As not all cruisers go Southampton – Southampton, these tips will apply to any fly cruisers, as much as for any holiday.

Copied from Independent Traveller.com

http://www.independenttraveler.com/travel-tips/packing-and-accessories/what-not-to-pack

My personal advice comes from someone wise, whose name I forget.  It is as follows:

Lay out everything on the bed. Everything. Bottles, clothes, gadgets, money, everything you intend to take.

Then take out half the clothes and put in twice the money.

Job done.

And a last word of wisdom from Dave Gorman: it is always cheaper to buy socks at the other end than to pay extra for having packed them.

In the latest blow to Carnival Cruise Line, a class action lawsuit is claiming that hot tubs on Carnival ships are infested with flesh-eating bacteria.

The suit alleges that hundreds of passengers contracted the MRSA virus on Carnival ships and calls for anyone infected to join in.

Tab Lankford claims he caught it on Carnival Paradise in December 2011 and almost lost his leg.

He spent a week in the hospital with doctors contemplating amputation, and running up $70,000 in medical bills.

Lankford claims someone in Carnival guest relations told him 50 other passengers on the ship also caught the virus.

Maria Osoriocano and Andrew Smith claim they caught MRSA and staphylococcus aureus in the hot tub of Carnival Fascination on a May 12 2012 sailing.

Attorneys for the three have filed a class action demanding that Carnival release the names of others who fell sick after using its hot tubs.

“Our clients – and we believe many others – have suffered horrendous infections from bathing in Carnival’s hot tubs,” said Sean Cleary, attorney for the Fascination couple.

“One problem is that these infections may take a few days to surface. By the time the passengers know they have been exposed, it is often too late to report the problem on the ship.”

A motion by Carnival to dismiss the class action was denied by Federal Judge Cecilia Altonaga of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida.

A Carnival spokesman said: “The lawsuit is meritless. All pools, whirlpools and water-based amenities on board our ships are properly maintained and their water content properties are routinely monitored. We take sanitation and cleanliness on our vessels very seriously and water quality is confirmed through periodic inspections by the U.S. Public Health service.

“Our guests may rest assured that these shipboard amenities are maintained via strict standards and practices to ensure a clean and safe environment. We decline to comment further given the pending lawsuit.”

By Cheryl Rosen, TravelMole US.  Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Of course, if the case was really “meritless”,, the Judge in Florida might have noticed…

Carol Marlow has been fired.

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The new Boeing 787 Dreamliner can carry about 250 passengers. This blog was viewed about 1,300 times in 2012. If it were a Dreamliner, it would take about 5 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

On 1st October 2012, Channel 4 broadcast an episode of their Dispatches current affairs programme entitled “Cruises Undercover: The Truth Below Deck”. It started at 8 pm and ran for 30 minutes.

It was filmed on the Celebrity Eclipse, which, like most cruise ships serving the British cruise industry, sails under a flag of convenience. This means that the ship is registered in a country with less stringent laws, so that they don’t have to keep to the standards of a more demanding country. This applies to all aspects of the ship, including health and safety, hygiene and, as focussed on here, employment law. Frankly, I think we should be just as worried about the other two!

Before I discuss the issues raised, and not raised, in the programme, I need to clarify the starting point. The presenter, Tazeen Ahmad, has evidently never experienced anything like four or five star accommodation. Almost the first thing she says is how “opulent” the ship is. As an example of the level of ignorant and fatuous we are going to have to deal with, she actually says the words, “It really is like a five star hotel”. Of course it is, you stupid woman, it IS a five star hotel. She keeps bleating on about the size of the cruise industry (£21 billion a year business, 1.75 million people last year took a cruise), as if the sheer size of the industry should be enough to annoy us. Then she shows us her cabin. “It feels really comfortable and spacious”. Well, dear, it jolly well ought to. You have an outside stateroom with balcony on one of the most expensive ships in Europe. Apparently, having a “really nice bathroom and balcony and patio doors that you can just fling open” (no, really, those are her words), is somehow sinful and evil and shocking. Not following the logic thus far, Tazeen, but I’m sure I’ll catch up with you at some point. Apart from anything else, I’m not being paid to go on a cruise ship and enjoy myself and I can’t afford an outside stateroom with balcony, either.

