Cruising The Seven Seas: Vision of the Seas

Vision of the Seas

28^th September 2011

The night before I’d spoken to Reuben about the possibilities of working on the gangway in Kusadasi. Normally I’m on gangway, so it shouldn’t have been a problem but I just wanted to make sure.

Vision of the Seas would be docking alongside us which means I could meet up with Lee for a couple of hours. During the evening I’d received a call from Lee to ask when I was free. We’d arranged to meet at about 12:30, after my tour. I couldn’t wait!!!

For once I didn’t have to drag myself out of bed. I was excited about seeing Lee and couldn’t wait to get on tour, get as many pictures as possible and run back to the ship at 12:30. At the end of the tour is a stop at a carpet and jewellery store. There’s no point me going in as I can’t take pictures so I usually just stroll back to the ship. Today, I did an Olympian speed walk back.

Looking at my tour group, I thought I was pretty lucky. I had a mixture of English speaking people. Young, old and families with children/teenagers. Our first stop was the Virgin Mary’s House. It’s a place I’ve never been before. I’d seen the photos the other photogs had taken so I had an example of the type of images I needed to come back with.

On our tour bus, we all had a little paper brown bag. Each contained a small clay water carrier with the Virgin Mary carved into the front, survey, map and two Evil Eye pins. The clay pottery was to collect water from the Virgin Mary's House.

Just as we were getting off the bus, the majority carrying their clay water pots, one lady behind me announce she didn’t have one. The tour guide rush around to see if he had any spare. He didn’t. She’d been late for the tour, we'd had almost left without her, so the others on the bus were looking at each other in frustration at this latest hiccup.

Walking up to Virgin Mary’s house, there were guests already there and coming out from the small stone building. I couldn’t go inside, I’d be in the queue for too long and needed to get the image count. Positioning myself, I quietly started smudging guests to have their pictures taken. Security guards were watching me so I had to be careful (we aren’t allowed to take photos for financial gain). If caught, you can be thrown out!

Following the path along we came to Mary’s Wishing Wall. The long strip of wall was covered in small white piece of paper with wishes written inside. It’s quite hard to describe the scale of things, so I’ll see if I can find an image to upload.

Back on the bus I noticed my clay pot was missing. The lady who didn’t have one (who was sitting behind me) came on shouting to her friend “I’m so glad I found a vase for my holy water”. What the hell!? The lady had taken my little souvenir! As I’ve been on the tours so many times I’m happy to give mine away, if I already have one back on the ship. I didn’t though. To be honest I was slightly pissed that someone, who is apparently so religious and desperate for holy water, would steal something so small. Isn’t there something about not stealing in the bible? Obviously, she must have missed that part.

My tour guide was a royal pain in the arse telling the guests “they don’t need big fancy cameras to capture their memories” right after I’d told him I was the ship’s photographer. Usually we ask the tour guides to announce that we are the ship’s photographers and they do it without a problem. This guy just flapped his hand and told me to get on the bus.

Arriving at Ephesus, the tour guide told me to wait to one side and if there was enough entry tickets, I could go in. What!? Luckily there was a spare! Leaving the tour behind I walked straight down to the library at Ephesus. I passed all the Royal Caribbean tours which gave me a head start, a good chance of getting a high image count.

I waited for about 20 minutes before the tours started coming down. There was a security guard watching me. Ephesus is one of the places we’ve previously had problems in. Some of the photographers have been kicked out while others were made to delete all their pictures from their memory card!

Quietly I started smudging. Just before the crowds came down I put my Royal Caribbean name badge on. It helped get people to have their photo taken. It wasn’t long until I was racking up counts. When my group came down nearly all of them wanted pictures together. It was fantastic. I showed one lady a picture I’d taken of her. She started calling her friends over to have their pictures taken too. Result!

It wasn’t long until one of Ephesus’s own photographers came down. He wasn’t happy with finding a ship photographer doing his job. He spoke a bit of English and using hand signals, I told him to stand by me and get the same picture I was. He did and before I knew it, he was doing the same for me!! We were helping each other out, smudging and getting the photos. Things couldn't get any better!

I managed to gather the guests from my bus for a group shot in front of the library. The photo was excellent! I really hope a couple of copies will sell.

A guest was even nice enough to offer to take my picture using my Nikon D90. I was unsure about it, but let him. His wife and friend wanted to jump in the picture yelling “wait, wait, we want a picture with our favourite photographer”.

