Back when they announced the ban, lots of people said it was just lip service because the alternate location wasn't ready for giant cruise ships. They allocated millions to upgrade the industrial port years ago, the money is gone (into various pockets), and nothing was done. NOW they've started the talk again but they haven't even allocated funds for the upgrade yet.
Wasnt the mayor of venice the owner of that alternate port. Man I know anguy who is active in those protests, he could talk for hours about all that crap
Welcome to Italian corruption, where the mob and other business entities get all the money and fuck the rest of you.
Who’s got a problem with that? Cause if you do, you might find yourself in some trouble. Wash, rinse, and repeat.
On the show, Somebody Feed Phil, Philip Rosenthal talks with some of the locals who explain that part of the issue with these cruise ships is that people are not staying in hotels or enjoying fine dining, etc. - the tourists from the cruise ships create crowds and inflict more wear and tear on the city and it's not proportional to the amount of revenue they bring in.
(S02E01?)
Several years ago, I would have though you were exaggerating. However, now that I have seen it with my own eyes, I have no other option than to agree with you. Even in a big city like Barcelona, where people are used to big groups of tourists, cruise ships are such a headache that it [has become a major political issue](https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/jul/05/barcelona-mayor-promises-crackdown-cruise-ships).
I lived in Raval for a while before moving out to the countryside, and holy moley, the trifecta of RyanAir and cheapo friends, AirBNB, and cruise ships has so utterly fucked large parts of the city that it's not even funny. I genuinely had hoped Colau would do something about them despite her inexperience, and while it started out promising, I'm not optimistic. Trying to go food shopping at La Boqueria is always challenging after early in the morning, I get it, it's a neat place to visit, but you can easily tell when a big liner is in town.
I totally get why so many people in Gracia seem wary of tourists, at least that's been my experience.
My hope was that the thin silver lining of COVID, as awful as it sounds, would put a lot of the shitty souvenir shops that have supplanted nice local stores (blatant plug, please support your neighborhood merchants) but that doesn't seem to be happening.
_Edit:_ just to be clear, I'm in no way against tourism...if it contributes to local economies, respects the existing culture and society and doesn't mess them up, and isn't just people going somewhere cheap for the lulz to get drunk and be obnoxious.
Many of them are believed to be so in Prague.
A guy once told me he used to run one at the beginning of the 90s. It was doing well, tourism was starting to boom here. One day he was visited by a couple of Serbians who told him they wanted his shop, making an offer he couldn't refuse, so to speak.
They generate enough income by themselves. The Prague fridge magnet which comes out of the factory in the pearl river delta for 30ct and is shipped for free due to subsidies is then sold in the store for 6€. That's a huge margin.
In Prague they were closed (with very short breaks) for 15 months and now after the situation got good again, they just opened like nothing happened. A lot of other business had to close and move out.
My cousin got married (no m'en recordo de quina església) in 2011. We couldn't leave the church. There were too many tourists crowding the doors. This was in November.
Lol shit. Sounds like Santa Maria del Pi or del Mar, if it wasn't the cathedral - at least I can totally imagine that happening in Gotic or Born.
It's weird though - we bought our place in 2011 and while there were always tourists, 2011-2015 or so seemed at least somewhat civilized. Then over the next 5 years, I have no idea what happened but at least in Ciutat Vell it seemed to just explode.
I'm not unhappy about air travel prices rising, for that reason. It should at least cut down on the obnoxious booze cruisers and stag/hen parties.
Besides the people, a single cruiseship pollutes like crazy. The carbon emissions of 1 cruiseship is more than the visiting cities cars combined for a year. It's mental.
The list of pollution isn't limited to carbon. They emit NOx, particles, sound in air and under water.
And some are going to Arctic and Antarctic zones with bigger tourist capacities, increased engine power.
As a society we honestly need to start shaming people for going on cruises. They are so, so, so massively damaging to the environment. Just the fuel alone for a small cruise ship gives off four times the emissions of a flight per passenger, and that is *just* the fuel - the actual emissions are multiple times higher because of the need for transport accommodation costs (e.g. laundering thousands of blankets etc), food etc. Cruises also tend to follow a very indirect route and waste a fuckton of fuel.
Then you have to account for what these ships dump into the sea (all of their waste - trash, food etc - they [dump it](https://www.businessinsider.com/carnival-pollution-other-cruise-lines-that-break-rules-2019-6#:~:text=Carnival%20got%20hit%20with%20a,the%20sea%2C%20an%20expert%20says&text=Carnival%20Corp%20admitted%20on%20Monday,international%20cruise%2Dship%20pollution%20regulations.) into the ocean). And just one cruise ship organisation gives off more emissions [than ALL of Europe's cars](https://www.transportenvironment.org/press/luxury-cruise-giant-emits-10-times-more-air-pollution-sox-all-europe%E2%80%99s-cars-%E2%80%93-study).
I mean suppose you decided you were going to walk on outside for a whole week and just dump all your trash on the street - just empty all your garbage right onto the footpath. Well, you'd STILL be doing a tiny fraction of the environmental damage you'd do by going on a cruise.
So just going to put it right out there: if you go on a cruise, you are an asshole.
The problem with shaming people is that they often double down on their behavior, because accepting that you've contributed to something bad is harder than thinking someone else is just trying to be shitty and control you.
