Wednesday, March 05, 2003

The Undersea World of Hondonius Aurelius Even though the temperature around these parts finally made it up to 50 (it's still supposed to snow tomorrow) I was more in the mood for a speaker at my scuba club meeting with a presentation on tropical dive sites. What I got instead was an interesting presentation on the wreck of the Andrea Doria. What really made it interesting was that he focused on the luxurious shipboard life and the design and artwork on the ship during its time in service, rather than the usual presentation of photos from the wreck (in over 200 feet of water) and the usual "show and tell" about artifacts recovered. One of the more interesting slides he showed was of a particularly awful looking suite on the ship known as the Zodiac Suite. A picture of it appears below in all of its "splendor." I think I would go nuts if I had to spend an 11 day cruise in there. You had to pay top dollar for that suite too as there were only four suites on the entire ship (unlike today's cruise behemoths). The other suites were quite a bit more tasteful. All in all the shipboard experience in those days must have been much more elegant than it is today with all of the "stuff-your-face" buffets that cruise ships seem to specialize in. Hey, even with airlines, remember when there was such a thing as the "jet set"? 11:57:41 PM    Go Ahead, make my day  []