But then she really blows the viewer’s mind. “On top of luxury, holiday makers also want value for money”. Really? How odd. “Nearly half of all UK cruise goers spend less than £1000 and take a week-long trip”. Well, no matter what kind of holiday I’m on, I’d be thinking twice if I was paying more than £100 a day per person for a shared room. That’s just NORMAL, dear. The first time I watched this programme, I actually wondered if Tazeen has never taken a holiday before in her entire life. In the UK, never mind abroad. She either has no sense of perspective, nor any idea of what things cost or she’s just trying to wind up the viewer so we’ll be extra angry when she finally gets to the point she’s supposed to be making. Three minutes in and still waiting on that, though.

Two minutes more, and at last she gets to the point. It’s about those working as crew and staff. She states, “Many of those… are from poor countries, where their wages can support whole families”. Isn’t that a good thing?! Is it not the whole point that one person’s wages supporting a whole family just makes them the breadwinner? Isn’t that the basis of much of family income across the globe? Granted, in some countries, a family can include more children and more siblings and older members than perhaps a UK nuclear family may contain, but if one person’s wages supports them all, then the children can go to school and not have to go out to work to help support everyone. This sounds like a good thing to me, but then I may understand global economics slightly better than Tazeen, who doesn’t seem to know much about anything at all, judging from her incredulous tone, which is a grating constant throughout.

This nonsense continues for some time. They put in an undercover reporter as a waiter. He is a white man in his thirties, which probably makes him stick out like a sore thumb below stairs. He works around 100 hours a week for what turns out to be about £1 an hour after deductions, including uniform and medical and visa costs. He earns twenty US dollars for 12 days and at the end, including tips, he gets £532.59.

So, shock horror, he had to work hard. 16-hour days. Poor petal. There are plenty of people who work harder than that. In fact, if he had been on board during a norovirus outbreak, he would have had to work 21-hour days, 16 would have been a wistful memory. She also completely omitted turn-around day, when every steward and waiter becomes a baggage handler for the day. Now THAT is hard work.
There were two genuinely serious points made (badly) by the programme.

Firstly, by using a flag of convenience, Celebrity, which is part of the same group as P&O Cruises, can bypass UK employment law, which now states that tips cannot be used as salary. They must be an extra. But we’ve only had that law since 2009, ourselves, so we’re not really in a position to criticise other countries for not keeping up, are we?! We also have a minimum wage. Malta does not. Neither, I believe, does Bermuda, which is the flag that P&O Cruises use.

Unfortunately, Tazeen also skips the paid overtime, free room and board, mandatory rest periods, medical care and sick pay, not to mention the chance to SEE THE WORLD. They’re not skivvies; this is not a slave galley. They get to go ashore and party like the rest of us. Just not as often. But trust me, if you want to know the best places to eat, drink, shop and visit in a new port, you should always ask your waiter. They will have been there before. This manifest bias rather dilutes the important points she was trying to make.

The second is the scandal of agents in these people’s home countries, charging hundreds, if not thousands of pounds, for the privilege of being put on a ship. They call themselves employment agents, but they are con men, ripping off those just trying to make a living for their families. That is a heart-breaking scandal and Carnival should be doing more to stamp it out.

But I have spoken to waiters and one said to me, “I will work another three years (so eight in total), then I will go home and use the money to buy a bar on the beach and retire”. How upset would you be if someone said to you, ‘You’ll have to work doubly hard but you can retire in EIGHT YEARS?’

Sadly, this documentary portrays a very skewed picture of the cruise industry, omitting any possible good or mitigation, and thus, it rather damages the points it was trying to make, just by sounding so spiteful and mean. In fact, I would describe Tazeen as sounding mostly jealous and petulant, and the quality of the ensuing journalism was decidedly limited.

The cruise industry is far from perfect, but it’s not the evil, decadent and maleficent monstrosity that Tazeen Ahmad and her editor would have us believe. Cruise away with a clear conscience.

