The MS Marco Polo

Day three marked my decision to observe the behaviour of the (mainly Eastern European) crew in their attitude towards the passengers. On the whole this seemed to comprise an awkward mixture of patronising condescension liberally laced with maternal / paternal concern. For example, on arrival at the Waldorf (!) dining area for lunch, where one was placed with others at random, unlike the designated and rigid sitting for evening dinner, I was seated at an empty table for ten and I was quickly followed into their seats by six or so others. As they were settling themselves around me the waiter handed me the menu, so saying “And where is your other half?” This was probably the first time on this voyage as a single traveller that I was rendered literally speechless. As I gazed at him in incredulity he continued, upping the volume somewhat in the belief, I presumed, that I was hard of hearing. “You know, your better half, your WIFE!” By now we had the full attention of not just our table but adjoining ones as well. So raising my voice appropriately I replied, “She ran off with a lounge lizard from Dublin six years ago.” Gasps and nervous laughter insured the lunch, for me at least, was short and sour. On reflection I can only think that the waiter thought my dinner neighbour of the previous night was actually my wife. But this was an outrageous assumption – I may have been gay, or recently widowed, and this incident reflected extremely badly on the training of at least one particular crewmember.

On the evening of the third day came the formal “welcome” by the Captain and his Heads of Department in the Marco Polo lounge reserved mainly for live evening entertainment. A promised glass of champagne with the Captain turned out to be a forty-five minute wait clutching a cheap glass of sweet sparkly. Meanwhile our Captain / host dutifully shook hands – for the benefit of the ever-present photographer – with each and every member of the passenger list (singles excluded) at £4.99 a shot. After introducing his colleagues, all standing to attention and very deferential and most seeming to come from the same part of the former Soviet Union as himself (Croatia), he soon absented himself with the parting shot “If you have complaints, make sure you contact one of them, not me!” Basil Fawlty in seaman’s uniform sprung to mind at about this point in our high-seas adventure.

My first taste of the live entertainment, “Venetian Nights”, had all the appeal of an immediate elimination from the first round of X Factor, enlivened by the sight of an elderly passenger projectile vomiting into the curtains bounding the stage arena. Was this a comment on the performances, I wondered?

So it is about this time that the effects of seasick passengers seem to segue into the unmentionable Norovirus. The virus is the bane of cruise operators as this highly contagious and violent combination of sickness and diarrhoea can sweep through the enclosed environment of a ship at sea like a forest fire. It must have been a nightmare in the below-decks hospital area to separate Bay of Biscay refugees from the genuinely ill. Soon the rumours were circulating, someone had died, three ambulances had arrived to meet the ship at Vigo, members of the crew were abandoning ship and we are all doomed! What was certainly true, as the company issued no information to us about any of these rumours be they founded or unfounded, was that certain cabin windows were marked with a large taped white cross and their doors were sealed with substantial bands of sticky tape. And we are barely a third of the way through the cruise!

Day 4: Vigo. Tanoy calls for all the moneyed passengers who had coaches booked for Saniago de Compostela leave us plebs facing a faulty gangplank and subsequent tardy arrival on the quay to see the two-hourly local shuttle bus disappearing in a cloud of diesel fumes. It is clearly the policy of cruise operators to keep passengers in the dark about available local bus services as an alternative to the scheduled coaches. Reason? They want you to book their expensive tours instead of helping you into town, even if all you want to do is just potter around it. On this cruise there were tours ranging from £26 – £70; a tidy source of additional income requiring merely the hiring of a local coach for half a day. Easy money, but as far as I’m concerned, a black mark to C & M. So for the rest of us a lengthy trek over concrete and macadam and then a vertiginous climb up and through a (literally) collapsing town. In Vigo many buildings seemed simply to have been abandoned and left, inwardly disintegrating and broken-toothed, to the elements. Occasionally a modern and surely temporary rescue is attempted when the building is “faced” in cheap steel and glass. A practical expedient to keep things in place for perhaps another decade, but after that, what then?