Costa Mediterranea Postcard #1 – Savona & Embarking

We were up early this morning but thankfully nowhere near as early as we would have been had we not stopped at the airport. After checking out of the Sofitel at 4:45 we made the short walk over the bridge to the South Terminal and promptly dropped off the cases. This morning’s 7:00 flight left a little behind schedule departing from Gatwick 20 minutes late. Flying over the Alps provided some spectacular scenery en-route.

We arrived at Milan’s Malpensa Airport at 9:43 local time and were soon through security and baggage claim. I had anticipated that we would have been met by a Costa rep in arrivals and when we weren’t we consulted our paperwork we found ourselves having to wait 1½ hours for our transfer to the port of Savona. I can think of many lovely places to spend 1½ hours and Malpensa airport certainly isn’t on the list. Irrespective of that our 16 seater bus arrived on time with 9 others already onboard and we soon on our way to Savona. We arrived at the port at around 2:30 and had a very short wait to get onboard. There are not many Brits onboard (only 7 boarded today and we were 5 of those) and it seems to be predominantly Italians which doesn’t bother us too much, in fact we would rather have it that way.

We have met our cabin steward who goes by the name Made, pronounced Maddie.

Muster was at 4:00 and conducted in only Italian and English. Then on we were free to enjoy a spot of imbibing. Our dinner time had been originally booked for 2nd sitting at 9:00 but the card in the cabin said otherwise and because there was nothing to eat when we boarded and a limited evening buffet on Costa, for tonight we decided 6:15 would suit us best. The plan being to change it to the later sitting for the other nights. However good service and a nicely positioned table have persuaded us to leave it as it is.

 

The remainder of the evening we just wandered around the ship exploring and making sure our drinks package is being fully utilized.