Ruby Princess


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Published: October 30th 2012
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29 October

Hey everyone, Sorry it’s been ages but it’s been pretty hard to sit down and write anything lately.
As you know I am now on my ship, Ruby Princess, it will be 3 weeks tomorrow since I boarded. Crazy how time flies! The reason I have time today is because the stupid Americans won’t let me into their country. We arrived in Florida 6am this morning and all the crew had to line up to get some piece of paper saying we could get off(as valuable as a passport basically), after 1 and a half hours I got to the front and was told that first contractors or people who haven’t been to America before can’t get off for 3 months. How shitty is that!? Me and all the others were under the impression we could get off 😞 the 3 months isn’t a definite though apparently it can change so I’m desperately hoping it will be shorter! From today we will be doing 7day cruises around the Caribbean starting in Fort Lauderdale, going to Princess Cays, sea day, St Maarten, St Thomas, Grand Turk then another sea day for about 6 months. So I should catch a decent tan haha.

I don’t know where to start with things on here there’s so much to tell. I joined the ship on embarkation day(first day of a cruise) for a 19 day cruise starting in Venice which finished yesterday. The last 7 days we have been at sea crossing the Atlantic Ocean. It has been kind of boring not being able to get off the ship over the crossing and we can’t go anywhere except the crew eating area, crew bar, gym, and our cabins. That doesn’t sound that bad buuut for us spa workers we are allowed in passenger areas and can eat at certain passenger restaurants which is really nice. So if we want to go sunbathe we can do that on one of the top decks rather than go to the crappy crew area, and go to the bar and get soft drink and eat on deck if it’s not busy. I feel like I’m on holiday sometimes! The reason we couldn’t go into passenger areas during the crossing is because too many of the guests got sick so we had to avoid as much contact as possible. That gets lifted tomorrow I think because it’s a new cruise with new guests so obviously they won’t be ill. A lot of the other staff don’t like us spa girls because of the privileges we get which is stupid because it’s not our fault. The dancers, singers, us and officers and high up staff get to go into passenger areas etc and the rest of the staff like cleaners, waiters, bar staff can only go in crew areas on their off time.
So far I have gotten off the ship in Naples, Civitavecchia, Livorno, and Casablanca (yuck). I went and saw the leaning tower of Pisa, that was pretty cool, took a bunch of touristy photos then had a horse and carriage ride around the little town. In every stop there are people trying to sell you something, it is sooo annoying and sometimes they won’t leave you alone. Casablanca was so dirty, we were going to go to a café for lunch but decided on McDonalds because everywhere just looked gross and not clean. I went with Cerys who’s blonde, everyone in Casablanca is dark skinned with dark hair and not showing hardly any skin even though it was absolutely boiling! So they were all staring at us and people would come up to talk to us or say hi or whistle. It was creepy.
I had a really nice roommate called Chix but she left a week ago so I got a new roommate who’s South African called Nicole. I like her toooo. She goes out with one of the bartenders on board, haven’t had to pay for a drink from him so far :P
The spa has just under 30 staff, hair, nail techs, massage therapists and fitness guys. So quite a big team, we had a cabin party for one of the girls birthdays, Izabel. We all dressed up for the fun of it in whatever we wanted to be, I went as a greek goddess, two of the guys dressed as girls haha makeup, heels and all! We all went to the crew bar dressed up, we were the only ones on the dance floor and everyone else was just watching.. we probably looked like idiots haha but it was a really good night.
My work days are usually 8am-8pm, 8am-10pm or 10am-10pm so really long but I don’t wake up and think oh crap I’ve gotta get up for work, it just feel like my life, like I’m going to see friends but I have clients too which is nice.
I get to work upstairs outside in the sanctuary which is a really nice area that has comfy lounger chairs, staff bringing you drinks and food. Basically a relaxation area with a view as it’s at the front of the ship at the top. So I work with Fiona in the cabanas doing couples massage.
During the crossing it was dead quiet like some days I had no one booked in, it was horrible. So basically we sat in a treatment room just chatting and mucking around, showing our face every now and then to the front desk if we didn’t have any bookings. If we had gone out the night before, have a lil nap on the treatment bed or go sleep in the lunch break. Very lazy, but now it’s much busier! I know I started writing this on the 29th but now I’m continuing it on the 30th, so we have had embarkation and the first day of treatments. Today was ok, not full but it was a good day because all my clients were lovely. One man proposed to his partner after we had finished the massage, it was sooo sweet! Tomorrow is going to be crazy, we are fully booked from 7.45am-7.15pm, fully booked as in noooo break but looking forward to the money 😉 today I made just over $100 in tips only doing 4 treatments woooohoo.
What else what else. It’s really strange here I never know what day it is because days don’t really mean anything so it feels like times going really quick.

I can’t think of what else to write right now, it’s getting late. Oh the tvs on the news which reminded me about the Hurricane, we had to change our route a little bit because of that but we are all fine and the boat was hardly rocky apart from the night before last night was quite rocky. And that reminds me of maybe two weeks ago we had a reaaaaally rocky night everything was falling out of the cupboards and sliding across the floor! We had to cellotape the cupboards shut, the spa flooded from the pool! That was rather entertaining, I took a video but it was taking too long to upload to facebook.

Basically all is going well 😊 I’m having a really good time so far, the only time since I have been away that I’ve not been happy is when I was told I couldn’t get off in America but that didn’t last long anyway!
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Xx 😊

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