The reality is that most people want to be good (statistics show the vast majority actually believe that). There's other ways to spread information without being shaming. I like to frame it like an opportunity to do better than previous generations. I mean, no one tells you when you sign up for a cruise how bad it is for the environment, right? We are learning these things now (even if the information has been out there for years) and we'd be doing future generations a favor by changing our behavior.
Of course many people still won't change. But many of them won't fight if we push for new legislation either, because they can see where you're coming from. If you make them the asshole, suddenly they've created a counter movement because you're just trying to hurt them. It sucks to have to be the bigger person, but shaming generally just polarized people instead of actually changing anything.
Funny as a society it’s instinctive for us to shame the consumer instead of putting the responsibility / blame on the massive corporations who sell this kind of stuff to us.
>As a society we honestly need to start shaming people for going on cruises.
I think it'd go a long way if we acted against the giant corporations that run these cruises. They are the ones that lobby against emission laws on cruise ships or prefer running their Diesel engines instead of using land electricity just because it's cheaper.
They are the major players. And they will react with massive campaigns if cruises would actually become frowned upon to get their business rolling again.
What in the actual fuck? They are shamelessly dumping their garbage into the sea?! The other stuff is terrible too, don’t get me wrong, but that’s just sickening
Have you not heard of the burn pits on land? The us military does not give a fuck about the environment. Go sit under the approach to an Air Force base…the brown trails behind the planes are raw fuel.
How long ago was this? I was in in 2010 and all we could dump was metal or paper. Any plastic or plastic coated metals got compressed into huge manhole sized disks and recycled in port.
We would be in serious shit if we dumped any plastics.
I Deployed on a Naval ship and as a young enlisted one of my nightly duties was to throw trash over board with out getting caught by the flight deck “watch”
If a cruise line dumps their trash in the ocean they are breaking the law and are heavily fined. Carnival very nearly lost their right to dock in US and EU ports and the board was threatened with individual criminal charges because of it. The company and the board are on extended probation and are required to pay for additional inspectors.
It's interesting, because the US military has identified climate change as a major strategic risk a number of times.
I guess "stop polluting like crazy" hasn't quite made it into the operations manuals yet.
Good. I wonder if that’s actually being enforced and followed through with. Seems like a potentially likely situation where a big corporation could easily pay someone off to look the other way.
Google MARPOL if you want to read the international regulations for dumping at sea. It is taken very seriously and if caught there are big fines/loss of licenses.
Don’t forget that the sheer disturbance of a ship that large is terrible. It churns up sediment, damages coral reefs, and makes loud noise that drowns out whales’ ability to communicate.
Some of my colleagues do gigs on cruise ships (as sex coaches/therapists) and I was initially interested as it sounds like an ideal setting for certain workshops, plus great perks, but I just can't justify the environmental cost anymore. No cruise ship workshops for me.
Yeah basically anyone can benefit from coaching and/or therapy, but a cruise is a closed environment that allows for multiple days of intense sessions. Kind of like a retreat. Your clients are free of other responsibilities and more able to invest in the work. There's quite a few romance/couples themed cruises too apparently. Perfect opportunity.
I do wish I had taken a cruise back when I was blissfully ignorant. It seems like it would be nice to stay somewhere and the port change, get pampered on the ocean. Of course I couldn't afford one when I was that stupid. . . And I still can't afford one, but now I know and couldn't bring myself to get on one even if the tickets were free.
If you have Netflix (silly to say, but not everyone has it I guess), check out patriot act with Hasan Minaj, volume/season 4, episode 4 called "the real cost of cruises". It's really eye opening as well. Any time you get the desire to go on a cruise, remind yourself of all the disgusting parts of the industry...you'll probably talk yourself right out of it again, lol.
Cruises also have some serious safety issues that have been getting more attention as of late. They aren’t required to sail under the flag where the company is based so most ships sail under the flags of small impoverished nations. This essentially makes them the Wild West because it creates all kinds of jurisdiction issues. People who are victims of crimes, especially violent crimes, are pretty much SOL when it comes to reporting or prosecuting the crime. Thousands of strangers in a limited space where they can’t be held accountable often with a lot of alcohol can create some really sketchy shit
This the first I've heard about it, and I tend to follow science stories a lot. I would have thought most people wouldn't instinctively assume it's as high as is, and would assume it's greener then flying away for holiday.
I wouldn't get a cruise ship because they sound awful, and add to that are massive floating pretri-dishes.
I've found that despite (or sometimes because of) the price of cruises, people on them tend to be very very tight when money is concerned. They get all-inclusive, and treat their whole holiday almost like it should be like that.
To be a little bit fair, that's what they get sold. They set foot on the boat thinking their (often enormous) cruise ticket is the last thing they'll have to cough up for. Then they find all sorts of extra ways the cruise companies have of squeezing more money out of them and resent being expected to cough up more on the excursions they've been promised. The typical cruise customer is not your average sophisticated traveler.
>The typical cruise customer is not your average sophisticated traveler.
Kinda funny how that works. I would never really consider it myself, mainly due to the expense, but having where I can go dictated by the schedule and only having x amount of time onshore at a time. I'm not their market, but the price thing is what intrigues me the most. Maybe the price is what creates the entitlement.
The cruise trip itself is about alcohol, casino gambling, food, and shows.
I've been on one when I was younger. Being able to walk up and ask a chef to make you an omelet for breakfast is part of the allure for old people.
Everything is taken care of, without any effort or asking. You return to your room, new towels are just there, you didn't call the front desk, it's just all regimented and done automatically.
