Cruising The Seven Seas: GBP Saves the Day!

GBP Saves the Day!

18^th September 2011

Usually we’d be docking in Naples, Italy. The destination was changed just 48 hours before the cruise started. There have been riots and numerous strikes throughout Naples and the Captain deemed it temporarily unsafe.

Needless to say, the change in itinerary hasn't gone down too well with many of the guests. One in particular wanted to get off the ship in Civitavecchia, forfeiting the entire cruise! $250 credits are being handed out to guests who complain and as you can imagine, news spread like wildfire and the number of complaints sored… so did Royal Caribbean’s cost.

Instead of Naples, we'll be docking in Valletta, Malta. Very few people seemed excited to see Valletta, Malta and were more looking on the negative side of things. It was our last port for this particular cruise and us photographers couldn’t wait to get out and about to explore. None of us have been to Malta before. We really didn’t know what to expect. To top is off, who knows if and when we'll ever visit again?

Arriving at 13.00, we had a much later gangway to the usual. The guests coming off the ship were surprisingly in a much better mood than usual.

Sandra was dressed up in my Crete Girl dress as “Malta Girl” and Fabio shooting her. Zoran was shooting Hernan, decked out in his Spartan mini dress costume. I was supposed to be shooting the rail due to an incredibly wide gangway, it was nearly impossible. Dragging the rail to the side – I hadn’t taken a single photo – I started free shooting. It was the first time I’d ever been a free shooter on gangway. The port itself is surrounded by great views, plus you could get a cracking shot with the Mariner of Seas in the background. Running, walking and skipping up to people I started smudging them in together getting photos of couples, large groups and little kids. My image count went sky high within no time.

Gangway was finished in 1.5 hours rather than the 3 hours we were scheduled for. There were less than 300 aboard and we’d hit our targets. Hernan and Zoran had 480, Fabio and Sandra with 490. I had 240 photos which smashed my 150 image target.

Meeting outside the ship; Fabio, Zoran, Hernan, Sandra and I headed towards the port’s exit. Stopping to admire the place and take photos, David and Regina joined us. Walking along, it wasn’t long until we found out the traffice flowed on the right side of the road. We only found this out by chance – David nearly got run over by a bus coming around the corner!

Jumping on the bus to the centre, we couldn’t help but laugh. It was a small, rickety, ancient, old fashioned bus. Armed with cameras, we started firing away. The old man driving the bus was sticking his head out the window shouting “Bus! Bus! Town centre! Bus Bus!” Obviously it wasn’t long until someone joined in... That certain person was Hernan. The bus driver loved Hernan mimicking him!

It was only a short drive to the centre and it wasn’t long until David and Regina disappeared from the group. The rest of us carried on wandering around taking pictures or in some cases taking pictures of each other taking pictures. There are photos from different angles, all taken by someone else. Seeing the pictures later, some had been taken that we had no idea about! Four different points of view through images.

The buildings throughout Valleta are massive monuments. Everything was on a grand scale and the details within the buildings are immense. Everywhere you turned, there was something to amaze you. Zoran commented a couple of times “this place must have such an important place in history. Look at the buildings, everything”. It summed the place up in a nut shell.

Throughout Valletta you could see the huge amount of British and Italian influence. There was a monument of Queen Victoria in front of the library with words engraved in Italian. It was like someone spliced the best of both worlds together and came up with Malta. The question on our minds was “why hadn’t we come here before?” We still don’t know the answer to this day.

Stopping off at a bar to grab a beer, we ended up with 1.5 litres jugs in our hands – not that we were complaining. Of course, there were endless rounds of photos taken, especially with Hernan’s 50mm fixed focal lens.

Time was ticking and Fabio soon had to be back on board for work. We asked for the bill. Getting our wallets out, I realized that I’d forgotten to exchange dollars to Euros and only had about €6. Fabio and Sandra were the same. Zoran only had Dollars which the waiter wouldn’t expect. The beers were €4.20 each. Luckily all of us managed to scrimp and scrape together to get the money for his beer.

The ultimate piss take came in the form of Hernan, looked over to us and said “I didn’t bring any money with me, I thought you’d have enough to pay for me”. Did he think we were walking money bags? The waiter wouldn’t accept US Dollars. Full stop. All of a sudden, after five minutes of frustration, the waiter said “We do accept British Pounds… you know Sterling?” Jumping up, I remembered I had a £5 note in my wallet. I'd completely forgotten about and initially left it in my wallet in case of an emergency, such as a Starbucks stop at Heathrow airport. If it wasn’t for that fiver stuffed in my wallet, I don’t know what we’d have done… we would have literally been screwed – well, Hernan would have been anyway.

Getting up laughing about the whole scenario, we thought it’d be best to walk back to the ship – especially as we didn’t have any money for the bus fare. It wasn’t bad, the journey back was all down hill and we had some beer to walk off. We were all still snapping away and ended up taking nearly 300 in total between us!

By the end of our day, we were shattered. Fabio had to go straight to work while the rest of us were lucky enough to have an hours sleep before the night shift began.

All in all, it was a fantastic day out and we’ve got a massive amount of photos to document it. Valletta is an excellent, splendid place to visit. It’s a shame it was our first and last time there. When you compare the city to places like Genoa (we docked there a total of 7 times) the difference is the scale of the Grand Canyon. To be honest, it’s incomparable. Valletta wins hands down!

So again, the main question still playing on our minds “how comes we aren’t going back to Valletta?”