Boarding at Geneva 5/22/1996 We Board Ship At Genoa, Italy

Beef From Argentina, Not Britain
By Bob Van Leer

(GENOA, Italy, May 22, 1996) - Our cruise ship, Eugenio Costa, left Genoa at 5:00 p.m. today sailing south to Naples. Most of today was spent getting from Rome to Genoa to board the ship. We left our hotel, the Medici, at about 9:00 a.m. Our plane wasn't scheduled to leave until 12:35 p.m., but DaVinci airport is a long drive from downtown Rome and we didn't want to miss the plane. In decent conditions it is a half hour-45 minute drive. The flight is only about 50 minutes aboard another Al Italia jet plane. The weather was hazy, but not enough so that we couldn't get a good view of the Italian coast on the way north.

  There is a wide, flat coastal plain along most of the way, much flatter than I would have thought. The airport is on filled bay land, so getting from the airport to the ship presented no problem. The paperwork to get on the ship took longer than the drive. But finally, we were on the Eugenio Costa and into our cabins. Our quarters are spacious for shipboard. Daughter Sally Shuey, husband Dave, and their son, Jordan, 3, have a cabin facing forward and Betty and I look out the right side of the ship a couple of cabins away. The Eugenio Costa is the largest cruise ship we have been on, it is 713 feet long with a beam of 96 feet. Cruising speed is 22 knots and is registered in Liberia. It has a passenger capacity of 1100 and a crew and staff of 475. 

  After we were at sea, the ship had a fire drill, a requirement on cruise ships. The captain lectured on safety in five languages, one after the other, which drags out announcements. (Italian, English, German, French and Spanish.). The fire drill was followed by dinner, which included a half-dozen courses, including prime rib of beef. The head waiter quickly assured us their beef came from Argentina, not England. No "mad cow disease" here. After dinner we returned to our cabins and I turned on our TV set. The ship picks up channels from land as we go south along the coast. There were four channels available from several cities, all with the same program, a championship soccer game being played in Rome. Tomorrow, our ship will arrive in Naples in south Italy and we plan to take a side tour to Pompeii to see the city destroyed by a volcano.