Live from the Queen Victoria--Princess Elites sail Cunard QV to the Baltic

[cwn]

PunkiC,

 

Still loving you "Live"! Thanks so much for taking the time and using your internet minutes to post. I look for each of your new posts.

 

We did the Baltic many years ago on the original little Royal Princess and would love to do the Baltic again. We also like the current Princess small ships so this is a doubly interesting read.

 

We will be on the QE next year, also in a steerage cabin with a balcony, deck 4for the first time on QE. Since she is the sister ship, I think it should be a similar experience.

 

Please keep telling us about your trip.

[Salacia]

Aside from the fact that I'm surprised a teacher would use Wikipedia as a dictionary, we were not talking about the use of the word 'ghetto' per se. Please refer back to the original post we are discussing, and note the context and phrases. Also, please consider that the contemporary use of words and phrases often has different implications than the historical definition, especially where slang terms are concerned.

[brigittetom]

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I think he did a tribute to Nat King Cole on our trip.

We sat and talked with him for a bit on an outside deck. Very pleasant gentleman.

 

I hate to disappoint you but the Nat King Cole impersonator was Donnie. I can't think of his last name at the moment.....but yes, he was especially friendly and nice. He only does NKC.

[brigittetom]

I found it. His name is Donnie Ray Evins and you can find his performances on You Tube. I'm sure you noticed how much he resembled NKC.

[Salacia]

I found it. His name is Donnie Ray Evins and you can find his performances on You Tube. I'm sure you noticed how much he resembled NKC.

 

Yes, he does!

[brigittetom]

Salacia, I don't know how on earth you managed to put that on so quickly. Of course you would have known who I was talking about......he was on the Christmas trip where everyone came home so ill......right?

[Salacia]

Salacia, I don't know how on earth you managed to put that on so quickly. Of course you would have known who I was talking about......he was on the Christmas trip where everyone came home so ill......right?

 

Oy vey, don't remind me of that trip! :eek::)

[PunkiC]

Live from the Queen Victoria--Princess Elites sail Cunard QV to the Baltic

 

Day Eight: St. Petersburg, Russia

 

 

Another early call this morning with breakfast arriving at 5:30 a.m. Many thanks once again to all of you who helped me realize that we could have a very early room service breakfast. Today customs was remarkably fast with no lines at all. I must say hats off to the Russians for their efficiency in processing folks through customs.

 

We had another full day of touring and once again I was able to keep up perfectly well using the pain-control device provided by my new friend. I will be buying one at my very first opportunity. Our first activity this morning was a tour of St. Petersburg by water in a very low, covered boat. Well the front half of the boat was covered and the rear was uncovered. The bridges in St. Petersburg are extremely low and folks who were outside had to be very careful to remain seated when we went under them. The crew had left the ramp leaning vertically against a bulkhead and it was knocked over and hit a passenger as we passed under the first bridge. It also knocked him over, but he did not appear to be hurt. When you come to St. Petersburg, be sure to take a water tour as it is a truly beautiful city from the water.

 

The weather was absolutely perfect—scattered clouds and 70F or 21C. We couldn’t have asked for better weather.

 

After the city tour by water, we boarded a hydrofoil and crossed the Gulf of Finland to the Peterhof. When we boarded the Hydrofoil, we and our friends were directed to the first-class cabin so we were able to enjoy the front row seats. After we were seated there was a discussion in Russian between our guide and the stewardess, presumably about whether or not we were supposed to be in first class, but there we were and there we stayed for the voyage, just the four of us. It was a lovely walk from the dock to and through the marvelous park area surrounding the Peterhof. We arrived at the bridge closest to the palace at 10:55 and were still able to get a place to stand against the rail to watch the fountains begin their day’s explosion toward the sky, accompanied by wonderful music which blasted the entire area. Impressive to say the least. We did not tour the palace at Peterhof, but instead wandered through the beautiful grounds until it was time to return to our shuttle and drive about an hour to Catherine’s Palace. Along the way they showed a movie that portrayed the history of the Romanoff’s and that was a very nice touch. This whole tour was extremely well-planned and delivered and I can’t say enough nice things about SPB Tours.

