At Sea

We sped on across a glassy sea towards Barcelona. We would need quite a high sustained speed to reach it on time but as that time was 0500 I am not quite sure why the rush. Since tides, I believe, are not a big deal in the Mediterranean, perhaps is to with having sufficient port time for resupply.

Anyway, I was looking forward to our day in that beautiful Spanish city as an opportunity to do several things more easily done on land than at sea where I am at the mercy of unreliable mobile communications and expensive internet connection.

Sea state notwithstanding, it was for while a bit of a rollercoaster ride today. At first it seemed that the CDC still had their grip on our catering arrangements. There was news of a good (better than £10) lottery win. We thought an e-mail purporting to be from AOL was probably phishing and narrowly escaped giving Greg’s credit card number to some online criminal, a shock. Then, at lunchtime normal service had been resumed in the Garden Cafe.

However necessary, the health restrictions they had impinged on our enjoyment of the cruise bringing a significantly less liberal regime to the ship. This ship also will be in Europe for many months and there are no plans for it to reposition. However, it sticks with the $US as the on board currency without even the facility to change Euros (large bills to smaller bills). On our back to back cruises alone our ports include Barcelona (3 times), Civitavecchia, Piraeus, Valletta, Las Palmas, Funchal and Malaga; go figure.

I learned that I was by no means the only dissatisfied passenger on this cruise. Others had found that a large part of the crew were not very engaged and this makes a big difference (compared to previous cruise experiences with NCL or other companies). Maybe it is because a lot of them are coming towards the end of ten month contracts and that is a long time to work without a break.

We are looking forward to meeting new friends when the cruise changes in Barcelona tomorrow. Having caught up on my reading, I am going to start a new blog when I am back in England to review books. I also plan blogs for restaurant and travel reviews.