Towel Art on the Rotterdam

 squid? scorpion? lobster? what are you?

Aside from being trained in housekeeping, cabin stewards on cruise ships also learn the "art" of towel folding. Each evening, a towel animal is left on the bed together with a couple of chocolates and the newsletter for the next day.

At first, I completely forgot all about them because they only started appearing on the third night. If the kids were with us, I know they would've been wondering where their little towel friends were. These animals here are from a recent Baltic cruise on Holland America's Rotterdam, in order of their appearance.

This must be a manta ray.

A cute little peacock, left on the night table.

I didn't know what this was. Looks like a a hermit crab without a shell.

A baby bull? These animals are quite small because they're made of hand and face towels only. The bath towels were too big and fluffy to use for the towel animals.

Again, this one is not too defined--is it a croco-turtle? (The girls said this is an anteater)

 

And on the last night, we had a dorky-looking monkey hanging from a light fixture. They were all cute. Glad I remembered to take pictures of each one to show the girls.  

Here are more animals from another cruise line. We had the kids with us then and they were very excited each evening.

They would try to guess what animal was waiting for them on the bed, and we weren't allowed to touch it until they got back from the Kids' Zone.

Then they would play with it until it fell apart.

If you left your shades in the room, this would eventually happen--a cool animal!

This was either on the Princess of Royal Caribbean, I'm not sure, but the towel art here was more elaborate than Holland America's. Probably because there are more kids on these boats.

 

It also depends on how creative and artistic the cabin attendant is.  This granny gorilla facing the TV with the remote in her hands was a funny surprise.

Kids are such an appreciative audience.