Travelogue observations - 27th September 2019 - painting 42,000 words

[whole diary]

[grahame]

A week or two someone commented (I paraphrase) that the usual pictures they see taken on a cruies ship are of the food, and that it would be nice to see some of the other things.

Any general pictures of food have no value in my mind. any pics of interiors of cabins, hotel rooms, shops, signal boxes and pubs even now are rare.

Well - you did ask for a wider selection - here are some onboard pictures with little food involved.

[froome]

The difference in ethnicity between passengers and the workforce is very stark.

[Thatcham Crossing]

Thanks for posting these Grahame, having cruised not on Aurora but on Ventura, Britannia and Azura, there a lots of familiar things to see like P&O crockery, similar furnishings, venues, staff uniforms etc.

To answer the previous post, despite that they are now American-owned (part of the Carnival Corporation), P&O's long-standing tradition of employing most of the "hotel" staff onboard from places like India and the Philippines continues. Many of these crewmembers live onboard for up to 9 or 10 months at a time between trips home. 
 

[Chris from Nailsea]

I'm just catching up with this particular topic, whilst looking (as usual) for something else. 

Some thirty years ago, I went on a 'Western Mediterranean' cruise on the QE2.  My now wife was then a Merchant Navy Officer onboard, so I was invited to many cocktail parties, as a guest.  The catering staff were generally of Filipino or east European origin - the two waiters at our table in the dining room were Serbo-Croat, as they told us, lamenting the current troubles in their homeland at that time.

I'm not saying it was right - it was just the economic reality at that time: employ domestic staff as cheap as you can, long before the minimum wage and all that.

[grahame]

The crew and customer profiles are both things we have noticed.   LONG discussion could follow but whilst we know and are concerned at the massive differences (in attitude but not in age, skin colour or current nationality) between us and most of the people we meet - we tend to be far more circumspect in talking about our views than I would be even in the regular member areas of the forum here.