June 14, 2015 –At Sea on our way to Tangier

"At Sea Day," Gym Time, Buffet Experience, Time in the Sun, Room Problems, Excursion Problems. First Formal Night

Time went back one hour early this morning.

Today we had breakfast delivered to us in our room so that we could get dressed and head up to the gym to get some exercise in, including a warm up of stair climbing from our cabin on deck two the gym on deck 11. It felt good to do some weight work and stretching.

We had lunch at the buffet and we observed the group dynamics of the passengers and commented on the generalized lack of organization. Lack of organization is a nice way of describing chaos.

We then went to lie in the sun for an hour. It was interesting to see how people “reserved” their deck chairs, even though passengers are told not to do this. This resulted in us having to having to head up to the second highest deck where it was very windy and cold. After lying in the sun we decided to warm up (as a result of the wind) by heading to the sauna for half an hour. The rest of the afternoon was uneventful other than having the disappointment of there being no "fine tea" or any tea at all in the buffet area in the late afternoon as advertised in the newsletter. We returned to our cabin to shower off. Our drain clogged and flooded our entire little bathroom. We used our provided beach towels and other towels to try to control the mass of water.

In the evening, we donned suit and gown and headed for dinner for the “formal” night. Right before dinner Bill called down to the excursion office to find out where and when we were to meet for our Tangier excursion in the morning. The answer we heard back shocked us. We would not be leaving until 2:00 in the afternoon when we booked an excursion for first thing in the morning.

The reason why we booked the morning excursion was because we wanted to orient ourselves with the city to know the safe areas as we knew Morocco could be more dangerous than our European ports of call. However, without even the courtesy of notice, our excursion was changed. As the excursion office was closing for the night and we had to get to dinner, we had to hang up and not belabour the point any more.

The food was better than the night before but still not up to our expectations. Many people, but not all chose to dress up, although there was a prodigious number of leathery olive skinned “Over-the-Hill Barbies” in tight/ill-fitting cocktail dresses. We had our first European pistachio ice cream, which was the highlight of dinner. We chose not to eat as many courses at dinner tonight because we wanted to get to bed earlier because we are passing through the Strait of Gibraltar at 6:00 a.m.

When we arrived back at our room, we had the daily newspaper delivered to us with the departure times for the next day’s excursions. We saw that there was an excursion in the morning into Tangier, albeit, a little different from the one we booked. We went up to guest services to tell them that we might have found a solution to our issue: put us on the other tour. Guest services told us that they had no insight in to the availability of tours but told us the time that the excursion office would open in the morning.

Although we’re very excited to scratch another continent to visit off our checklist we are a little apprehensive about venturing into the city alone without a tour in the morning. We were also given no room service breakfast ordering card tonight. Our beach towels were taken away from our flooded bathroom and not replaced.

April contemplates the Mediterranean

Look at us all fancy at Formal Night #1

Bill looks ready to devour this grilled fish

This grilled fish was beautifully presented

The ice cream was the highlight of the meal. Proper pistachio ice cream again . . .  finally!

June 13, 2015 – Marseille, France & Boarding the Ship

Explore Marseille, check out the Hotel Alex, taxi to the cruise ship terminal, and board the Costa Magica for our first ever cruise

We awoke to find lots of wet clothes from last night’s rainstorm that we were caught in. We had breakfast in the hotel, buffet style. What value! For 12 euros we had pastries, cheese, yoghurt, eggs, bacon, ham, coffee, tea, and juice. We packed up and continued to dry our clothes with the hair dryer.

We checked out and checked our bags in the hotel as we had some extra time to kill. As we walked to the Old harbour, we stumbled upon a flea market. It was fascinating to peruse the old wares and quasi-antiques. We then wandered down to the old harbour and found a café right on the water to have what discovered too late was a sad nicoise salad, albeit, reasonably priced.

After lunch, we wandered back to the hotel, procuring along the way some water and nuts to bring aboard the cruise ship to snack upon. The friendly front desk agent at the Alex Hotel called a taxi and a jolly cabbie came and brought us to the cruise ship terminal.

We went through the cruise ship security screening without much hassle, however, Bill suddenly found out that he would have to surrender his passport for the remainder of the cruise because he did not have an EU passport like April (we were not informed of this ahead of time when we booked the cruise). They said that they would have to hold the passport for visa reasons at each port of call. We asked to speak to the manager and had to wait for quite a while at the "passport collection table." The passports were all on display on the little table with nothing covering the little box. The bored employee seldom had her eye on the passports and anyone could have grabbed a handful and absconded with them. We doubt the Canadian government would be happy to know their passports were being held in this manner. The manager said that Bill would have to surrender the passport or get up very early every time they called in port and go with an employee to sort out visa issues with that port or just stay on the ship. So Bill surrendered his passport. April was able to keep both her Canadian and Irish passports.

We were subjected to a security drill for abandoning ship if necessary, but not necessarily abandoning ship. After all the adventure we ordered ourselves room service of a light meal to share as we had the late dinner service and wouldn’t be eating for another number of hours. The “fruit with fresh cream” was a special treat for April, and resembled a chilled fruit soup. Traces of melon and pineapple shards were uncovered in the opaque liquid. A little surprising…a little unexpected…not a great description of what the dish actually was.

We were also disappointed and shocked that we could not order a glass of tap water with room service. Even though we were told before we booked the cruise that all non-fizzy drinks and alcohol would be free (the "North American plan" that Costa is using to try to attract customers from North America).

We were happy with the size of our room which was bigger than we expected. The condition of the room though was definitely showing the age of the ship (11 years) with marks on the walls, chips out of the bathroom counter, and a worn carpet. The light by our door flickered like a strobe light and we called to have it fixed.

A little while before dinner, we changed our clothes and went to explore the ship and get our bearings.

Dinner was in itself rather disappointing, however the server, Amit Sing, was the highlight. He provided us with great service and we enjoyed talking to him about where in India he was from. The highlight of the mediocre meal was the ice cream.

It was a very full day. We returned to our cabin to find the ship's newsletter in French. Apparently they thought that we were French.

Breakfast in Marseille

April's flower complements the life jacket during the emergency drill very well.

A silhouetted Bill finds a perch in our cabin

Selfie on the top deck of the boat before dinner.

Before dinner

The ice cream was much better than the M&M meats style cream puffs.