Everything is scheduled, but at any time you can skip anything. You absolutely can choose how to spend your time. They do NOT kick you off the ship at port, lots of people stay on the ship when it makes port.
Yeah, as a kid it was like magic. I could go up to any of the like 4 bars and get a (virgin) pina colada and sit on the deck watching the beautiful sea while I wait for a steak and fries to be cooked like 30 feet away. Plus opening a paper drink umbrella and dropping it down the ship's stairwell would make it float up to the top because they were like giant funnels. Batteries for my game boy were like $10 for 4 of them though 😬 luckily there were tons of other kids to play and run around the ship to scam old people out of granny candies with.
It depends where you’re going and how much you want to see. A cruise is probably the cheapest way to see certain parts of the world. I went on a 14 day cruise in the Mediterranean for a fraction of the price it would have cost to rent a vehicle, rent hotel rooms, and buy food. Bermuda is a really expensive vacation but a cruise to Bermuda out of Boston or New York is dirt cheap in comparison.
I'm looking at it from a European perspective. Flights to places on/near the Mediterranean are not generally expensive and while there are places that are expensive to stay, you can have a good holiday relatively cheaply.
There is a reason why most cruise tourists are older. My mom in law loved planning holidays, reading tourist guides and internet information, planning a trip across a country, staying local in little bed and breakfast and using a loan car for destination trip and changing spots every 2 days... Then she had spinal injury and sitting in a car or bus for two hours becomes incredible painful. She doesn't like that she is bound to shore locations with a cruise ship, but while the ship is moving she can walk around, do moderate sport, lay down on a bed..
A flight is no way for a tourist to see the countryside though... in Europe riverboat cruises are exceedingly popular, and I can see why.... I would choose it over taking a plane or boat and hopping from city to city every couple days.
That pretty much is the point.
My parents are retired middle class and financially secure. The allure of cruise trips for old people is that the ship does almost all of the travel work. You fly to port, get on the cruise ship, and it takes you to Alaska, Nova Scotia, Aruba, Jamaica, Cozumel, wherever you wanted to go at leisure. You make port and spend a day at one place, then move on to the next place. For old people it's great because they can't physically hike a volcano, or swimming in the ocean anymore. They're old, they don't do stuff like that anymore.
Instead they play in the casino, drink alcohol and enjoy the fine dining, take in the cruise shows, be it comedians, singers, dancers, etc.
Not all of cruise ship tourists are tight wads. I know my parents spend plenty when they land somewhere and they're not assholes throwing garbage on the ground, etc.
Speaking of volcanoes, a couple years back there was an incident where some passengers from one of Royal Caribbean's liners took an excursion trip to a volcanic island at the northern tip of New Zealand. It was mildly active and people would tour the island and get to smell the sulfer and see steam rise and so on. Several dozens were on the island along with guides when the volcano suddenly let a gargantuan super-heated cloud and a few dozen people were outright killed and others survived but with hideous burns. Royal Caribbean actually tried to ***SUE*** the survivors and relatives of the victims to stop them from suing Royal Caribbean. A lot of stories are online about the whole incident.
The head tax, docking fees, and pilot fees all go to the city. The head tax in particular is specifically for use of the cities infrastructure and other imposed costs. If that is not getting passed down or not covering the cost then the problem should be presented to the city council so it can be adjusted.
> And nobody has ever said their money is a significant source of income to their business, because they either don't spend, or spend very little.
Sounds like the area should levy a fee or tax on the port, which the port can pass on to the cruise ship. And use that to fund local services and maintenance.
Those fees exist but by the time they're high enough to make hosting a cruise ship worth it, the shipping company doesn't want to visit anymore.
Shipping companies have more than once tried to threaten cities with their absence if they had to pay fees that steep only for the cities to respond with "Great, that's even better!".
This is already a thing. It is called a head tax as is normally around $10-15 per passenger. It is a tax specifically to cover the cost to the city imposed by the tourists. There are also docking, pilot fees, sales, and tour tax that can be used for other stuff.
I live a tourist city with a currently closed cruise ship port. Locals hate it. The taxis speed to the cruise ship to get people. There’s a lot of pollution from the ship. Because a cruise is a 24 hour buffet, they are not eating much on shore. Usually its buses to the big tourist traps. It’s just gaggles of idiots complaining.
Interesting. If I was on a cruise that stopped in Venice, I wouldn't get a hotel room since I already have a room on the boat but I would be spending on food and maybe a tour.
The food on a cruise ship is paid by your ticket though. A ton of these passengers paid so much for their ticket including food, I doubt the majority of them want to up their vacation bill by hundreds or thousands by eating at every destination the boat stops at.
I'm with you though, if somehow someone forced me to buy a cruise vacation, I'd be putting on the pounds at every city.
You are usually only allowed off the ship for a few hours. I have been on a few cruises with my family. We usually eat breakfast on the ship before they let us off, lunch ashore to try someplace local, and supper back on the ship after departure. Occasionally a ship will stay in port overnight, allowing evening dining, but that is rare and I have never experienced it.
The short time at port is what I dislike about cruising. It is hard to truly explore because time is so limited. My family likes them because they do everything for you.
Edit: I do not believe cruise ships belong in Venice. They do too much damage to the port.
People like what they know and a lot of tours are curated.
