A Little Bit of Home...

For those of you that know my mom, this post will make you laugh...

The last night of our last cruise, we had a pretty big lineup, and this lady comes to the desk, and she was from Canada. She went to someone else, and she said that I had helped her yesterday, or at least spoken with her, so she had brought me something. And just what did she have? Two boxes of girl guide cookies. She said that she was a comissioner, and I replied that my family was in guiding, so I understood. Anyway, this actually did sort of make my night, it made me think of home. Of course, I realize that I might be sort of creating a monster, maybe the next time my mom goes cruising she'll start packing boxes of cookies in her suitcase.

Anyway, only just over 2 weeks until I'm home. I don't have flights yet, but I should know in the next couple of days. I think I'll just have to do like I did last time, and do a bunch of posts once I get home with lots of pictures. I hope everything is going fine in Canada, and hopefully the weather is getting nicer for me.

Randomness

Okay, so I have mostly given up on doing many posts. Just no fun without putting up pictures. I'm getting near the end of this contract, which I think is a good thing... starting to get cranky with the guests.

It really surprises me how many people sort of put their brains in "sleep mode" when they're on vacation. Like the lady who a few cruises ago comes to the desk almost in tears. She had just received all of her bags except for one, and now couldn't remember whether she picked it up from the airport or not. I explained to her that it isn't uncommon for the bags to get separated and arrive at different times to the room. Had her fill out our report for lost luggage anyway, just in case, and had someone call the lost & found at the airport for her. And when she filled out the description of the bag? Bright red duffle bag. How do you miss that at the airport? And isn't it the most important thing before you leave the airport to make sure that you have all your bags, and to make sure that they are in fact your bags? Surprisingly for a lot of people it's not...

Our department is in the middle of planning an all-crew party in the Starquest Disco. Should be fun, but it's a lot of work. This is going to happen next cruise.

Really, lately I don't seem to have too much time to do much of anything. Although I have had time to figure out that if I work out my hourly wage with my salary, I get paid somewhere in the range of $5.50 -$6.80 an hour. And they wonder why we have such high turnover...

I do have a day off next cruise too, which I think I'm taking in Rhodes. Hopefully that will be interesting. Or at least relaxing. This cruise we have lots of kids because of Easter and March break, which is of course bringing out the crazies. Only 7 more days left of the cruise. And then only 2 more cruises left before I sign off, which is still listed as being May 11th.

Stupid Computer

Okay, so I had every good intention of posting not one, but two (yes TWO) posts today, both with pictures... but alas, the internet is not letting me upload photos to the website, I keep getting an error message, and it won't take the pictures. So, no pictures for you. But I did try. I promise.

On the cruising side of things, we just had some more changes to our team. Last cruise two people left, Marcelo, the Brazilian who was here my first contract too, and Hugo, who is from Mexico and is transferring to another ship after his vacation. So we have 3 new team members, since Betsy is covering the vacation of the concierge.

We now have Rosa from Portugal, Nick from Romania, and Simona from Italy/South Africa. We're starting to get a bit of a Romanian mafia going at the desk, we have 2 others as well. Maybe I'll start to pick up some Romanian.

In other news, I did get to the pyramids, and you would have seen the pictures, but the internet is stupid. Don't blame me, blame the internet. You'll just have to wait for another day to see the pictures.

New Itineraries

Okay, so as many people have pointed out to me, it has been a long time since I made a post. And I have yet to post any pictures yet either... but I have many reasons (ahem, excuses), as to why...

First of all, we had the 2 long holiday cruises. These were 14 & 15 day cruises, which I discovered is far too long to have the same guests onboard. Especially when they are extremely needy guests with lots of complaints. Especially when you have a new supervisor who basically does not now how to do even the simplest of guest services tasks... But really, I would just rather not think about those two cruises now, they are thankfully in the past.

Right now we have started our two new itineraries, which we will be doing until the end of my contract here - May 22nd is my sign-off day, and I am counting down the days already... Basically we have 2 cruises that we alternate between. There's the Morocco & Canary Islands cruise, and then the Greek Isles & Egypt cruise.