 

We had lunch at another local restaurant not too far from Catherine’s Palace but well away from the tourist area. Lunch consisted of salad, borsch, meat and potatoes for those who were not vegetarian and dessert. I had ordered a vegetarian meal which was also very good. Lunch both days was included in our tour. Before we left the port this morning, I had purchased 500 Rubles (about $13.87) from the cash machine at the pier. We used 300 Rubles to buy two glasses of decent red wine to drink with lunch at a cost of $4.16 per glass, leaving us with 200 Rubles left to spend.

 

It was at The Catherine Palace where our tour guide truly worked her magic. The lines were very long but she somehow finagled a by-pass through a side door, dramatically expediting our entry into the palace. The opulence and extravagance in the Catherine Palace is a bit overwhelming. Naturally, we were most impressed with the amber room where the vast majority of the walls are covered in intricate and gorgeous amber decorations.

 

We returned to St. Petersburg via our 16 passenger coach, thoroughly satiated with beauty and history and extremely grateful at our good fortune in having picked SPB tours and getting Katya as a guide. She is a wonderful young woman who dramatically enhanced our time in St. Petersburg. We exchanged cards and I invited her to visit us in Seattle if she ever ventures to our part of the world. I will definitely repeat that invitation via email. On our way back to the ship we stopped at a shop where people could buy souvenirs and I bought a bottle of Russian Vodka for my niece who lives very close to SEA/TAC airport and usually drives us to the airport, stores our car at her home while we are traveling and picks us up when we return. If we get back late, DH can grab a taxi for under $10, get our car and be back at the airport before I have collected our luggage. It is very handy. We had 200 rubles remaining and used them to purchase a beautiful souvenir book of St. Petersburg for 199 Rubles. The book has over 156 pages of wonderful pictures of the sites we visited. We did not get any change. ;)

 

When we returned to the ship, the owner of SPB tours was waiting to greet us all and thank us for our business. I really can’t tell you how impressed I was with this company and our adorable and very competent guide, Katya. Once again, Russian customs was remarkably efficient whisking us through with no wait whatsoever.

 

We were greeted at the ship by a contingent of food service folks from the ship, including the very handsome Maître d’ Hotel, and many chefs and head waiters. That was pretty cool. When I asked if they were counting passengers returned to the ship to determine how many meals they would need to serve this evening, they said that they were so busy greeting returning passengers that there would be no dinner tonight. I told them that we would just have to muddle through with the vodka we had bought in port.

 

We were required to be back on board at 5:30 p.m. and I noted that we checked into the ship at exactly 5:31 p.m. but there was still quite a line of folks still coming through behind us. You could say that we all made the most of our time in St. Petersburg. ;) It was a truly fabulous experience all the way around and it created some wonderful memories that we will carry with us for the rest of our lives, or at least as long as our memories hold together. Fortunately we have our photos and our souvenir book to remind us of our St. Petersburg adventures.

 

I deliberated about going to dinner or going to bed, but in the end decided on dinner, just to have a chance to review the events of the day with our table mate friends.

 

On my way to the restaurant, I stopped for a moment and chatted with a crew member who has had a chance to observe Jeffrey Archer. He said that while he noticed that Lord Archer was very nice to us and generally very nice to beautiful women, he was extremely rude to most of the other passengers. I have not personally witnessed this behavior so I cannot swear to its validity, but this is what the crew member reported and he appears to be a stand up sort of guy whom I believe, but for me, the jury is still out. If I form a firm opinion of Lord Archer before the end of the cruise, I will report back.

 

When I arrived at dinner at about 6:30 there were only five people at our table for ten. I made it 6 as I had told DH to go ahead to dinner at 6:00 and let me think about whether or not I thought I was up to it. About 6:45 another couple showed up. They were on a Cunard tour and were late returning to the ship due to horrible delays all day long. Once again I gave thanks that we had lucked out and chosen an excellent local tour company that really knew how to work the system.

