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Lorraine from S Africa has to have a visa and the short version is that she couldn't get one without her
brother-in-law John's passport because he made the cruise booking, so we all had problems making it to
Venice. Next morning we chose a water bus to get from the hotel to the boat, but we were dropped miles from the boat and had to walk. Signage was poor and large docks are always difficult to navigate on foot. At the boat reception we were photographed, scanned for Ebola, photograhed again and searched for drugs and weapons. Finally on board, we then had an evacuation drill after which we descended into alcohol. Tonight we do 323 miles to Bari, we are all having a quiet day tomorrow. The boat is quite clean and one can tour the non public areas. Looking down at the water from deck 15 creates severe vertigo! The mostly non-english-speaking staff have been trained to be very pleasant. Our cabins are on the very top deck, with small balconies. Food is abundant and the standard is quite good, some set dishes a bit weird. BUT I told you that I was not looking forawrd to it ! There ia an RJ45 socket in my cabin but noone in reception has a cable to connect my laptop. My cabin TV has 28 channels one of which is BBC news but that does not work. I can watch sky news but no subtitles, making it useless for me. No other channel is in English. On board wifi is very expensive, with a system where if you don't sign off, the cost keeps rising. Just disabling wifi on the phone does not stop the accumulating charge. I tried the internet cafe but at £3.50 for less than 3 mins use it is insane, some 45 terminals and noone using them. The prohibitive wifi cost means I am using my phone as a hot spot via public phone networks whilst in range of shore towers. I have 2 euro electrical sockets in the cabin but they are too close together to take 2x13A plugs !! I think it will be difficult to retain my weight as eating and drinking are mainline. I decided to weigh myself, thinking the spa/gym would be able to do that, but no scales. So I visited the medical center who were delighted to let me weigh myself dressed, I can re-check as we go. The facilities are a full operating theatre and lots of medics lounging about, with no customers but me! Jan is delighted to be with her siblings. |
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