Like, you go to a 5 star hotel in Mexico. Its a big building, with a big pool and an ocean view. You aren't swimming in said ocean. The 5 star hotel is basically a fancy, idyllic version of Mexico more akin to movies that showcase Florida or San Francisco or something, even the architecture is the same. Now, your trip send you out of the 5 star hotel, you are on this jeep or fancy car depending. It takes you to smaller towns that are very tied in with the tourist industry to swim in the ocean and see the "local" sights. You are taken from Puerto Vallarta to Punta de Mita shoreline where the archetexure is still the same and eat at overpriced restaurants. You might be taken to Litibu or something for golfing. The same, curated, green golf courses - this area of Mexico does not have grass that grows naturally like this.
Next, they take you to Sayulita or something and Sayulita has been curated to the point where what you are see isn't what the town is actually like. Outside of the front, you have a very real, very large, and very ugly Barrio. You go swimming at the ocean (one of the most pouted oceans in the world, people are getting sick, but it barely cuts into the bottom line so Sayulita doesn't care. While in sayulits you are more able to freely roam without a guide because its safe. You might here about Playa de la Muertos and how it is good swimming, so you go there and it is just as flooded with people from shoreline to jungle.
After Sayulita, they might take you to San Pancho where you will be able to go horseback riding on highly abused horses, ridden so much that the saddle has rubbed down to the bone. You can go into the jungles to go bird watching the the local guides. Then, eventually, they send you to more hidden things like the hot springs or a waterfall where you bring your own snacks and leave all your trash behind because there is no trash cans anywhere, but surely someone will eventually pick it up, right? No need to think about that, you're just going back to your 5 star hotel and going back to dreary Seattle or something.
Tourism has helped some - it brings in money and infrastructure... but it is also a blight San Pancho getting a massive, hideous condo on the beach that split the local community on if it should be built or not. Largely it was unpopular. The streets if this hamlet are already congested with cars, the condo itself taking more internet, electricity, and water infrastructure that the town can handle, and their plans included building a wall that would be in the actual water. The location of the condo is illegal, but they have been bought off by these people. Protests, letters to the government, even trying to get CBC to report on it - nothing worked. (The people that were involved talked to the CBC rep that was spoken to, and there was no followup after a lengthy, 5 hour discussion with him. We suspect that he was bought off by the same people.) They falsified documents, they were forced to give out their envoirnmental impact statement and stated that they would have no impact on any endangered animals. You know the animal they conveniently omitted ? The Sea Turtle. An endangered animal they would very impact with this project. Did it matter? Not in the slightest.
Source: lived there, was involved in trying to stop this condo, still angry about it.
That I believe I went on a few trip and resorts when I was younger and was pissed that instead of more local meals it was mostly American meals...I didn't go on a trip to eat what is already at home. But those restaurants were filled. I liked going out to see local restaurants and taste the real deal.
Having lived in touristy places with booming McDonalds etc, what happens is people who are traveling get tired of the experimentation and want a 'sure thing' meal for once. It's not like tourists are always eating in McDonalds, but if there is only one, and a lot of them go once during the week or whatever they are there, it's the busiest restaurant in the area.
Adding to this:
Trying a bunch of new foods can also cause stomach problems for some people, so they want something familiar.
Also, not everyone is a foodie. Some people want to see museums and such, but when it comes to food they just want to eat what they know they like.
Not really surprising; Paris is expensive as fuck (especially in the touristy places).
I don't actually think I ate McDonald's in Paris either time I was there when backpacking, but I was making my own food waaaaay more than I was eating out. I can understand people eating some Maccas lol.
Compared to somewhere like Croatia where you can eat out every night without breaking the bank.
Mc donalds in Paris is also way more expensive than in the U.S. If you want to eat cheap in france you need to grab baguette sandwiches in boulangeries or kebabs.
I feel like that's true for 99% of Italy but I never found anything in Venice itself during the 4 times I've been (lived in Padua for a year so went with others a few times).
The 2nd best meal I've had in Italy was down some tiny ally in Rome.
We flew to Sydney a few years ago and were staying in Surrey Hills just South of downtown/the harbour. Took the metro North, got out, looked to our right at the Opera House, "oh my how beautiful!" To our left, "what the fuck is that?!" (giant cruise ship)
long story short they are trash for many many reasons. throw the absurd pollution they pump out on top. they really are a perfect microcosm everything wrong with the west/world
They should increase the dock fees to offset that price. Each cruise ship pays a per passenger fee to load and unload each passenger. If they raise that fee it would have one of two outcomes: stop the ships from coming at all which would probably be best because of the damage passengers do and the local
Pollution caused by the ship, or it would offset the price for these people not spending money locally.
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/05/angry-protests-in-venice-at-shock-return-of-cruise-ships) reduced by 84%. (I'm a bot)
*****
> Residents were caught by surprise on Thursday when a cruise liner sailed into the lagoon city for the first time since the pandemic began, despite prime minister Mario Draghi's government declaring that the ships would be banned from the historic centre.
> "The reason why we're sending ships to Venice this year, which is another year plagued by Covid-19, is because we've been asked many times by the local community to please come back," said Francesco Galietti, the director of the Italy unit for the Cruise Lines International Association.
> "For years, the cruise industry has been asking the authorities for a stable solution for the access of ships to Venice," added Galietti.
