My trip started on Monday with a 10 hour afternoon flight from Vancouver to Frankfurt airport, which was overall enjoyable and passed quickly, with the exception of the of the tag-team shrieking of two babies. We arrived in Frankfurt at 9:30 Tuesday morning, and after a relatively short layover I boarded my second flight to Rome, which passed pleasantly in conversation with an older German man.
Arriving in Rome, I was pleasantly surprised not to have lost any luggage. Last time I joined the ship, the airline lost my bass for a week, and I was only able to play because the ship's former bass player was able to leave his instrument on the ship for me to use.
I was greeted by an oily looking Italian man carrying a sign with my name on it, who was to take me to my hotel in Civitavecchia where I would be boarding the ship. He was friendly but spoke little English, so the 30 minute drive to Civitavecchia was passed in silence.
Civitavecchia is the port city of Rome and is quite beautiful, something that I somehow overlooked last time I was there, likely due to my preoccupation with going to Rome.
The hotel was far nicer than the ones I've been put up at on past contracts, which have been nice but relatively generic looking. The Hotel St George on the other hand felt like almost everything one could want out of an Italian hotel experience, with marble floors, winding staircases, and very tall ceilings. To top it off, the hotel was right in the heart of the city, right in front of the beach, and only a very short distance from the cruise ship terminal.
I dropped my stuff off in my room and met my roommate, one of the broadcasting techs on the ship, who gave me the lowdown on who's in the band, the shows we're playing and some minor changes to the ship. Overall, things are pretty much the same as when I left it a little the ship more than a year and a half ago. As with the last time I did the Mediterranean itinerary, we are being redirected from Egypt, and in place of going to Alexandria and Port Said we will be going to Istanbul and Naples. No complaints there.
Before dinner I took the opportunity to go on a run along the amazing beach front of Civitavecchia, and savoured one of the few moments I will get to be in a port city at night time.
I got back and went to the restaurant to use my dinner voucher. The restaurant was a classic Italian dining experience, with nice floors, round tables and classy servers. I felt surreal sitting on my own in this upscale Italian restaurant in Civitavecchia, and the feeling was exaggerated by my exhaustion from not having slept for over 24 hours. Pretty soon I was joined by my roommate and two other people who would be joining the ship at the same time as me. I spoke with a Romanian girl who is the guest services manager onboard, who described in detail the different kind of complaints that she has to deal from the different nationalities(it goes without saying that the english are the worst).
After dinner I went straight to bed, and slept decently well for three or four hours until my internal clock started protesting that it was only early evening Vancouver time and thus unacceptable to be sleeping. The rest of the night was spent stubbornly refusing to get up before seven o'clock, when I could get breakfast and then start heading to the ship.
It is now Wednesday, and I have boarded the ship, done some relatively painless safety training, met a bunch of new people, and am about to go see if the passenger buffet has changed at all in a year and a half.
I'm slightly exhausted, but pretty pleased to be back at sea.
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