 

After dinner, we crashed. What a wonderful day! We not only move our clocks back an hour tonight, but we can also sleep in as long as our hearts desire.

 

Reponses:

 

I am smiling at the intense responses to the word “ghetto” because for me it holds no prejudicial overtones or undertones. Here is the definition of ghetto:

 

“A ghetto is a part of a city in which members of a minority group live, especially because of social, legal, or economic pressure.[1] The term was originally used in Venice to describe the part of the city to which Jews were restricted and segregated.”

 

I had the privilege of touring the Jewish ghetto in Venice with a Jewish friend who lived on a kibbutz in Israel, close to the Syrian border so I always associate the word ghetto with that experience. I also grew up in a neighborhood not too far from a black neighborhood which would clearly qualify as a “ghetto” and attended grade school with lots of kids from that area, some of whom were part of the STS program.

 

Now this is a real prejudice—STS stood for “Superiorly Talented Students” and almost everybody knew it. All children in our school system were tested and separated into groups at a very young age based purely on IQ tests, and assigned to a class level. If you did extremely well on the tests you went into the STS program, if you did only very well, you went into the A level, average students went into the B level and those below average went into the C levels, and for the most part, there you stayed all the way through high school and your level pretty much dictated your level of preparation for university. I always thought this was horrendous as the children of immigrants just didn’t have sufficient English language skills to make the cut it the beginning and were never taught above the C level and were not prepared for university when the time came. The black kids whose parents spoke English were much more likely to be included in the program in the beginning, be taught at the STS level throughout grammar and high school and be thoroughly prepared for university. One of the black gentlemen in the program, with whom I am still a good friend, ended up being the Dean of a College in Illinois. His mother, like Bruce Parker’s, was a school teacher which gave them both a tremendous advantage.

 

I am sorry 3rdGenCunarder that you didn’t have time to have a real conversation with Bruce Parker. If you had, the first thing you would have noticed is that he is extremely well-educated and articulate—his mother was a teacher. His show, on the other had has ghetto overtones. This dichotomy is the first thing we discussed when I met him and his response was that the music he presented was originally “ghetto” music and he chose to present it in a somewhat ghetto style.

 

Yes, of course, soul music originated in the fields by slaves, and carried into black churches before it was presented to main-stream white audiences by amazing black musicians from the ghetto. The bottom line is that Mr. Parker and I were totally comfortable discussing the fact that he chose a ghetto style for his show. I am sorry if our conversation as reported here made some of you uncomfortable, but as they say, different strokes.

 

GCurry, yes, Seattle is a very liberal multicultural city and these days it is even more liberal. Staring June 1, 2014 it became legal to buy marijuana for recreational use in Washington State. If you have a medical marijuana card, you can even grow it. I had thought about doing that to see if it would help with the pain in my back and shoulder but then decided that it would just give me the munchies and make sticking to my diet even more difficult.

 

Can’t wait for a big long sleep-in and a relaxing sea day tomorrow.

[Ray66]

Before we left the port this morning, I had purchased 500 Rubles (about $13.87) from the cash machine at the pier. We used 300 Rubles to buy two glasses of decent red wine to drink with lunch at a cost of $4.16 per glass, leaving us with 200 Rubles left to spend.

 

Just a note for anyone reading this who is going to do a St Petersbourg tour in the future - there is no need to buy rubles, you can use US dollars.

[cunardaddict]

Hi folks, I live in a place that is called "The Ghetto" by the local people. It is one of the very rare gated communities in Germany. I do not belong to a social minority nor do I or presumably any of my neighbours suffer from any substantial shortages of whatever.

 

But I do remember the song by Elvis Presley - and off cause the terrible places the ****s ordered the European Jews to live in.