Learning about the new ports has definitely been interesting... especially since we don't have all that much information on the ports, but we have managed to struggle through. I finally made it out into Egypt last cruise. We had some technical difficulties the cruise before, with the person who I was supposed to go out with's shore pass going missing. I have not yet made it to the pyramids, but hopefully soon. This time we managed to get to the shopping mall in a taxi, which was quite an experience in itself. As we left the port in the taxi, I started seeing a few carts with horses pulling them. I mistakenly thought that these were just a tourist trap. Not so much. The cars have to share the roads with lots of horses and carts, and driving between the lines is pretty much not a concern for people. Neither is crossing at a corner, or while the light is green, or even while cars are stopped. These people have no fear I tell you. I on the other hand, had lots of fear. I don't think I will be going out walking around any time soon.

Anyway, our new itinerary has been interesting, and I will write more later, however I am doing laundry, and it is just about time to put it in the dryers. We are having problems with the crew internet working in our cabins, so it is a bit more difficult to get online and post lately. Hopefully they will have things fixed soon.

Lifeboat Capacity: 150 people

So I am finally off the night shift. But the day coming off of the night shift was something in itself. Since it is winter, and there are a lot of storms in the Mediterranean right now, we had to miss a port this cruise. There was a really big storm as we were supposed to come into Civitavecchia (the port for Rome), so we had to delay coming into port until around 6:00 pm, when we were supposed to arrive at 7:00 am. We have a new captain onboard this cruise however, so at least he came up with some solutions instead of just missing the port altogether.

We ended up having an overnight in Civitavecchia which ran into the next day. This also meant that we would have to miss Mykonos, Greece, but given the weather, we probably would have missed it anyway.

The night before we arrived to Rome was supposed to be my last night shift, so I was excited when I found out that we would have the overnight, since I would be able to get off the ship then. No such luck. They changed the schedule, so I had to work an extra night. So everyone else got to enjoy the night out but me. We always have a boat drill for the crew in Civitavecchia because all the guests get off the ship early, and we won't disturb them too much. Of course, this happens around 9:30am, so I hadn't slept yet. There are two parts to the drill. The first part we have emergency duties, and an emergency station. I have to go and check off that a bunch of crew are at their spots. Then the second part we have to go to our muster stations, where we would abandon ship if we had to. While we were at the second part, the Safety Officer comes over to my station, and says, "above you, in those two boxes, take out the lifejackets, and put them on" then we were instructed to go down to deck number 2, where we had the pleasure of filling a lifeboat.

I'm not sure what the exact purpose of filling the lifeboat was, other than to annoy crew by having them all squished together for a half an hour while they get things organzied. Hopefully it wouldn't take that long during a real emergency.

When our drill was finally over, we had a team meeting, after which I decided that I should go out for lunch to enjoy Italian pizza for one of the last times, so I didn't get to have too much of a nap before I had to be in to work for 8:00 pm, since they decided for some reason that the 8 hours you already worked that day was not enough.

Anyway, I am thankfully happily off of the night shift, and back on days. Of course, my sleeping schedule isn't fully adjusted, but hopefully soon everything will be good, and my body will stop hating me for making so many changes to my internal clock. Today I was able to go out for lunch in Santorini, Greece, which was very nice, despite a very needy cat that kept jumping in everyone's laps. Tomorrow we will be in Turkey.

Starting on my birthday, we have our new winter itinerary, which includes the Canary Islands, Sicily, Morocco, Egypt, Malta, and some others... although I'm sure having boarding day on my birthday is one of the least ways I would like to spend it, it will be nice to be able to see some new ports.

Worst. Cruise. Ever.

Or at least that's what the guests have been saying lately. My supervisor seems to think this is the worst European cruise that he's been on, and he's been on the ship for 6 years. Here's a bit about why...

First off, we were supposed to go into Cannes, France as our first port. We were tendering there, but the wind was too strong, so we had to miss our first port. Which always sort of sucks, but it really doesn't start things off on a good note.

The guests seem to be a bit "cheap" this cruise too. Which I sort of don't like to say, because I hate grouping people in like that, but they don't seem to want to pay to book tours, but of course, none of them have done any research on the ports themselves, and have no idea on how to get around on their own. Nevermind the fact that none of them seem to understand the concept of a line, and just seem to gather on the sides of the desk because they can't seem to decide where they want to go. And then get mad at us when we tell them that the excursions desk or the foreign exchange is closed, but if they join our line we can help them out. (For those that don't know our ship setup, our desk is in the middle, and the other two are on each side of us, but there's no real separation of the desks, only a big column on each side, which I admit is sort of confusing).

