It’s the blog that starts at 5:50 am again and as I sit here squinting at the monitor I wish you a very good morning. So, here we go with debarkation again and it’s dark outside. In a few minutes I will have to make my first announcement for guests to leave the ship and as always I will be very conscious that for many this is a sad day and there are not many smiles around the place. This is why I try and be as soft spoken as I can and also keeping each announcement as short as I can as well. I always finish with the words “have a safe journey home” and as I type this I have no idea why I am telling you…………..but it’s too late now I already did.

Yesterday while docked in Rome I discovered that we will have to tender in Dubrovnik this coming cruise……………….bugger. I was under the impression that we would not have to do this but the Captain informed me that we will indeed have to do for this call only so out come the tender plans again. More about that later in the week.

How did this cruise go? Well, I think it went well. Certainly, there can be no complaints about the weather as we had 12 straight days of sun and temperatures as high as 88 degrees in Athens. It was the perfect week not to be in on our Grand Mediterranean cruise as there has been lots of rain in France and Spain. This cruise however (did I tell you this already?) I have changed the activities a lot. Gone are the pool games and deck contests such as the Hairy Chest, Pool Olympics, Synchronized Swimming, etc. There really was no participation and as much as we tried we have reached that time of year when we have to adapt to the demographics of our guests onboard. These activities have been replaced with the very popular big screen movie trivia, famous places and faces clips, and more live music and video concerts on deck. I will also be starting the “matinee” movies at 2 pm as well which I have recommended to Todd that he keeps in during the TA crossing as they were so popular last time. So, most of the 2,900 guests had a wonderful time even though we had no baseball………………………talking of which.

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I have never seen the ship as quiet as it was last night……………….Good Morning everyone from Civi on our overnight stay before debarkation tomorrow. It’s 7:50 am and I still cannot get over how quiet the ship was yesterday evening following on from a long day exploring Tuscany, Pisa and Florence during our stay in Livorno.

I had swapped the shows around with second seating seeing the show at 7:15 pm before dinner with 1st sitting at 9 pm. The performer last night was Chris Watkins a brilliant fiddle player whose music includes some light classics, Irish folk music and some standards such as The Devil Went Down to Georgia, etc. Now, I have experienced Livorno nights when I have walked out on stage and seen half a house but goodness me, not like last night. There must have been 400 at the first show and maybe…maybe…..200 at the second show. I called the Maitre D who told me that on both sittings at least half the dining room was empty and that most people had eaten on the Lido deck and had gone to bed. After the shows (both giving standing ovations to the performer) I walked along the promenade deck and was astounded that the ship was so quiet………….all that was missing were a few tumbleweeds blowing down the Promenade. I made some notes for today’s blog……………here we go.

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