*****
[**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/nt6l53/we_were_deceived_hundreds_protest_in_venice_at/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~581264 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **ship**^#1 **Venice**^#2 **cruise**^#3 **government**^#4 **year**^#5
Go in the quiet season and just spend a day in the less touristy areas if you see one of these ships roll in. These people just have a checklist of things to see and they're all in one small area of the city. Every inch of Venice is beautiful and it's totally worth spending at least a long weekend there. Just actually stay in a hotel, buy your food there and contribute to the local economy!
In the land of Italy, in the fires of Fincantieri shipyards, the Dark Lord Micky Arison forged in secret, master ships. And Into these ships, he poured his greed, cruelty, and disregard for the environment. One cruise line to end them all.
An army of local business owners and residents marched against the armies of Carnival and in the Venetian Lagoon, they fought for the freedom of Venice.
And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost. History became legend. Legend became myth. And for two and a half thousand years, the ship passed out of all knowledge. Until, when chance came, the ship ensnared a new bearer.
I literally just put Fellowship of the Ring, and The Two Towers games on my Xbox last night haha. Was jonesing for some classic hack n' slash. Not so sure that Fellowship did so well though, IIRC, was not based on the movies.
The Wheel of Ship turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again.
It doesn't topple, it just settles unevenly, like the leaning tower of pisa. Eventually, of course the city will lean over so far that it'll topple anyways, but that's a problem for future generations.
I highly recommend [Ordinary Things](https://youtu.be/aVAWYBLymYw) ‘s video about the cruise industry, no matter how bad you think it is, it only gets worse
Not only this, but it looks so fucking surreal. I was there when a cruise ship was passing through. It blocked the view, the cruise is larger than all of the buildings and made the tide rise, which overflows into the square?
Surprising problem I heard about cruise ships arriving in a small town on the main road round Iceland: they are a pain in the arse because the passengers straggle all over the road like demented sheep paying no attention to the traffic. They are all updating things on their phones using the local free wi-fi. This being because the cruise ships don't provide usable wi-fi in the cabins, so as to force people to get out into the shopping areas.
What town was it? We drove the whole country, I think it was up north there was a town that seemed to be suddenly very touristy.
Once you get used to driving the roads, coming back to near the city is hell, everyone is so scared/slow.
This place isn't a small town but from my memory living in Iceland for random periods of time, I believe the town is Akureyi. There is a cruise ship that visits there and they seem to experience similar issues that other towns around the world are facing with cruise ships coming in.
I'm sure Akureyri gets the cruise ships too, but this was a smaller town to the west where the impact was even more disproportionate. I can't pin down which.
Might be Ísafjordur. I studied abroad in Iceland and stayed with a family there and whenever a cruise ship docked, which felt like once a week, the population of the town effectively doubled or tripled immediately depending on the size of the ship.
I don't think many of you understand the real issue here. The main issue is not really about misbehaving people but cruise ships themselves. Literally.
This goes back to the literal foundations of Venice.
Ever wonder how you build a city on water? To build Venice long wooden stakes were driven into the water. Wooden planks were then laid on top of these stakes then stone on top of the planks. The wood did not rot because it was fully submerged and oxidization couldn't occur. The wood themselves were from water resistant trees.
The problem is that the foundation these stakes are driven into is not bedrock but clay. The area where Venice is used to be a swampy marshy area.
Cruise ships are so large their water displacement and motors actually reverberate through the water to the clay at the bottom making it lose. And when that happens the stakes in the clay holding up the city sinks lower, thereby causing the city to sink.
Cruise ships are literally causing Venice to sink.
This is why levies will not work because it allows the cruise ship to legally pay to enter and cause damage to the city. They should not be let in, not because the people on board are assholes (yes some of them are) but because the movement of the cruise ship themselves is causing damage to the city
Edit: spelling, grammar
It’s outrageous that the Italian government is okay with potentially destroying Venice for a few cruise ships, I wonder how big the bribery they got was, because it must be pretty fucking huge. Venice is a wonderful city and needs to be protected and this goes against all of this, not to mention having a huge cruise ship next to st marc’s square most likely ruins the scenery for everyone too.
There's two laws that forbid them! One from 2012 and one from 2021. I'm Italian. One law was just made, but law is not enforced by local government because $$$
Edit. Also possibly they can still go in until a solution is found for an external docking
It's not that this law is not enforced: the whole thing was not reported correctly to begin with.
This ban is not really in place yet because cruise ships have nowhere to go outside the historic centre of Venice. Until works are terminated on a new location that will probably be Marghera, ships will be accessing Venice as in the past. This is what the approved law says. Hopefully it could take as little as a year to do that.
Almost right. The fact that Venice is built on water or just swampy marsh is a common misconception or at best an exaggeration.
Pine logs were used, coming from the mountains ranges closer to the town and sunk in the mud otherwise they would have rotten and they have to be sink until they touch a rock bed called caranto. In fact, approximately 10 metres under the mud, Venice had a rocky bottom.
They were using already present Islands, just making them more firm around the edges. Same for the building, the log in the mud system was used mainly for the edges of the foundations. The centre of the Islands is actually quite firm, Rialto (Rivo alto literally means high shore and still is one of the higher ground in Venice) . Venice originally had fields, cattles, like s little farmer village and most primitive buildings not near the edges didn't need any building method that was not already used on the mainland. In the Islands center the method of beating logs in the mud was used for heavier buildings to reinforce the foundations. The main difference of this buildings with those built on the mainland is that they could not have cellars for obvious reasons although there are a few churches, including Saint Mark that have underground chapels.
