I've been on a wine cruise before and figured it would be similar - cushy and air-conditioned with obligatory snack/wine bar and tourist commentary that you're too busy talking over to hear. Instead we were met with a dingey boat that had seen better days. It appeared that they were trying to hide the fact that the boat was ancient and could do with a really good scrub by covering it with lashings of bright turquoise paint on the inside and hear-it-coming-orange on the outside.
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Kinda looked like this... CC wdlindmeiers |
About three minutes in to the cruise I was wondering why I even said yes because my stomach had already started doing flips. Not an issue, surely they'll turn on the aircon soon? Wrong. They didn't have any. On a boat where the windows didn't open and half of the roof was made of glass...
It was sweltering and despite it being a calm day I was starting to turn a lovely, and appropriately festive, shade of green. I asked Gopher Smith for a sexy spew bag. I thought he was taking the piss, the way most people mock me for intense sea sickness (I got sick on a cruise ship with 12 decks...) but no, they didn't have any. They don't stock them.
Are you fucking kidding me? What kind of public boat, particularly one that is on a WINE CRUISE serving a tonne of cheap goon to it's patrons, doesn't provide spew bags? Boats and booze, people! One of those is going to make at least one person yack.
Gopher, who looked like one of the Waugh brothers (the sexy one), gave me a shopping bag, complete with hole in the bottom. He might as well have handed me a paper cup and gone all Garth on me. "If you're gonna spew, spew in to this".
On disembarking, after having managed to not lose my lunch (if I'd had lunch - you had to pre-order food on the boat and we weren't told until we got there) I let the guys know they might want to invest in some vom pouches to which they replied "But people don't get sick on the Swan River". I'M PEOPLE, I GOT SICK! Fucker.
It got me thinking, what places have you been that have had the most obvious thing missing? Pub with no beer ala Slim Dusty? Hotel with no