The Cancellation and The Announcements

Sunday, September 13, 2015

Our tour of Cinque Terra was cancelled due to rough seas, so we took an alternative trip to Pisa – of leaning tower fame. The weather was threatening most of the morning and the skies were gray as we walked through the city gates to see the magnificent cathedral, baptistery and world famous leaning tower. Our tour guide spoke English but every English word ended in “a” or “o.” “Come-a to-a da cathedral-o and-a see-o de-a beautiful-a example of-a gothic-a architecture-o.” You get the point.

Wandering street vendors were hawking their usual touristy stuff, including umbrellas for 5€. Tim assured us that his ‘weather bug’ app said no rain until the afternoon (it was about 10:30 at this point). We were standing in front of the cathedral (along with 1000 other tourists) listening to our tour guide explain some history when we heard thunder. Tim and Chris brought rain gear, Steve and Debbie had one umbrella, Chan and Michele put too much trust in the weather forecast.

It started raining and Michele joined Steve and Debbie under the small umbrella. Chan couldn’t fit, and some vendor offered him an umbrella for 5€, but he noted confidently, “I’ve played golf in worse than this.” Within minutes, the rain was coming down very hard, and Chan was getting soaked along with many other tourist. The price of umbrellas was now 7€. We ended up buying some because it was just raining too hard.

Interestingly, hundreds of tourist were converted to Catholicism at that moment as they rushed into the cathedral to go to Mass. This included Chan. Mathematically speaking, Chan’s interest in seeing the cathedral increased exponentially as precipitation increased. Chan was asking, nay begging, for a priest in the back of the church so he could confess and convert. By the time the priest arrived, the rain slowed to a drizzle and Chan’s conversion fizzled, so he left the safety of the cathedral. So much for cheatin’ Chan’s conversion.

We ended up in a Burger King (it’s true) and we went for the blow dryers, each of us taking turns directing hot air on our shirts and pants. You have to imagine Chan turned backwards and sideways to the blow dryer, trying to get dried off. You also have to imagine that the blow dryers are motion activated – which is no big deal when drying your hands – and the backwards dance Chan was doing to keep the blower activated was well worth the price of buying something from Burger King so we could stay indoors. Just close your eyes and imagine that.

The evening was a chance for us to go to our first show on the ship after dinner. What caught us by surprise was that every announcement/introduction was done in six languages - English, Italian, French, Spanish, German, and Russian. Sometimes it seemed like even more. It takes forever to introduce the show. With so many versions of introductions, the master of ceremonies spoke extremely fast. So, ironically, in trying to communicate to everyone, he most likely was communicating to no one. We certainly could not understand his English, especially since he speak the Italiano version of Ingleso.