Embarkation Day

It’s 8AM and Craig and I are repacked and ready to go. I am up-loading yesterday’s photos to the on-line Gallery. There were so many I did not edit very carefully and there will be many that should not see the light of day but... They have been uploading for almost an hour now. It is almost entirely of the Vatican but we have some of a river [Tiber] cruise and a couple of “people pictures.” Perhaps on a lazy day at sea I will get around to editing. Off to Civitavecchia. I was going to write about the Vatican visit but circumstances have changed I should get this negative item off so I can get back on to the pleasantries.
We arrived at the pier at 11:30AM, our bags were carted off to the ship and we got in line to board. We had with us our fancy blue silk jacquard Holland-America packages, our “Signature” easy-boarding/on-line check-in forms, passports etc. We sidled up to the desk and were greeted with “I’m sorry, you are not booked on the cruise. Stifling the urge to pull the attendant across the table and clean his clock, I told him how ridiculous that was given what I had shown him. He backed off with “Well, you are not in the computer.” After a while and several consulting dimwits they decided that they must be wrong and provided us with room keys and access to the ship. Once aboard we discovered that our staterooms were not ready. This is not unusual as they, just hours before, were occupied by cruisers disembarking in Rome. We retired to the lido Deck for lunch and drinks. It was announced that our rooms were ready and we headed down. The keys did not work. Indeed half the keys in our section didn’t. I went down to the main deck and got replacement keys. They worked. Our luggage arrived and we started to unpack. We had our lifeboat drill [nothing has changed since the last account of this “separate-the-worthless-jerks-from-the-good-people” exercise] and made mental note of passengers to avoid. While we were resting before dinner I waltzed indignantly down to the front office to complain, inquire and follow up. We were still “phantom” guests. Our credit cards were screwed up, they had no record of the three excursions we had booked and they could not offer any explanation other than they had two computer up-grades, recently… really? Upgrades? Our situation was shared with 22 others.
We had a lovely dinner! Appetizers included assorted crostini and seafood ceviche. We had a cold rhubarb soup spiced up with a touch of cinnamon. It was praised ‘round the table. My entrée was a “basa filet” with asparagus and brown rice; Jim and Dotty had prime rib and Craig had salmon. It was all as good as it gets. Things have turned for the good. Dessert was Sherry Trifle, Berry Dream [a custard and mixed berry tart] and a chocolate[!] pudding. There were about a half dozen other offerings but we settled on these. With dinner we tried the bottle of Swiss wine we had received in Zurich and it stood up admirably. We took in the stage show on the way back to our rooms. It turned out to be a short, silly “get-acquainted” variety show with embarrassing audience participation games. Just before going to sleep I signed up for Internet access and will post this as soon as I get a good signal. We are in Livorno about to go to Lucca and Pisa.