Tender

Tomorrow we arrive in Rome and reach the end of our time at sea. It has been a great trip. We will spend a few extra days in Rome and I expect to have more to say about our experiences there.

Today, the port was Ajjacio, Corsica. We took a trip to the Pernelli Gorges and the views will beautiful. I will probably post a few images at a later time.

Today, I decided to write about our ride on a tender. In some of my earlier images, you may have seen these orange boats hanging from the side of the cruise ship. You probably thought these were life boats and you would be correct. A couple of the smaller boats serve another purpose. When you will into a port, the ship is not always allowed to stay at the dock. Other ships may need access while those on board our ship do their things on shore. When this happens, the passengers and crew are ferried to shore and back on smaller boats called tenders. 

I had heard the term tender before and I assumed the use of this vessel was to bring needed supplies to a ship. I guess people are included. This was our only need for a tender and it was not an easy process to get everyone back to the ship. People had to stand for a significant amount of time in the sun and were upset. I admit I was hot. As the lines grew, more boats appeared to join the process. After spending all the time in line that was necessary to get a seat on a boat, I wanted very badly to ride back in one of the orange life boat/tenders. This worked out. I have included a couple of images of the experience.