everybody it's Bruce here with traveling with Bruce welcome to my channel today
today's date is August the 9th 2019 and I have some updates for you on a number
of stories that have been making the rounds all this week and the first story
is all about Venice have you heard the news
cruise ships are being banned from Venice or at least you'd be made to
think so if you believed every headline you have read all week long every
newspaper across Europe and North America blaring the news that big old
cruise ships like these are going to be banned from Venice they're the scourge
of the city they're causing all the problems
ever since 1500 when the city started to sink in the muck cruise ships have been
playing wait a minute the cruise ships haven't been going since 1500 okay so
here's the story uh this week it was reported that a an Italian cabinet
member who is part of the Transportation Committee suggested that one of the ways
to solve an ASUS problems is to ban cruise ships outright because that's
what the environmentalists have been screaming for years and every newspaper
stopped listening to this guy as soon as he said that and printed the headline
cruise ships being banned from Venice here's the reality take a look at this
picture you see that big bridge up there that bridge brings in everything Venice
needs to survive and at the top of the bridge on the island you'll notice to
the left is the crew sport where cruise ships actually come and berth at if
you've been listening to the headlines all week you've been getting the
impression that these cruise ships are going in these little canals and going
up and down the canals they can't do that they are very regulated as to where
they go they park here and this is where they dock and it's highly regulated and
it's very clean it's very safe and only one and a half million tourists out of
the 32 million a year come to Venice this way most of the tourists that come
to Venice come in by train and by bus on the bridge and any event thus
or egos that they will be banned it is not going to happen there'll be
adjustments made yes but they cannot divert the shifts to any other ports in
the area because no other ports exist anywhere near Venice that can handle
these cruise ships and handle this number of tourists what Venice could do
to alleviate their issues would be to have ship to shore power made available
in Venice for these cruise ships and then that way they won't have to keep
the engines running when they're in port but that's for another day they're going
to do is regulate when ships can come into port so they won't have as many
peak times well standing on top of the story see how it goes in the meantime
here's another story making the rounds Freedom of the Seas was in st. Maarten
this week and a couple missed the ship up on the right there you'll see two
people walking away they were late coming back and apparently a crew member
was mocking them by having a goodbye and sign up on the bridge fake nose that is
not what happened at all this crew member was waving at the anthem of the
Seas which is also docked across the way as both ships were getting ready to
depart Freedom of the Seas had rights to go first anthem of the Seas had the
rights to go second the passengers were waving as well at the other ship you can
see here how it's quite common for two ships like the anthem on the Seas on the
left and another one on the right they are parallel park to each other and they
wave eat each other when they go those two people were not being mocked at all
other news Carnival Fantasy failed a health inspection these inspections take
anywhere from eight to ten hours to conduct and the ship got a seventy seven
score when you need anywhere from 85 to 100 to pass problems they found flies
all over the bread and the bagels and parts the kitchen
they found dirty forks and knives and spoons mixed into clean forks knives and
spoons and they caught staff members using towels to clean the items and put
them back in a major nono dirty dishes were
in racks that were marked for only clean and sterile dishes they were really
blowing it apparently the lack of training of a lot of the staff in the
kitchens was a big issue with the inspectors they also found water leakage
onto food containers some of the storage areas and they found film on the water
in some of the swimming pools and hot tubs when they also noticed children
running around in diapers in adult-only areas and one has to wonder what was
going on there other news Princess cruise line the
regal princess they're going to try and set a record next Valentine's Day for a
Valentine's cruise by having a whole bunch of couples get remarried to renew
their vows and Captain Stubing from the Love Boat is going to officiate the
entire deal last year Carnival had 2,000 people renew their vows on a cruise ship
princess wants to break that number and so they're gonna use Captain Stubing as
the lure to get couples to get with the program and come onto the ship and give
her another go we'll see how this works out should be a lot of fun and it'll be
a big promotion bye princess I am sure hope you found these stories of interest
today some of it is fake news some of us exaggerated out there I try to stay on
top of it as best I can for Elle we'll see how things go next week join me
Monday night live 8 o'clock at Eastern Time we talk cruise ships every Monday
look forward to having you and please subscribe to my channel today hit the
bell notification icon and we'll keep you posted everybody take care this is
Bruce with travellerbruce bye for now