Travelin' Geezers (TM): Taking a Big Boat to a Little Boat

After such a busy day in Rome, I could have used another day at sea. That was not to be, though. The next morning, we made port in Savona, Italy. For our shore excursion, Chrissy and I chose a trip to Genoa. Our ship docking in Savona instead of Genoa was curious, though. The Costa Diadema, the ship we were on, is a very large ship. In fact, she's currently the largest cruise ship in the Mediterranean, though Costa has a larger ship soon to be christened. She is actually registered in Genoa, so Genoa is its home port. Genoa Harbor is supposedly larger than Savona Harbor, though Savona Harbor was quite capable of handing her needs.

For some reason, there was difficulty clearing customs in Savona, though we had cleared in two prior Italian ports (Sicily and Rome) and had not left the Schengen Treaty area/European Union since taking on passengers at any port. The ship makes this same circuit over and over, taking on new passengers and dropping off old ones at various ports. This was the only time the ship seemed crowded. Almost all shore excursions were scheduled to leave at the same time each morning, which was soon after the ship docked. When customs took an extended period of time, everyone who was planning to disembark the ship for a shore excursion was held in that small section of the ship. It was standing room only (with bodies pressed against each other) for two floors. Customs did finally release the ship, and everyone spilled out to the excursion buses. Chrissy and I boarded our bus for the short drive to Genoa.

While I'm curious why the Diadema docked in Savona instead of Genoa, I'm certainly not knocking Savona. From what I saw driving through, it's a lovely city with lots of history, including a Medieval fortress just outside the port.

We really didn't get much background of things that we saw through much of the trip to Genoa until we stopped at Genoa Harbor.

Our schedule in Genoa was not packed at all. We had, basically, two items on the agenda: The aquarium and a boat ride around Genoa Harbor. To get to the aquarium, we walked past the pirate galleon, Neptune, built by Roman Polanski for his box office bomb, "Pirates", and more recently starring as the Jolly Roger in the TV miniseries, "Neverland," another show of limited success.

The Genoa Aquarium is touted as the third largest aquarium in the European Union. It was well put together with some unique exhibits, including having sawfish. These guys were snoozing on the floor of the tank. They tend to be a bit elusive in many aquaria.

They were hatching these egg sacs, or mermaid purses. I forget which type of shark they were for.

I took loads of pictures. Few of them turned out well, though. I many areas, the lighting is high enough that the windows had far too much glare. No, I was not using my flash. Some of the areas, where the animals needed lower light, I was able to get some good results. For enjoying the animals, it is a nice aquarium. I just had trouble getting good pictures, which is really not uncommon for me in aquariums.

After the aquarium, I spent time just sitting on the docks, enjoying the sunlight and the water, resting my foot. Chrissy took the opportunity to explore some of the waterfront area and artesan markets. She brought us back a focaccia to share. It was quite good. Not being a fan of olives, I left those to her, but I did enjoy the bread.

After the bread, we boarded a tourist boat for a short spin around Genoa Harbor, which is very lovely. She talked about the history of the harbor, capacity, and various restaurants and things around the harbor. Here are some pictures of Genoa Harbor.