[cunardaddict]

Hi folks, I live in a place that is called "The Ghetto" by the local people. It is one of the very rare gated communities in Germany. I do not belong to a social minority nor do I or presumably any of my neighbours suffer from any substantial shortages of whatever.

 

But I do remember the song by Elvis Presley - and off cause the terrible places the ****s ordered the European Jews to live in.

 

The * were set by the system, not by me. Obviously it is not allowed to call the evil by their chosen name.

[English Voyager]

I am smiling at the intense responses to the word “ghetto” because for me it holds no prejudicial overtones or undertones. Here is the definition of ghetto:

 

“A ghetto is a part of a city in which members of a minority group live, especially because of social, legal, or economic pressure.[1] The term was originally used in Venice to describe the part of the city to which Jews were restricted and segregated.”

 

 

 

The point is that you did not use the word ghetto as a noun but as an adjective, as in "ghetto folks"

 

Here is an article from 2005, which comments on the use of the word ghetto as an adjective.

The title is self explanatory:

http://www.blackcommentator.com/132/132_guest_ghetto.html

 

Whilst the word ghetto may hold for you no prejudicial overtones or undertones, why not just apologise for unintentionally offending people for whom it does.

[eatsallinsects]

I hate to disappoint you but the Nat King Cole impersonator was Donnie. I can't think of his last name at the moment.....but yes, he was especially friendly and nice. He only does NKC.

 

******************************************

Not disappointed but grateful for the information.

Need to research through our saved daily programmes and see exactly which voyage he was on with us.

EAI

[GCurry]

Whilst the word ghetto may hold for you no prejudicial overtones or undertones, why not just apologise for unintentionally offending people for whom it does.

The word would be Los Barrios in Mexican Spanish.

I realize that I don't have a dog in this fight, but why should she apologize for being herself?? This is her thread giving a review of a Cunard Cruise. If you don't like how she writes, you don't have to read it. People from all over the world post on these boards and should be free to express themselves.

Those that hijack the thread to try to force their values on others are the ones who should apologize!!:)

[cwn]

PunkiC......Glad to know you had such a good time with SPT. When we were there almost 20 years ago, you had to have a very expensive Russian visa or do a ship sponsored tour. It was before internet travel, so contact with SP travel groups was not easily made and I am not even sure they could arrange a visa for you.

 

We arranged for a two day private tour through the ship and had a wonder experience similar to yours. A small group private tour is the only way to go there as there is so much to see. I wanted to go to a book store to see if they had a nice hard bound coffee table picture book, the ones available at the gift shops were all poorly made paperbacks. We did get to a local book shop, but the guide had to buy the book for me and I paid him back later in US$. That was an improvement over our first visit to Russia in the early 80's when we weren't even allowed to mix with the locals in eating places or shops, but had to be content with private dinning rooms and special tourist only shops. Things have changed!

 

Thanks for the rest of the story on Parker. I agree with you, your use of ghetto is not out of line. In fact I could just imagine the performance. But then, apparently a teacher using Wikipedia is not approved of either.

[Jimsgirl]

The * were set by the system, not by me. Obviously it is not allowed to call the evil by their chosen name.

 

I also had the name of the National Socialist party **** out, when I used it. Strange since I am sure I could use GOP as a name for the Republican party .

 

Perhaps the moderator is too young to remember the evil that was done by the *****, which is a pity, because the ideas behind that evil still continue, in many parts of the world today.

[brigittetom]

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Not disappointed but grateful for the information.

Need to research through our saved daily programmes and see exactly which voyage he was on with us.

EAI

 

I do know that he was also on the 5 day July 4th celebration trip following our Christmas trip. We were on both the 2011 and 2012. I was so impressed by him (aside from his talent) because he was so friendly and seemed to genuinely enjoy talking to people. Of course he was also missing his wife and kids because it was so close to Christmas. :)

[3rdGenCunarder]

I also had the name of the National Socialist party **** out, when I used it. Strange since I am sure I could use GOP as a name for the Republican party .

