After yesterday, it was back to normal and the first priority was to see how Paula was. A little bit better, but no rush to get moving, so a leisurely breakfast before opting to use the $15 ferry tickets. These had been charged to our cabin accounts, for both days and I had returned the unused Sunday tickets last night for a refund. We hopped on a coach immediately outside the terminal building that whisked us around the corner to the next dock, where we caught the exclusive Princess ferry shuttle to a spot close to St Mark’s square. This was a very steady, leisurely ride of about 20 minutes.
We ran the usual gauntlet of very mobile African street sellers, who seem to spend most of their day, scooping up their carefully laid out (fake) wares in their blankets and relocating before the local police appear, which they do with monotonous regularity.
We didn’t do much more than one block before Paula started to fade again, so we headed back to the boat and then of course, the ship, and a decent coffee before heading to the cabin.
At this point Paula was at an all-time cruise low, physically and emotionally, with the cough and bad chest seemingly not improving. Just to give you an idea of how low, we even considered going home, but first of all, a trip to the Doctor was on the cards and according to the Princess Patter, the medical centre was open 4:30pm.
When we got there, a notice on the door said that as it was a sector changeover day, the medical centre wouldn’t open until 5pm…
The nurse was very good and ascertained that there was no infection as such, just a virus and it was just a case of being patient and seeing it through. I’m not sure that Paula felt any better after that, but a spell in the spa pool certainly helped and we were joined by Ros and Arnold, Jo and Garry, dangling their feet in the warm water.
A late lunch/early dinner trip to HC about 5:15pm, then up to deck 12 for the Venice sail-away much later. It was quite late (after 10pm) and the ship was towed out backwards, then it turned almost into the adjacent dock, before heading out, with a tug literally in tow.
Although the sail-away is attractive at night, there are far fewer lights than at other places and let’s face it, a load of LED lights around Venice wouldn’t be right. Mind you, the enormous Gucci poster, covering most of a building almost adjacent to one of the most historic and well known squares in the world, was also deemed out of character.
Photographs were difficult but the low lux setting on the video camera made a huge difference to the detail and the quality and I got some decent footage.
So that is the second half started and one of the major topics of conversation was the sheer number of cruise ships around, particularly in Venice, and the number of tourists they dump onto the streets.
My own opinion is that cruising will continue to be popular and wide awake countries will start to take a good look at their facilities, including building quays or docks where they don’t currently exist and putting in an infrastructure to cope, and encourage local tourism development. Any cruise ship arrival is effectively export dollars earned – and lots of them. We are not sure what the average spend is from either the ship or the passengers, but pumping 2 or 3 million dollars into the local economy from each cruise ship (including a sizeable VAT/GST tax take in many countries) isn’t to be sniffed at.
And so to bed, a bit later than usual with Koper in Slovenia our next stop. Another walk off and wander as we reluctantly had to cancel Jo’s tour, but thankfully, Sharon and David have offered to go in our place.
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