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....