On the Malaspina, you are not allowed to be on the car deck. It's not an open deck like the Washington ferries. Every 4-6 hours they would announce a 15 minute period when passengers could go down to the car deck. I didn't quite get why until near the end of the trip. People had their pets in their cars and they had to be tended to. So the day before we came back, Barbara (another passenger I liked) and I would go down to the passenger deck to see what was going on. Sure enough, people had their dogs out; they were supposed to relieve themselves on the deck and cleaning materials were provided. Pretty soon, we made some dog friends. That's Zeus in the foreground, a very friendly German Shepherd. Also some angry cats who were not happy about the situation AT ALL as their staff cleaned out their pet carriers.
Only service animals were allowed above the car deck. I went up the elevator with one pit bull service dog. Her owner said that she was quite angry with him because she KNEW you were only supposed to pee and poop outside and what was up with this??? Yup, his pit bull service dog was looking reprovingly at him, this was just WRONG!
The scene on the car deck during one of the open intervals.
Also sometimes I felt like I was on a ship of vagrants because not everybody had a room. There were some tents on the upper deck. But basically you were allowed to curl up with your blankets or sleeping bag wherever.
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