On the way back from the Grand Car Park Opening, we called into the recently opened Cruise Shop in Mahara Place and had a chat with owner Lee Amor.
Lee impressed us as a friendly, helpful and very knowledgeable chap who doesn’t just sell cruises but also leads tours in countries and places that we wouldn’t have placed much priority on, such as Vietnam — “the most capitalist of the communist countries.”
He says they promote the cruise lines which have a good reputation, the main one that fails that criterion being Costa of Italy, which isn’t surprising given the incident involving the Costa Concordia and an underwater rock off Isola del Giglio, Tuscany, on 13 January 2012. Lee also says that many of Costa’s employees are East Europeans “who haven’t yet learned how to smile.”
We left loaded with brochures tempting us away to places where the sun shines and it’s warm and dry. 🙂