And another one... - Reisverslag uit Rouen, Frankrijk van Linda Damhuis - WaarBenJij.nu And another one... - Reisverslag uit Rouen, Frankrijk van Linda Damhuis - WaarBenJij.nu

And another one...

Door: Linda

Blijf op de hoogte en volg Linda

26 Augustus 2014 | Frankrijk, Rouen

August 26th 2014
Well, here we go again! The last group has left us this morning and the new group is already in, we are already on our way to Vernon.
And yes, I’m in another cabin again!!One of the sailors is back from his break and our darling, snoring Souschef is on vacation for two weeks, so I have moved into her cabin. With the replacement for the Laundry, Anita. Really nice person. It was funny, this afternoon she cleaned the bathroom, the Souschef had already done it yesterday, but she didn’t like the way she had done it, so Anita did it again this afternoon. Fine with me!
And she didn’t mind sleeping in the top bed, so here I am sitting on the bottom bed with my tablet, writing my stories! I love the bottom bed, whenever I feel like it I can sit on my bed, writing or reading a book. Things you don’t really do in a top bed. First of all I have a problem getting up there, I mean I’m not as young as I used to be, second you can’t bring tea up there, because there’s no place to store it without spilling it all and if you have forgotten something, you have to climb back down again…. No I’m not a big fan of bunk beds!!
So for the next two weeks this will be my cabin. What will happen afterwards is still undecided. It may sound like a puzzle, but there’s only so many cabins, there’s couples who want to be together, then there’s a couple of people who have the cabin to themselves and right now there are more men than women crewmembers..so yes it is a puzzle!
I have talked to Geanina, our Nighty. She’s sharing her cabin with her boyfriend, but things aren’t going as well as they used to, so she has been thinking about moving out. Which would be great, because then I can share a cabin with her. At first she wanted to move out, then she thought she might be able to stay like this till the end of the season, but yesterday she told me that that wasn’t going to happen. We had already been looking at solutions yesterday. But today we got a call that instead of a women as replacement for someone in Housekeeping, we’re going to get a man.
Our HM is on vacation right now, her husband, the Maitre is replacing her and he wasn’t happy at all. He said we needed a woman, because I have been working here for a couple of months now and the last couple of weeks I have been moving around like a gypsy, he wanted to make sure I get a cabin now. Which is good, I’m glad he feels that way, that’s what will make things happen. So I told Geanina that it would be a good idea to decide what she wants to do and talk to the HM about it, so he knows what is going on and so he can make sure we get the right person in our crew. So we’ll see in two weeks what will happen! I mean I can be very compromising, if it is really going to be a problem, I’ll take one of the guests suites, I don’t mind at all!!! Haha
Last week we had a couple with us, of which our CRD already knew that they could be trouble…Every Friday, the guests either go to the Landing Beaches or they do the Taste of Normandy, where they taste things like Calvados etc, to get a good idea of what Normandy is all about.
They also go to a thing called the Bayeaux Tapestry, made by the wife of William the Conqeuror as legend has it. Now the local guide gives them a tour, some time to wander around and she tells them when to be back at the bus to continue with the trip. Well, there were 24 people on this trip and only 22 made it back to the bus on time. She had lost the couple I talked about earlier…. She had looked everywhere for them, even checked the hospital and even waited for 30 minutes for them, but they were nowhere to be found. So the CRD told me that when they would call us, to tell them to take the train back to Rouen. And they did call us, to tell us they were taking a train and please inform the guide.
Later I asked the CRD what had happened and he said they were really very sorry for the guide and all the other people in the group….but later he let me read a note of 3 pages, in which they had some advice for the local guide on how to explain to the guests to exact way how to get back to the bus….in other words, they were politely telling us that it was definitely the guides fault that they had lost their way and missed the bus…..OF course the CRD already knew that this couple had a big problem listening to what they were told (for instance they were always late with signing up for excursions, because they never knew that it had already been discussed!!) and considered it all total BS!!!
I mean out of 24 people, 22 people made it back to the bus without a problem and on time too. To be honest I have never heard of anyone being left behind on this or any of the other trips for that matter, this entire season!! Some people!!!
Last week I got another book from one of the guests to add to my collection!! It’s called Waiter Rant, a waiter telling us how to be a good guest!! Haven’t started yet, but I’ll bet I’ll read some familiar things! And yesterday I got a little koala bear from Australia, one of those bears that you can clip onto things. Really nice!
This week we have Tony again as CRD and 125 guests on board. We’ve decided to rename this cruise to Booze-cruise!!! Haha Guests can buy drinking packages before they go on the cruise, with the booking. But this time we had a lot of people buying the packages at the desk. We tell people that you would have to be a heavy alcoholic, drink at least 7 cocktails a day to be able to get your money’s worth of drinks. For most people that is too much, but now we’ve had a couple of people who didn’t mind. Ok fine with us, but we’ve already had one person who had bought one such package, staring at a sliding door waiting for it to open, before he realized it was already open…I hope this doesn’t give us an idea of the intellect of the rest of the group!! Hahaha
The last couple of days the weather was really bad, lots of rain and bloody cold! This afternoon we finally got some sun, hope that is a good sign for the rest of the week!
Like you may have already noticed we get a different CRD with each new group, they all have their different ways of doing things and some of them really stick out, in my opinion. What I like about Tony is that in his Welcome- speech he invites people to become a part of the Avalon world, he asks them to become Avalonions and to be one group, instead of a group of Americans, Australians etc. And I think it really works. We’ve had some groups where we had a group within a group and that, I think, is really annoying. They stick together, like they are special or something. I’ve already seen someone from a group telling other people to take their receivers from another box because they were not part of their group, I really hate that.
But that’s just me, I like to talk to other people, hear their stories. And of course there are always people you would rather not talk to, but then the ship is big enough to avoid them!! Fortunately we have an open seating arrangement for dinner, which means you can sit wherever you want and you can’t make a reservation. So if you really don’t like a person, you can sit somewhere else. Unfortunately we have had problems with this already, because there are always people who really need to sit together…so they either make a fuss about it or they stand in front of the door to the restaurant 10 minutes before it opens, to get the best table….O well, what can you do?
I had a bit of a dip last week, I wanted to go home, I had had it!
I had gotten a cold, which is getting better and all this moving around wasn’t improving my mood either.. I just wanted to go home and lie in bed till the cold was gone and I was feeling better.. Of course there’s nothing you can do here, but take medication and get back to work. It’s better now, but you can sort of feel it with the other crewmembers, the season is almost over, they want to go home. Not in a big way, but they’re tired. O well, 10 more cruises to go, we’ll survive!!


Love
Linda

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Verslag uit: Frankrijk, Rouen

Linda

Actief sinds 19 Maart 2014
Verslag gelezen: 92
Totaal aantal bezoekers 12003

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