Our excursion along Italy’s Ligurian coastline was at an end which just left the matter of heading back to the ship in Genoa. I had, of course, taken plenty of photos of the hills, towns, and surprisingly large number of bridges our boat had passed during the outbound portion of our trip earlier in the day so there was no need to grab any more pictures of the coast from the water and I wouldn’t have had it not been for two important factors:
- the light was different; it was later in the day and the sun had burned off the cloud cover that had accompanied us on our trip during the morning
- no parasitical organism had invaded my brain and disabled that part of me that always takes photos even if I’ve taken them dozens of times before; I was still most definitely me
If you’ve read any of the many travelogues on this site then you already know that I take a lot of photos and I’m pretty indiscriminate when it comes to sharing them with the world. Let this moment be no different to any other one. Behold! The Italian coast!
That place over there is San Fruttuoso.
I know.
Just letting you know.
I was on this boat earlier when we passed it the first time.
Just checking that a parasitical organism hadn’t invaded your brain and stolen your memories.
You’re a kind and considerate husband.
The journey back along the coastline seemed to be taking place at a faster pace than the one that had taken us out from Genoa in the morning. I can understand that. Who amongst us hasn’t commuted to work at as slow a rate as possible to delay the inevitable drudgery then bolted for home at the end of the day?
The higher speed of the boat in the water was creating some interesting overlapping wake patterns behind us and I found myself mesmerised by the interactions between peaks and troughs and the combination of straight lines of churn overlaid with gently curving foam tracks.
Look at the patterns in the wake.
Very pretty.
They’re really interesting when you really think about it.
No! Stop it!
What!? Why?
You’re going to try to get me to do some maths or physics in my head, aren’t you? We said we weren’t going to arbitrarily calculate things on this cruise.
How can you think that!? I just thought the colours were nice.
Sure you did.
I tried not to let being accused of such a thing by my wife spoil the day and just enjoyed the view from our aft position on the boat, quietly estimating differences in distance between the curving lines of wake against best guess at speed to determine what the rate of decay of dispersal from the central position of the vessel’s length was on an imaginary set of axes in my head.
The number of buildings suddenly increased as we neared Genoa and started passing the suburbs of that city as opposed to individual towns and villages.
We’d seen a few other boats as we’d hugged the coastline during our return journey but they’d been almost universally tourist vessels or ferries of some kind. As we slowed on our approach to Genoa’s port we noticed people out for pleasure: small yachts, kayaks (if you call that pleasure), fishing boats (ditto).
The port of Genoa looked far brighter and far more attractive in the sunshine of the late afternoon although for all the cranes and other industrial sights around there appeared to be nothing that needed unloading and it all seemed quite quiet and peaceful too. Our boat’s engines had been cut to a minimum – a safety requirement of being within the port confines, undoubtedly – and this last part of our day’s boat trip excursion along the Italian coast was wonderfully peaceful.
It’s always lovely to see your cruise ship up close and from the perspective of the water line either on a tender boat or, like on this occasion, a tourist vessel, and we particularly love the Sea Witch logo on the front of Princess vessels.
That marked the end of our excursion for the day and we let the melee of people getting off the boat in order to get back on Emerald Princess to make up for missed buffets dissipate before we disembarked and headed back to our room ourselves.
A quick freshen up allowed us to formulate a plan for the evening which was to grab a quick drink or two then catch the departure from the port either from our balcony or the promenade deck ahead of dinner. That’s not much of a plan and not anything that anyone who’s read any of these cruise accounts couldn’t have guessed but it was a plan. We started with a wine each in Vines then forced ourselves up the couple of flights of stairs in the piazza to Crooners.
Our plan crumbled into dust. In Crooners we found ourselves seated next to an American couple (an older woman and her son, around our age) who’d been on the boat tour with us. We started talking about our thoughts on the cruise excursion – we all agreed that Camogli had the most appeal – and where everyone was from and what made everyone choose this cruise – they were on for three weeks, not just the one that we were – and what we were drinking – “Ooh, that looks pretty. I might try one of those!” – and whether we should have another one – “Well, we shouldn’t but we are on vacation” – and whether we should have another one – “We’ve missed the cruise away from Genoa now anyway” – and whether we should have another one – “Still plenty of time to have dinner” – and you get the picture.
We eventually tore ourselves away from our new friends and headed down one flight of stairs again to get something inside us to soak up the cocktail of cocktails. All very nice. Probably. Thoughts were muddled a smidge at this point.
At this point on any normal evening aboard a Princess Cruises ship we would hit another bar before making our way to Skywalkers but that wasn’t the case this time around. I know what you’re thinking. So, a parasitical organism had invaded their brains after all! But, no. We wanted to go and see the deck party taking place around the swimming pool. Now, admittedly, such behaviour in us is almost indistinguishable from actually having parasitical organisms in the brain under normal circumstances but there were mitigations at work here that for once didn’t (entirely) include alcohol.
Firstly, we’d attended the deck party aboard Star Princess as it departed Puerto Vallarta earlier in the year on what was going to be, for me, The Cruise Where I Took A Lot More Video Than Normal. And I did. Unfortunately, I hadn’t planned on that occasion also being The Cruise Where I Lost Almost All The Video I’d Taken and amongst the videos never to see the light of day were the ones around the evening’s Love Boat-themed entertainment. For that reason, I wanted a second bite at capturing some of the atmosphere.
The second factor in deciding to hit the pool deck party was that the Americans we’d been drinking with hadn’t attended one before but were very big Love Boat fans. We’d played up just how much effort Princess put into their themed deck parties with cameo appearances from the cast and staff and, well, we figured we almost had to turn up in case they did.
As it turned out, the son did turn up and I’m glad he did because I then used talking to him down at poolside near the staff as an excuse to get right into the action of the party as opposed to simply videoing it from afar as I had done previously. The result, I think, is much better, really captures some of the fun of the entertainment, really shows off how engaging the staff were. I hope you’ll watch the video below to see elements of the staff engaging with me and playing up for the camera, to see how good the house band Topaz were, to see the Emerald Princess’s dancers don afro wigs and expose their chests, and to see some of the Love Boat touches, especially towards the end.
The next day would be our final full day aboard the cruise ship and we’d be docking at Livorno where we had an excursion planned again. With a wine-tasting! Becalm your surprise! That will be covered in the next post in this travel diary series.