I have two pieces of news, well, three actually.  As with all the best PowerPoint presentations you have ever been forced to sit through, I shall set them out in bullet point form. Well, why not? Apart from anything else, I have the sun in my eyes, and it’s easier for me to find the cursor!

1. I will be tweaking this site over the next few days/weeks. I should be grateful for any comments, suggestions you may have as to whether these changes are better or worse, a la optician’s eye test. “Better 1 or better 2”? Please email me or comment below or find me on Facebook. 

2. I have a new blog, called Mpinion, which will be filled with pretty much any stuff I feel the urge to write that does not relate to cruising and does not occur to me on a cruise ship.  If you would like to read it, I will let you have the link on request, or will post it when i have worked out what it is… :-S Please note, it will be my personal opinions, You may not always agree with me. But then, that’s half the fun, isn’t it?!

Edit: The address of the new blog, in case you are interested, is http://mpinion.wordpress.com/

3. The next cruise is booked. Well, there are several, but I’m only going on one – the parents are going without me on the other(s)!  The next one that I will be going on is a way off. It’s March 2014.  Yes, that’s right. That’s booked a long way ahead, even for us. Not next year, but the year after next.  But it was so popular, we actually had to go on a waiting list, because the whole cruise sold out within days of going on sale.  

I have been searching for a cruise going to these destinations for several years, and it has been very hard going. I wanted my mother to see the Northern Lights, but there was not one cruise ship in the entire United Kingdom, Northern Ireland and the Channel Islands that was a “no fly” cruise to Norway.  And my mother won’t fly.  Frankly, after watching that documentary where they deliberately crashed a plane to see what would happen, I’m not so keen any more, myself!

So I kept looking and looking. I even tried joining two together – one to get us from Southampton to Norway and another to get us up near enough to the Arctic. But that was prohibitively expensive, unsurprisingly.  But now there is. Now you see why it sold out so quickly.  Apparently we are not the only people in the entire UK who want to see the Northern Lights without flying.  Who’da thunk?! We have now made it to the top of the waiting list and we are now booked. Huzzah. I hope there will be other cruises in the meantime, obviously, otherwise this blog will go very quiet(!)(stop cheering at the back!), but in the meantime, please see items 1 and 2 to help pass the yawning but not quite interminable wait until 2014 rolls around.

Home again, home again, jiggety jig. The last night was superb. Dinner was lovely and we said our goodbyes. We went to the theatre to hear Anton sing before he leaves P&O to start his recording contract. He was brilliant.

Then down the other end for Eighties Hour followed by a Pub Night. Silly games, tv theme quiz and so on. Our team won by a landslide, largely thanks to us getting 9 out of 10 on the tv themes. Well, can YOU sing the theme to The Price is Right?! No, exactly. Nine out of ten.

Unfortunately, the prize was a bottle of wine. Flo doesn’t drink, Yvonne had had plenty by then, i can’t drink wine, because it makes me ill, and Donna went to bed. Which just left poor Welsh Sue from Swansea to drink the whole blinking bottle. To her credit it, she managed it, but she could barely stand by the end! We danced til about 2, which was fine, because the clocks go back tonight, so we all get an extra hour in bed. Yay!

Sadly, Saturday is Chucking Off day. They start shouting at you in the cabins at 8am and at 9, my stewardess actually threw me out so she could turn my cabin around. Mum and Dad booked a taxi and dropped me at the station. Train into Waterloo, tube to parents’ house. Easy peasy, no? No. Not during the Olympics. It was like rush hour in a heatwave the whole way. Standing room only all over the place. Hard work. Then the drive home, petrol fillup, tesco shop (empty fridge syndrome) and then home.

It’s the silence that’s weird. Not hearing the constant hum of the aircon. I think i’ve almost stopped swaying, though, which is nice. So here endeth the Norway cruise. I hope you’ve enjoyed the blog. If you have any questions, let me know. Til the next time.

A fairly leisurely start. Woken at about 7am when the ship slowed down and I had to put my wristbands on. Then got up properly about 9.  We were booked on a boat trip, which always feels like an odd thing to do when on a cruise – get off a ship, get on a boat.  But this was a lovely, relaxing trip across Lake Olden, just lying on the deck in the sun admiring the scenery, which is breathtaking, and getting to know fellow passengers (one of whom has no recollection of having danced with me the night before last!). Our guide was a bit old and doddery but pleasant enough and the coach trip back was uneventful but with a couple of rather lovely photo stops.