Then of course we dock in Rome on a Sunday. Which means a lot of things are closed, like the Vatican Museum, where the Sistine Chapel is. Of course, travel agents should inform their guests of this at booking... but now it's our problem when they get onboard.

Then for a few days, things seemed to be going alright. We went to Venice, had our overnight (I ended up buying a nice paperweight that was sort of expensive, but it is Murano glass, and I got it for 10 euros off, I'll post a picture if I ever get my computer working with the internet).

Today, or I guess last night however, was the icing on the cake. The captain announced that we would again be missing a port, this time, Valetta, Malta. We of course had a sea day yesterday, and tomorrow is a sea day as well, before we return to Barcelona the day after that. Three sea days in a row. So now, the guests are cranky, they don't understand why we're doing this, and they seem to think that we're trying to get the guests to stay onboard so they'll spend money. Like our idea of a good time is to keep people onboard who clearly don't want to be there, so they can come and make our lives miserable? Like none of us wanted to get off this ship, because we are stuck in the crew areas, and a lot of people haven't even breathed fresh air in days?

Anyway, the captain is giving his "Captain's Corner" talk at 11:00 am today, and I'm VERY glad that I'm not him. We may have a possible mutiny on our hands. I have never been more happy to be on night shift than I am right now. I only had 3 or 4 guests coming to me, not the huge lines before. I think my favourite line though, was Tina told me that a guest was rather upset with her, and said, "well who should we talk to about this weather?" to which Tina replied, "I think God, ma'am." Tina is leaving soon, and really doesn't enjoy guest services. She's got a lot more nerve when it comes to talking back to guests that the rest of us.

So, that's pretty much been the fun that has been this cruise. Aside from the lady who always comes to see me at 7:00 am to talk about how dissapointed she is that there's no bibles in the staterooms. Apparently I should start reading it, but I should start with the new testament because the old one would just confuse me. She was a real joy to talk to early in the morning...

Finally Back on the Ship

So, after an already long vacation, and then a nice 2 week bought with a bad flu, I am finally back on the ship. My trip was fairly uneventful, aside from being pulled aside in the Toronto airport after customs. They took me to a room on the right hand side, and the customs officer asked me about four times if I really had nothing to declare. I of course answered no, that I was just in transit through the US. He then opened my bags and verified this.... very exciting.

My flights were good, we left a bit late from the JFK airport, someone needed some medical attention onboard, but they never fully let us know why. So then I got to Barcelona. More about Barcelona another time, when I'll post some pictures too.

Life on the boat has been fairly easy to return to. Everything is mostly the same, it is just taking some time to remember everything, and learn the new processes for things. We also have a mostly new team. There are I think four new hires since I left. I am now one of the more senior people on the team, which feels a bit weird since I was the newbie for so long. Right now we have 3 Mexicans, an Argentinian, a Britt, one other Canadian, an Italian, a Brazilian, and an Indian on the team. We're still very international.

Today was an interesting day. I'm not sure on the exact details, whether the immigration authorities changed their policies, or whether it was partly our fault, but they decided today that the Greek officials wanted to see all the non-EU passports before we were cleared to leave port today. This essentially meant that we needed to collect 1700 passports from guests.

I got called into work an hour and a half early, and got to stand in the Pier Terminal informing guests of this. There were two of us there stopping all our guests as they came in (there were I think 3 other ships there too, one was the QE2). I'm pretty sure that I will hear "are you a guest on the Brilliance? What country is your passport from? The local authorities are requiring us to collect all non-EU passports so that they can look at them before we are cleared to set sail this evening. If you have a passport with you now, we can collect it here, or if it is still on the ship, then you need to take it to Guest Services on deck number 4 as soon as possible..."

Of course lots of people didn't want to hand over passports. Especially Americans. "we've always been told never to surrender our passports to anyone when travelling". And a surprisingly large number of them seemed to think it was because of the election. But of course we were collecting all non-EU, not just American, but that seems to be how they think.

Anyway, I'm tired out now from standing on the pier for 5 hours telling everyone this constantly, and trying to relieve their fears that we will lose their passports. Times like these I sort of wonder what I'm doing here....