry shut down. That was on the  Royal Caribbean's  Allure of the Seas . Two weeks later, the  crew and guests on the cruise ship  Diamond Princess  were quarantined in a Japanese port. For us, it was a lucky miss.  Now, we were on the WOTS . On February 15, 2022, Royal Caribbean lifted their mask mandate, and no masks were required for vaccinated passengers, although all crew used KN95 masks at all times. And the