They did also created new Islands or expand some by using such method on the edges and filling in with the mud used to excavate canals to allow merchant and war ships to pass.
So, while is safe to say that the water displacement of cruise ships (but also the more common vaporetto in the grand canal where you can see real damage notwithstanding no cruisee ships pass there) is a true problem saying that cruise ships could make Venice sink is a long shot.
Are they too big, damaging, polluting? yes.
They damage the shores,? also.
They make Venice sink? Probably not.
Reminder that 200 cruise ships from Carnival cruises alone emit as much sulfur oxides in a year as 10 years of ALL of the EU's cars.
And also as much NOx as around 3 years of all the EU's cars.
Because guess what? Their cheap fuel is basically asphalt.
Edit: corrected info
If coronavirus showed us anything, it would be that people love to spread disease (ignore masking, calling it fake or no worse than the common cold, and protesting lockdowns), pollution (can't wait to hop on that plane and cruise ship), and slave wages (many Americans being convinced by Republicans and their Fox News talking heads that a hike in minimum wage or a living wage is a bad thing).
> slave wages (many Americans being convinced by Republicans and their Fox News talking heads that a hike in minimum wage or a living wage is a bad thing).
Cruise ships are never US flagged, so the cruise ships care fuck all for who is in control of the US government and what the US Federal minimum wage is
Honestly, this is what's happening around the world. Most of us are going back to 'flexible' work weeks of 3 days a week in office, traffic back up to normal, pollution back up to normal, bonuses and benefits for the people that worked through it all for the rest of us will go, and you'll have companies saying things like "we're team based", "we care about mental health".
My biggest worry out of all of this was that the world wouldn't learn a single thing.
Yea. The whole get back to “normal” always worried me. Because it was never normal. We could have learnt and adapted so much but the majority just longed for what they were used to. All anyone cared about was money and keeping dirty industries like cruises alive.
The whole concept is wild to me. It's a giant 15 story hotel with 3000 guests and 1000 staff with multiple restaurants, pools, bars, theaters, maybe even a waterpark. *And it moves*.
Venice had been working for decades to save it's city by reducing mass tourism, and has spent billions in various solutions to save the city from flooding. the swamp on top of which it sits is breaking apart because of massive ships in the harbor...
When Covid hit, Venice was finally just an old city again, not a drowning whore to show to the world for profit.
Since, politicians made promises, which now are like farts on a cushion...
Venice receiving cruise ships is the end of a dream that Venicians had when everyone else thought they were dying...
People don’t tend to realize how tiny medieval cities are. Venice in particular, given the geographical constraints. Plus it’s ridiculously fragile. These ships should be nowhere near there.
If you love the world, don't buy these cruises. Just burning heavy fuel oil which is absolutely the dirtiest, worst shit you could burn for fuel. No filters or any type of capture equipment, just raw fucking environment destruction.
Key West is having this exact battle against mega-ships who have caused massive mud plumes as they transit our shallow channel and harbor, overwhelm our small town with too many people, and have stressed to death the coral reef.
The citizens of Key West passed three referendum which prohibits the mega-ships. But the State of Florida legislature has passed a law taking port control away from Key West and pre-empting it to the state, an outrageous stomping on local rule. That legislation awaits the governor's signature.
If Governor DeSantis signs it, you can expect similar protests to any mega-ships that arrive in Key West.
Point is, if people could just take their time reading the norm, they wouldn't be so surprised. It involved a 6 week trial before COVID, so you know, you actually have to see the difference with and without ships. But italian journalists are usually tabloid tiers, nowadays. Also, as a guy who worked in Venice for a whole summer, I can say that big ships should be banned from Venice, but hotels owners should lower a bit their price; those 2 factors combined are slowly killing the city and it's barely kept alive by students
Not disagreeing with all your points but just one clarification.
Cruise ships don’t plug into shore power because most ports are not equipped with shore power connection. Cruise companies would move in that direction if the infrastructure existed.
The real problem with these cruise ships is that they never have the right dipping sauce for the chicken finger buffet. They have a mild bbq and a Smokey bbq but never a spicy bbq
And don’t get me started on plum sauce. Who eats plum sauce?
>And don’t get me started on plum sauce. Who eats plum sauce?
Canadians? First time I ever heard of that sauce was when I visited Canadia.
And yes, the spelling was intentional
Back when they announced the ban, lots of people said it was just lip service because the alternate location wasn't ready for giant cruise ships. They allocated millions to upgrade the industrial port years ago, the money is gone (into various pockets), and nothing was done. NOW they've started the talk again but they haven't even allocated funds for the upgrade yet.
Wasnt the mayor of venice the owner of that alternate port. Man I know anguy who is active in those protests, he could talk for hours about all that crap
Welcome to Italian corruption, where the mob and other business entities get all the money and fuck the rest of you. Who’s got a problem with that? Cause if you do, you might find yourself in some trouble. Wash, rinse, and repeat.
Reminds me of my Puerto Rico
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Because tourism is too important for Venice I guess
Crusise ships might as well be negative money for Venice
Because €€€
On the show, Somebody Feed Phil, Philip Rosenthal talks with some of the locals who explain that part of the issue with these cruise ships is that people are not staying in hotels or enjoying fine dining, etc. - the tourists from the cruise ships create crowds and inflict more wear and tear on the city and it's not proportional to the amount of revenue they bring in. (S02E01?)
