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Cellpic Sunday – Behind the Scenes Cruise Ship Tour

Chef Narrator.

First, please accept my wish for a Happy Easter to those who celebrate the most important and joyous holiday in Christianity.

For last week’s Lens-Artists Challenge on Thursday, I shared some photos from a behind-the-scenes tour of the Norwegian Bliss hotel facilities. The challenge was about photographing people, and it seemed appropriate to feature those people whom cruisers seldom see, those who work below the public decks. To keep that post short, I omitted several photos. I will share them today to provide more context about our tour below the public decks. Sorry for the unusually long Cellpic Sunday post.

Our visit to the allergen-free kitchen started with a description of how the kitchen works to prepare food for people who have food allergies. Behind the chef, some holiday decorations were getting ready for table displays. These images were captured on November 30, 2023.

Dedicated Elevators
Special elevators.

On our way to the kitchen, I spotted two nearby elevators. I noticed the small placards just above the floor buttons. One elevator is used to carry allergen-free meals up to the restaurant levels, and the other is used to carry dishes with food waste from the restaurants back down for disposal.

Daily linen wash
Part of the day’s towel laundry.

Our tour was in the morning, so we saw the laundry crew just starting the day’s laundry for bath towels and washcloths. By the end of the day, this pile will be folded, stacked on carts, and ready for distribution to the room stewards on the following day.

Industrial washing machines
Industrial washers.

These are the smallest washing machines we were shown. They would never keep up with that mountain of towels daily. Those machines were large and behind a fenced area, so I couldn’t get a decent photo of them. They were loaded from the side opposite where we were, and the carts were weighed to allow the washers to be loaded to maximum capacity with each cartful of laundry.

Entrance to the Crew's Gym
Entrance to the crew gym.

We didn’t get to see any of the crew’s leisure areas, and rightfully so. Crew members have their own restaurants and bars, and we happened to walk by the entrance to the crew gym. During their time off, they sometimes can check out and spend some shore time at the various ports of call.

For more photos from our Behind the Scenes tour, you can check out my photo challenge response with descriptions here, or I’ve put all of the images into a single Flickr album here. All of these images were captured with my Samsung S23U.

I encourage fellow bloggers to create their own Cellpic Sunday posts. I never have a specific topic for this feature, and the only rules are that the photo must be captured with a cell phone, iPad, or another mobile device… If you have an image from a drone or even a dashcam, that’s also acceptable. The second rule is to link your challenge response to this post or leave a comment here with a link to your post in the comment. Oh, you don’t have to post it on a Sunday.

John Steiner

35 comments

  20. Interesting tour, John. I’ve only taken a few cruises, but never seen the laundry area. Those are huge. My sister-in-law would love to see those. She worked in a nursing home laundry. Those machines are way taller than she is. 🙂

    Reply

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