A New Chapter

A New Chapter

22^nd July 2011

Off with the old and on with the new! That’s right, it’s embarkation time again. 

We are back in Civitavecchia, Italy. The two week cruises have finally come to a close and we are at the beginning of a new chapter. 

For the next 7 weeks we’ll be doing seven day cruises and inter-porting. Inter-porting, is basically having two cruises merged into one. We’ll be having two embarkation days, one in Civitavecchia and the other in Genoa, Italy.

The countries we’ll be visiting this time are: Civitavecchia (Italy), Genoa (Italy), Cannes (Monte Carlo) (Italy), Barcelona (Spain), Palma de Mallora (Spain) and Corsica (France). 

Although I lived in Spain for 14 years I’ve only ever driven through Barcelona and never had a chance to look around. I’m incredibly excited about some of the new ports but there’s one in particular: Cannes (Monte Carlo). I’m desperate to go to Monte Carlo, it’s a place I’ve wanted to go to for years. I’ll literally be running around the F1 race track snapping away.

Approximately 2,200 guests would be embarking today and roughly 1,200 would be Italians. Italian season is in full swing! Italians are notorious for not trying to speak another language other than their own, a little like the England and Americans! 

Instead of setting up three backdrops, we set up two inside the terminal. Another bonus was we were allowed to wear our white shirts. Wearing the black GTP shirts in the sun last cruise was an utter nightmare. We were roasting! 

During my five hour stint on embarkation I picked up a few Italian phrases from Fabio and Sandra. Nothing special but useful things like, “let’s get your photo” and “have a nice day”. Every time I try to count one, two three in Italian, the two comes out in Portuguese. I guess you can’t have everything!

Things were slowing down and we were rapidly getting bored. An Italian family were walking towards our set up. Bouncing up to the guy I smiled and and laughed “Tutti Frutti… Let’s get your photo” in Italian. The guy didn’t look too impressed and abruptly replied “Italiano”. I really didn’t  know what to say, I was completely dumbfounded! 

Later on I told Sandra what had happened and she couldn’t stop laughing and called Fabio. Telling him what happened, he did the same but told me to be careful. “Frutti” sounds very similar to a slang word meaning “gay” in Italian, so the guest could have misunderstood me and thought I’d told them all they were gay. Oops!! Trying to look the least bit concerned failed as I creased up alongside Sandra.

Luckily enough there wasn’t a pax dril today, that’d be tomorrow once all the guests were on board. Unfortunately, there wasn’t time to get off the ship to have a look around in the port. 

Towards the end of the shift, as things were going quite, Jomar left to get us a burger from McDonald’s. We were all joking he’s trying to sway our votes as he’s not the most popular at the moment.

Once embarkation was over it wasn’t long until I was due to shoot LSP. My knee’s been playing up recently and not getting any better. It keeps blowing up like a balloon but I’m refusing to go to the medical facility. I’ll see if it sorts itself out. Sitting on the posing boxes, the ship was almost deserted. 

Smudging was impossible, I was either ignored or told no. During the entire one and a half hour stint I managed to take two photos – both were for a crew members passport. Sanela did the middle shift on LSP and came back with similar results. So much for hitting the 100 image target. We didn’t even scratch the surface.

Jomar has now come up with the bright idea of us working until midnight. Everyone was sitting around for the last hour with nothing to do. People were slowly drifting by earlier on in the evening but from 11 onwards, there was no one to be seen. Just us photographers. 

By the time we broke the studios down and closed the gallery it was 01.15. The printer in the office has broken down so we all had to head down to the lab to get our schedules for the next day.

By 02.00 I was wrapped up in bed. The alarm was on and I was dreading waking up at 06.30 for gangway!

Genoa, here comes the Mariner of the Seas!

Oh, and House Keeping left us all a present...

 ... which Hernan wanted to test his karate skills on...

... unfortunately, my camera battery died just as Hernan took his second attempted and kicked the toilet roll off the door handle!!