 

Perhaps the moderator is too young to remember the evil that was done by the *****, which is a pity, because the ideas behind that evil still continue, in many parts of the world today.

 

The mods don't do this. It's an automatic function, primarily designed to avoid nasty name calling. It's unfortunate that some words, like the one in question, cannot be used in a straightforward historical reference, but that's a side effect of software that is meant to keep posts civil. The mods couldn't possibly review every post for offensive words, so they rely on the software to do it.

[English Voyager]

The word would be Los Barrios in Mexican Spanish.

I realize that I don't have a dog in this fight, but why should she apologize for being herself?? This is her thread giving a review of a Cunard Cruise. If you don't like how she writes, you don't have to read it. People from all over the world post on these boards and should be free to express themselves.

Those that hijack the thread to try to force their values on others are the ones who should apologize!!:)

 

Is this an attempt to curb my freedom of expression? :)

[imacruizer]

The word would be Los Barrios in Mexican Spanish.

I realize that I don't have a dog in this fight, but why should she apologize for being herself?? This is her thread giving a review of a Cunard Cruise. If you don't like how she writes, you don't have to read it. People from all over the world post on these boards and should be free to express themselves.

Those that hijack the thread to try to force their values on others are the ones who should apologize!!:)

 

Thank you, Gene, for a very well written post. That's why they call you Gentleman Gene! Good to see you on the Cunard forum.

Beth

[Slow Foxtrot]

....

I realize that I don't have a dog in this fight, but why should she apologize for being herself?? This is her thread giving a review of a Cunard Cruise. If you don't like how she writes, you don't have to read it. People from all over the world post on these boards and should be free to express themselves.

Those that hijack the thread to try to force their values on others are the ones who should apologize!!:)

 

Well said G.Curry. It appears that there are certain politically-correct people who seem to be everywhere on these boards desperately looking for something to be offended by. Punki goes to great lengths and some expense to give her account of cruising on the Queen Victoria and, as G.Curry says, if you don't like it don't read it!

Political-correctness is a curse on society. I'm sure most readers saw nothing 'offensive' in Punki's comments but if the word 'ghetto' gives you a touch of the vapours perhaps it's time to get a life!

[English Voyager]

Well said G.Curry. It appears that there are certain politically-correct people who seem to be everywhere on these boards desperately looking for something to be offended by. Punki goes to great lengths and some expense to give her account of cruising on the Queen Victoria and, as G.Curry says, if you don't like it don't read it!

Political-correctness is a curse on society. I'm sure most readers saw nothing 'offensive' in Punki's comments but if the word 'ghetto' gives you a touch of the vapours perhaps it's time to get a life!

 

Was the article in 'The Black Commentator', to which I posted a link in Post 112, written from the perspective of Political Correctness?

 

Being aware oneself, or making someone aware, of what might cause offence does not mean that one is an advocate of Political Correctness.

[esmo]

The word would be Los Barrios in Mexican Spanish.

I realize that I don't have a dog in this fight, but why should she apologize for being herself?? This is her thread giving a review of a Cunard Cruise. If you don't like how she writes, you don't have to read it. People from all over the world post on these boards and should be free to express themselves.

Those that hijack the thread to try to force their values on others are the ones who should apologize!!:)

 

I wish this board had a "Like" button!

[Salacia]

...Here is an article from 2005, which comments on the use of the word ghetto as an adjective.

The title is self explanatory:

http://www.blackcommentator.com/132/132_guest_ghetto.html

 

...

 

English Voyager, thanks for the link to that thought provoking piece. -S.

[eatsallinsects]

I do know that he was also on the 5 day July 4th celebration trip following our Christmas trip. We were on both the 2011 and 2012. I was so impressed by him (aside from his talent) because he was so friendly and seemed to genuinely enjoy talking to people. Of course he was also missing his wife and kids because it was so close to Christmas. :)

 

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We were on the July 4 trip on QM2 in 2012 and I will bet it was on that trip we conversed with him. Thanks for making it easier to research!