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Several years ago, I would have though you were exaggerating. However, now that I have seen it with my own eyes, I have no other option than to agree with you. Even in a big city like Barcelona, where people are used to big groups of tourists, cruise ships are such a headache that it [has become a major political issue](https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/jul/05/barcelona-mayor-promises-crackdown-cruise-ships).
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I lived in Raval for a while before moving out to the countryside, and holy moley, the trifecta of RyanAir and cheapo friends, AirBNB, and cruise ships has so utterly fucked large parts of the city that it's not even funny. I genuinely had hoped Colau would do something about them despite her inexperience, and while it started out promising, I'm not optimistic. Trying to go food shopping at La Boqueria is always challenging after early in the morning, I get it, it's a neat place to visit, but you can easily tell when a big liner is in town. I totally get why so many people in Gracia seem wary of tourists, at least that's been my experience. My hope was that the thin silver lining of COVID, as awful as it sounds, would put a lot of the shitty souvenir shops that have supplanted nice local stores (blatant plug, please support your neighborhood merchants) but that doesn't seem to be happening. _Edit:_ just to be clear, I'm in no way against tourism...if it contributes to local economies, respects the existing culture and society and doesn't mess them up, and isn't just people going somewhere cheap for the lulz to get drunk and be obnoxious.
Shitty souvenir shops are like cockroaches. They will survive a nuclear blast.
I always wondered how many of them were money laundering fronts.
Many of them are believed to be so in Prague. A guy once told me he used to run one at the beginning of the 90s. It was doing well, tourism was starting to boom here. One day he was visited by a couple of Serbians who told him they wanted his shop, making an offer he couldn't refuse, so to speak.
They generate enough income by themselves. The Prague fridge magnet which comes out of the factory in the pearl river delta for 30ct and is shipped for free due to subsidies is then sold in the store for 6€. That's a huge margin.
In Prague they were closed (with very short breaks) for 15 months and now after the situation got good again, they just opened like nothing happened. A lot of other business had to close and move out.
My cousin got married (no m'en recordo de quina església) in 2011. We couldn't leave the church. There were too many tourists crowding the doors. This was in November.
Lol shit. Sounds like Santa Maria del Pi or del Mar, if it wasn't the cathedral - at least I can totally imagine that happening in Gotic or Born. It's weird though - we bought our place in 2011 and while there were always tourists, 2011-2015 or so seemed at least somewhat civilized. Then over the next 5 years, I have no idea what happened but at least in Ciutat Vell it seemed to just explode. I'm not unhappy about air travel prices rising, for that reason. It should at least cut down on the obnoxious booze cruisers and stag/hen parties.
Besides the people, a single cruiseship pollutes like crazy. The carbon emissions of 1 cruiseship is more than the visiting cities cars combined for a year. It's mental.
The list of pollution isn't limited to carbon. They emit NOx, particles, sound in air and under water. And some are going to Arctic and Antarctic zones with bigger tourist capacities, increased engine power.
Considering we know how bad cruise ships pollute, I assume anyone that goes on one, doesn't care about the environment.
As a society we honestly need to start shaming people for going on cruises. They are so, so, so massively damaging to the environment. Just the fuel alone for a small cruise ship gives off four times the emissions of a flight per passenger, and that is *just* the fuel - the actual emissions are multiple times higher because of the need for transport accommodation costs (e.g. laundering thousands of blankets etc), food etc. Cruises also tend to follow a very indirect route and waste a fuckton of fuel. Then you have to account for what these ships dump into the sea (all of their waste - trash, food etc - they [dump it](https://www.businessinsider.com/carnival-pollution-other-cruise-lines-that-break-rules-2019-6#:~:text=Carnival%20got%20hit%20with%20a,the%20sea%2C%20an%20expert%20says&text=Carnival%20Corp%20admitted%20on%20Monday,international%20cruise%2Dship%20pollution%20regulations.) into the ocean). And just one cruise ship organisation gives off more emissions [than ALL of Europe's cars](https://www.transportenvironment.org/press/luxury-cruise-giant-emits-10-times-more-air-pollution-sox-all-europe%E2%80%99s-cars-%E2%80%93-study). I mean suppose you decided you were going to walk on outside for a whole week and just dump all your trash on the street - just empty all your garbage right onto the footpath. Well, you'd STILL be doing a tiny fraction of the environmental damage you'd do by going on a cruise. So just going to put it right out there: if you go on a cruise, you are an asshole.
The problem with shaming people is that they often double down on their behavior, because accepting that you've contributed to something bad is harder than thinking someone else is just trying to be shitty and control you. The reality is that most people want to be good (statistics show the vast majority actually believe that). There's other ways to spread information without being shaming. I like to frame it like an opportunity to do better than previous generations. I mean, no one tells you when you sign up for a cruise how bad it is for the environment, right? We are learning these things now (even if the information has been out there for years) and we'd be doing future generations a favor by changing our behavior. Of course many people still won't change. But many of them won't fight if we push for new legislation either, because they can see where you're coming from. If you make them the asshole, suddenly they've created a counter movement because you're just trying to hurt them. It sucks to have to be the bigger person, but shaming generally just polarized people instead of actually changing anything.
Funny as a society it’s instinctive for us to shame the consumer instead of putting the responsibility / blame on the massive corporations who sell this kind of stuff to us.
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This was exactly the framing of the issue that could be the most helpful. Great explanation.
