{"id":6613,"date":"2011-02-02T01:12:32","date_gmt":"2011-02-02T09:12:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cruisingdoneright.com\/?p=6613"},"modified":"2011-02-02T01:12:32","modified_gmt":"2011-02-02T09:12:32","slug":"theme-cruise-crystal-cruises-bridge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/?p=6613","title":{"rendered":"Cruises to Bridge Entertainment Gap"},"content":{"rendered":"

Put these words together. Cruise ship. Bridge. What do you get?<\/p>\n

A visit to the bridge of a cruise ship, of course. Passengers often get the opportunity as part of a ship’s tour. Lucky passengers sometimes get the chance to be there when a ship is arriving at or leaving a port. It’s an exhilarating experience, to see what the captain and the bridge crew see when a ship carrying 2,000 or more passengers is on the move.<\/p>\n

Not so fast.<\/p>\n

There are other ways to connect those words \u2014 cruise ship and bridge. When a cruise ship is in a waterway with bridges, there’s the matter of clearance. Some bridges are too low for cruise ships. Somebody told us when the Oasis of the Seas<\/a> sailed out of Germany, there’s a bridge it has to clear that’s so low that the captain had to pick up speed to get the ship deep enough in the water to miss hitting the bridge.<\/p>\n

Neither of these word associations apply, however, to people who go on cruise ships to play bridge. The card game, you know. The mind-bending, memory-testing card game of all card games, say those who play it.<\/p>\n

Every ship we’ve been on has a card room, or a place where people can go and play cards. Some probably even play bridge. These are the casual bridge players. They’re friendly. They talk around the table. Sometimes they even tell a rookie bridge player what to play, or how to play. Or even play again.<\/p>\n

Then there are bridge cruises.<\/p>\n

Actually, there are websites devoted to bridge cruises. People, too. All you gotta do is ask. On one, you can play bridge from Buenos Aires<\/a> to Miami. From London<\/a> to Rome. On another, from Seattle<\/a> to Alaska and back. There are bridge experts everywhere waiting to teach you more about this cerebral game.<\/p>\n

Most of the cruises seem to be 12 to 14 days. Learning bidding tendencies takes time. The Salobs, Roberta and Arnold<\/a>, seem to be the most aggressive. They’ll do five bridge cruises \"\"<\/a>this year, starting in March. Five! All of them are on either the Crystal Symphony<\/a> or the Crystal Serenity<\/a>. That means they’re upscale. Six-star ships (we always thought “five-star” was the ultimate adjective\u2026times change). That means it takes more than cruise writers’ income to go.<\/p>\n

Of course, you have to like bridge, too.<\/p>\n

Assuming you do, and assuming money is no object (or at least a small object), you can go bridging with the Salobs to Mexico in March (10 days), from London to Rome<\/a> in August (12 days), go back to Barcelona<\/a> on the return trip (12 days), from Athens<\/a> to Istanbul<\/a> via Israel and Egypt (unrest permitting) in October (12 days) and from Miami<\/a> to the Panama Canal<\/a> and back over Christmas and New Year’s (14 days).<\/p>\n

Sounds great! As long as your idea of bridge isn’t where the captain cruises or something that goes over water.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Put these words together. Cruise ship. Bridge. What do you get? A visit to the bridge of a cruise ship, of course. Passengers often get the opportunity as part of a ship’s tour. Lucky passengers sometimes get the chance to be there when a ship is arriving at or leaving a port. It’s an exhilarating… Continue reading Cruises to Bridge Entertainment Gap<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,25,31,19,15],"tags":[502,51,204,86,35,227,321],"class_list":["post-6613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cruise-industry-news","category-people","category-ports","category-ships","category-stories","tag-bridge","tag-cruise-ports","tag-cruise-ship-entertainment","tag-cruise-ships","tag-cruises","tag-crystal-cruises","tag-theme-cruises","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6613\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}