I got off in town, having been told it was 1km to walk back to the ship. Browsed the shops, ate in the only eatery in town, which was a pub up a rather vertiginous staircase, and then back to the ship for the regulation nap.  That was NOT a 1km walk. I was shattered and woke up with screaming cramp. Had to get dad to go and buy some tonic water and bring it to me, because I was in too much agony to move. I had cramp up the FRONT of my calf. You try stretching that. 

 At dinner, there were balloons on the table and Tony had found some on his door in the morning too.  He also got a card from the Captain, as well as the one from us.  Dinner was roast lamb, which was very nice.  After dinner, we went to the show, which was songs from musicals.  Again, there was a slideshow before it started, and again there were some dreadful spelling mistakes.  It really is inexcusable.

Then rounded off the evening with a disco called “Dancing Through the Decades”, which is the same as the usual disco but in a different room and with the bad band for some of it and all the Ents Officers dressed in silly outfits.  It transpires that DJ James rather fancies Yvonne, who sadly could not be less interested.  Very funny to watch, though.  It also turns out that Tony and Sandra do a mean jive. Who knew?! Pumpkin time at midnight. Fourth port day in a row tomorrow.  Urgh.

No tenders. Told to be on the quayside for 9.40 to catch a train we thought was at 10.15. It turned out it WAS at 10.15. And it was raining. Nowhere to sit and nowhere to shelter. We got SOAKED. Very unkind, P&O, very unkind, and totally unnecessary.

The train, when it came, was very luxurious and clean and we had a wonderful trip through the mountains, up to Bjorli (pronounced like the British motor museum – Bewli), which is Norway’s southernmost ski resort with six months of snow (!). Took loads of photos of amazing scenery.

Andalsnes is slightly messy at the moment, because the International Base Jumping Championships arrive next week. Andalsnes has several mountains just outside town with sheer granite drops of several hundred metres – it breaks in a similar way to slate – so it is the base jumping capital of the world, apparently. It is spectacular stuff, but as there are no motor vehicles allowed in the national park, apparently, they have to climb the mountain before they can throw themselves off of it!

Long queues for the surprisingly pleasant two toilets at the station. A lady asked to buy one of my t-shirts, so I gave her my email address. I was wearing the one that reads: “I might look like I’m doing nothing, but at the cellular level, I’m really quite busy” and she wants one. Clearly a lady with much taste, oh yes. Then a coach back down to town, with several photo/shopping stops, and a commentary conducive to dozing. A really wonderful trip.

We then walked the few hundred yards into town and ate a rather odd restaurant in a marquee on the quayside. I had a homemade burger, which had pieces of yellow and red pepper mixed in, which made it quite sweet and very tasty indeed. I’m not sure the sweetcorn on top was such a good idea, logistically at least. Mum and Dad ordered a small pizza to share. A SMALL one.

We then wandered around the two streets of shops, where I bought a top and some more Norwegian Kitkats. Then we’d run out of shops and stuff to do, so we went back to the ship and I napped til dinner. Dinner was delicious. I had fried loin of haddock in panko breadcrumbs, which I had never heard of, but Sandra said it’s the best bit and has no bones, which was all the recommendation I needed. Turns out she was right, it was superb. Mum’s trout came with almonds sprinkled on, which, bearing in mind she is listed in the kitchen and at the waiters station as having a nut allergy, shows that the lack of attention to detail is spreading, sadly.

After dinner, Yvonne and I went to watch the ballroom dancers and the band with the bad singers until it was time to go to the show, a Queen tribute show, which is so popular they have to do three performances, rather than the usual two. Front row seats. Had a brill time. The Headliners are superb. Must learn the name of the lead girl, as she is OUTSTANDING. Then disco til 2, midnight snack (crackers and butter) in the Al Fresco restaurant and then blog and bed. ANOTHER port day tomorrow. Crumbs.