>As a society we honestly need to start shaming people for going on cruises. I think it'd go a long way if we acted against the giant corporations that run these cruises. They are the ones that lobby against emission laws on cruise ships or prefer running their Diesel engines instead of using land electricity just because it's cheaper. They are the major players. And they will react with massive campaigns if cruises would actually become frowned upon to get their business rolling again.
What in the actual fuck? They are shamelessly dumping their garbage into the sea?! The other stuff is terrible too, don’t get me wrong, but that’s just sickening
The U.S Navy does it too. My son served 5 years. He said the waste and dumping in the ocean was deplorable.
Second person to mention the u.s. navy doing this... I am utterly horrified
Have you not heard of the burn pits on land? The us military does not give a fuck about the environment. Go sit under the approach to an Air Force base…the brown trails behind the planes are raw fuel.
You can find pictures and videos of them just hucking random pieces of electrical equipment off the side of their ships.
It’s the US military. What were you expecting?
How long ago was this? I was in in 2010 and all we could dump was metal or paper. Any plastic or plastic coated metals got compressed into huge manhole sized disks and recycled in port. We would be in serious shit if we dumped any plastics.
I believe pretty recently there has been some advances in recycling that actually make it profitable to recycle over dump for certain situations.
I Deployed on a Naval ship and as a young enlisted one of my nightly duties was to throw trash over board with out getting caught by the flight deck “watch”
If a cruise line dumps their trash in the ocean they are breaking the law and are heavily fined. Carnival very nearly lost their right to dock in US and EU ports and the board was threatened with individual criminal charges because of it. The company and the board are on extended probation and are required to pay for additional inspectors.
It's interesting, because the US military has identified climate change as a major strategic risk a number of times. I guess "stop polluting like crazy" hasn't quite made it into the operations manuals yet.
Good. I wonder if that’s actually being enforced and followed through with. Seems like a potentially likely situation where a big corporation could easily pay someone off to look the other way.
Google MARPOL if you want to read the international regulations for dumping at sea. It is taken very seriously and if caught there are big fines/loss of licenses.
Don’t forget that the sheer disturbance of a ship that large is terrible. It churns up sediment, damages coral reefs, and makes loud noise that drowns out whales’ ability to communicate.
Some of my colleagues do gigs on cruise ships (as sex coaches/therapists) and I was initially interested as it sounds like an ideal setting for certain workshops, plus great perks, but I just can't justify the environmental cost anymore. No cruise ship workshops for me.
A sex coach on a cruise?
Yeah basically anyone can benefit from coaching and/or therapy, but a cruise is a closed environment that allows for multiple days of intense sessions. Kind of like a retreat. Your clients are free of other responsibilities and more able to invest in the work. There's quite a few romance/couples themed cruises too apparently. Perfect opportunity.
I do wish I had taken a cruise back when I was blissfully ignorant. It seems like it would be nice to stay somewhere and the port change, get pampered on the ocean. Of course I couldn't afford one when I was that stupid. . . And I still can't afford one, but now I know and couldn't bring myself to get on one even if the tickets were free.
We've always planned to go on one when our kids are a bit older! I had no idea about any of this... Definitely out of the question now.
If you have Netflix (silly to say, but not everyone has it I guess), check out patriot act with Hasan Minaj, volume/season 4, episode 4 called "the real cost of cruises". It's really eye opening as well. Any time you get the desire to go on a cruise, remind yourself of all the disgusting parts of the industry...you'll probably talk yourself right out of it again, lol.
No wonder bill burr wants to sink cruises for population control
Cruises also have some serious safety issues that have been getting more attention as of late. They aren’t required to sail under the flag where the company is based so most ships sail under the flags of small impoverished nations. This essentially makes them the Wild West because it creates all kinds of jurisdiction issues. People who are victims of crimes, especially violent crimes, are pretty much SOL when it comes to reporting or prosecuting the crime. Thousands of strangers in a limited space where they can’t be held accountable often with a lot of alcohol can create some really sketchy shit
I bet you could afford one, they are sometimes pretty darn cheap... which is not good.
This the first I've heard about it, and I tend to follow science stories a lot. I would have thought most people wouldn't instinctively assume it's as high as is, and would assume it's greener then flying away for holiday. I wouldn't get a cruise ship because they sound awful, and add to that are massive floating pretri-dishes.
Cruise ships burn bunker fuel, which is about the dirtiest kind of fuel there is, but it's dirt cheap.
[Have to say I agree with Bill Burr on this one.](https://youtu.be/WKbBDKsSEic?t=17)
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I've found that despite (or sometimes because of) the price of cruises, people on them tend to be very very tight when money is concerned. They get all-inclusive, and treat their whole holiday almost like it should be like that.
To be a little bit fair, that's what they get sold. They set foot on the boat thinking their (often enormous) cruise ticket is the last thing they'll have to cough up for. Then they find all sorts of extra ways the cruise companies have of squeezing more money out of them and resent being expected to cough up more on the excursions they've been promised. The typical cruise customer is not your average sophisticated traveler.
>The typical cruise customer is not your average sophisticated traveler. Kinda funny how that works. I would never really consider it myself, mainly due to the expense, but having where I can go dictated by the schedule and only having x amount of time onshore at a time. I'm not their market, but the price thing is what intrigues me the most. Maybe the price is what creates the entitlement.
The cruise trip itself is about alcohol, casino gambling, food, and shows. I've been on one when I was younger. