Even though today is our stop in Venice, I titled his post "Italy" because we opted to stay aboard ship. A couple months ago, I read that the Italian government had restricted large cruise ships from having access to their regular moorage in Venice. This trip we berthed at an industrial area a few miles away to the southeast. Furthermore, passengers who wanted to visit Venice were not allowed to explore individually, but had to be part of an organized excursion. We didn't want to go through that drill plus we spent two days in Venice a few years back. So here we are aboard ship.
This is one of the offshore drill rigs I saw in the northern Adriatic on the way yesterday. Altogether I counted 19 of these or similar. I'm sure there were others that I didn't see.
This morning on our way into the moorage area I snapped this pic of the approaching sunrise. I was a little surprised by how dirty the air was in the nearshore area.
The crew took advantage of the slow day to wash down the verandahs. There is a ground crew that works washing down the sides of the ship at every port. They use long-handled brushes and nozzles tied to the top of long poles to wash off the salt water. They can't reach as high as the verandah cabins so this was a chance to clean our windows and decks too.
I saw several fishermen in small boats, both along this waterway and others on the way in and out of the berthing area. Note the industrial area in the background.
At some of the ports we take on supplies and offload garbage. I saw several trucks bringing supplies and other trucks taking away palletized garbage, or in this case, pallet boards that were unloaded earlier. I must say the operation is well organized and seems to efficiently bring the supplies in and the garbage out.
My main source of info (our cabin steward) told me that about 600 passengers left the ship today and about 800 new passengers arrived. About 200 of us stayed aboard for the return journey back down the Adriatic coast through Croatia, Montenegro and Greece, eventually making our way to Athens and our return flights.
The cabin stewards were busy last night and all day today taking departing passengers bags to be stacked on enclosed pallets ready for offloading, cleaning rooms, and the prepositioning the new passengers bags in their rooms as the baggage trucks arrived.
This port area was just transformed into cruise ship berths. Note the containers located on the dock to form barriers to keep the vehicle traffic in the proper locations. I suppose there are plans afoot to build a proper cruise ship handling area.
The waterways here are narrow and made even more narrow by large cruise ships. I saw this freighter being towed stern first out to a larger waterway where it could be turned around and escorted out to open water.
Around 1800 we dropped the dock lines and, assisted by tugs fore and aft, we made our way out through the canals to the Adriatic. Here you can see the tug helping direct the stern of the Eurodam as we make a corner. The sunset was red through the smoggy skies.
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