The Cruise

So where did we go and how did we get there? Read on.

We were booked on the Carnival Splendor setting sail out of Civitavecchia, Italy. Which is about 50K away from Rome itself.

The Splendor has just been finished in the past few months. So basically we would be cruising on a new ship. We, unfortunately, you would never be able to tell that from looking at the inside. It looked like a really bad 1980's bomb exploded the decorations onto the ship. Seriously it looked like this was the one ship, that by law, Carnival had to have a disable employee work on.

You know how companies have quotas and they have to hire X amount of disable individuals or they would be breaking the law. Well I think Carnival had been ignoring this law and suddenly they were going to be audited. They didn't have any normal positions open so they fired the decorator. Upon realizing that their offices were not equipped to handle anyone with a wheelchair they were forced to the conclusion that they needed to hire someone with another disability. The only disable individual that could navigate their offices without requiring renovation or special assistance would be a blind individual. So they hired one, gave them the only open position, which was the decorator, and set them lose.

Finding themselves in a very awkward position the blind individual complained that they were a Human Resource specialist and had no decorating experience. Carnival must have scoffed, gave them some kind words of encouragement and dropped it. The HR individual, after many complaints decided that they were going to quit due to the unfair expectations of the company. Before leaving, however, the individual took their revenge and decorated the most horrible and ugly thing ever conceived...and of course Carnival loved it.













ANYWAY we did our muster drill and we were off. Where were we going?

Messina, Sicily (Home of Mt. Etna)
Marmaris, Turkey (Home of Rhodes and Topless Beaches)
Izmir, Turkey (Home of the House of the Virgin Mary and Ephesus)
Istanbul, Turkey (Home of 13 million people, Blue Mosque, and Hagia Sophia)
Athens, Greece (Home of the Acropolis)
Naples, Italy (Home of Pompeii and Vesuvius)
Florence, Italy (Home of Renaissance)
Rome, Italy (Home of Alex)