30 October- We can board after midday.

In the morning we took a walk around the local Auchan Hypermarket, basically to kill some time, before we head off to the port to join our SHIP called the Norwegian GEM. Its not Norwegian really, it’s an American ship based out of New York, but resisted in the Bahamas no doubt for tax and other reasons, and it is returning from it’s summer cruising in the Med to enable it to start it’s Caribbean cruising season.

We arrived at the Port at about 1245 and there must have been about eight large cruise liners and a couple of large ferries all tied up alongside the various quays. We checked in and had to wait about an hour before we could board and so purchased a very expensive coke and panini sandwich to keep the hunger at bay and then we noticed a little table where your could already book a table for dinner and so we booked the steak restaurant called Cagney’s.

At about 2pm we were finally allowed to board and headed off to our cabin, actually they call them state rooms although I am not sure why.

This is the first cruise Noel has been on although Jennifer has been several times before with her father. Noel’s experience of a cruise is largely confined to the Dover-Calais route and sometimes the Portsmouth - Le Havre or Isle of Wight ferry so he was surprised when they would not let him bring the car on board - Ha.

The cabin (oops, sorry state room) is on the 11^th Floor (deck)(level) of the boat (ship) and it is a reasonable size and looks slightly bigger than our caravan, with a nice balcony where there is a great view of the old Docks. Before leaving we were called to muster to find out what to do when the ship hits an iceberg or similar and how to don our life belts, Noel could not find the bottle of brandy on his which was quite disappointing. The Captain is Finnish, the rest of the crew a bit like United Nations but mostly Filipino and they were all very friendly.

The ship (boat) is run on what they call a freestyle basis which means you do not have to use the same restaurants all the time and you can eat when and where you like and 24 hours a day we understand, not for us but looking at some our co-passengers it reminded me of the Monty Python sketch of, ”just a little wafer-thin mint sir” ??.

As we left port the Pope came to bless the ship and the bands played (well actually it was the on board music really) as we slid past the old town of Venice with its St Marks Square and other visible Church towers and there are some lovely views over the old town.

Cagneys restaurant was pretty much empty for the time we were there and the steaks were very good and so was the bottle of Argentinean Malbec wine which accompanied the meal. For some of the specialist restaurants there is an extra cover charge which is between USD 10 and USD 25 per person but the other restaurants which are included in the fare were quite full.

After dinner we found a bar, surprise, surprise! And listened to a Filipino, playing a guitar, playing songs from James Taylor and Cat Steven etc and he was excellent. He then stopped singing around 9 pm and so off we toddled and ended up in the large bar where there was a Filipino band playing and so we did a little bit of dancing but we were put to shame by another couple who had obviously practised the tango for the last couple of years but we didn’t mind.

At 10 pm the band took a break and we went to the cabin to catch up on some well earned rest.

We are promising to go to the gym tomorrow before breakfast, gosh that could be a big mistake..