Moving along, I headed down towards the exit where there’s a Gladiator show. When the show was over it’s a great opportunity to get guests to have their photos taken perched upon the thrones on the stage.

Nearly all the tours were on free time so there weren’t many guests around or willing to have their photo taken. They were all running around like blue arse flies buying drinks, Turkish delights, souvenirs and anything else they saw as a bargain. Having said that, I really cannot complain! Today's tour had started off a bit slow but arriving at the Ephesus, things couldn't have gone better or smoother.

Ephesus was our last stop. Back on the bus, it wasn’t long until we were at the carpet store. Jumping off the bus I took the lollypop sign from the owner of the store who was trying to convince me to go inside and “just look. No buy. Just look.” As I was walking off he called “Louise, I’ve been waiting my whole life for you. Please just look. No buy.” He must have read my name badge. I shudder at anyone who calls me Louise! His smudging techniques made me smile, I’ll be honest. Even if you’ve heard it several times before, you can’t help but smile at it all. We have to smudge too, to get business so you see the sellers in a different light. Yes, they can appear annoying but they are doing their job and we know, as photographers, just how much rejection, denial and shit they can get from customers.

Back at the ship, security told me Lee had been looking for me. Running in, I found Dione and gave him my memory card. Security started ringing my cabin. It was Lee, he was outside waiting for me. Grabbing my computer I ran out for a massive bear hug!!

We were both starving so decided on going for something to eat, preferably somewhere with an internet connection. Lee knew just the place. I’d never been to the bar before but the atmosphere was good and the food too.

One thing I learnt from Lee was that he absolutely hates salad of any kind sitting on his plate. Asking Lee if he wants salad is almost an insult to him! We sat about chatting about absolutely everything while surfing the net. Lee got through to his parents in Cannes. They remembered me as the girl with the long blonde hair. His parents always make me laugh!

Going back to the ship, I quickly dropped my stuff off and grabbed my swimming trunks. We were going to head to the beach together. While changing Sandra came into the cabin crying like a baby. She’d gone out this morning, after gangway, for a walk around. She walked into a shop to check out some jeans. The owner, a Turkish lady, started pushing the jeans onto her telling her to try them on. Sandra didn’t want to but asked for the price. The lady refused to give her the price and told her to try them on. Giving up, Sandra walked out the shop. The lady started shouting after Sandra calling her a whore, telling her “you treat me like shit because I am a woman, you whore” and basically told her to fuck off out the shop.

Next shop Sandra walked into, she found a pair of jeans that she liked and asked how much. The guy grabbed her and said she could have the jeans for 50% off, if she gave him a kiss. She tried pulling away but he wouldn’t let her go or leave the store. In the end she managed to get out and ran back to the ship. Once back on board and in the cabin, she burst into tears - with bloody good reason too!!

That wasn’t the only thing that had got her down. She originally wanted to go out with the other guys but they were all “too busy”. David was going out with Regina and neither of them would wait for her to get out of her gangway costume. Hernan went out with Eve for a bit and just left. Zoran said he was too tired to go out, closed the door and went to bed. And I wasn’t around when she’d finished gangway because I was on tour.

Dragging her out of bed I told her she was coming to the beach with me and Lee. We both had about an hour and a half before we had to be back on ship. Hernan came back into the corridor as we were leaving and decided he was going to come with us. Sandra looked a bit miffed about that!

Outside, we met up with Lee again, who was ringing my cabin from security’s deck phone. As soon as we left the port, we saw the bus pulling away and then it clicked. We could only go to two beaches and one was “Ladies Beach”. There are only two beaches in Kusadasi that we knew of where females could go.

We decided against waiting for the next bus and walked along the seafront. Spotting a small bar we stopped for a drink. The four of us were laughing and joking about the fun times we’d had in the past. Lee and Sandra had never worked together but by the way we all got on, you’d never suspect.

Time flew by and soon it was time for us to get back to our ships. Lee had to do some paperwork before opening the gallery. Sandra, Hernan and I had to get back for crew all aboard at 16.00. It’s a shame as I didn’t have work until 20.00.

The rest of the evening spent in the gallery, went smoothly. To be honest, there wasn’t really anything to do. This cruise is by far the slowest I have ever seen. We were half way through the cruise and only a fraction of the gallery had photos on display. By now we’d have most of the gallery full. That might sound like a good thing, not much to display, bin and condense but it also meant a huge amount of mass rejection, standing around and low sales. Low sales obviously means low money and at the end of the day, that was all we were here to do. Work like hell for 6 months and get paid to do so.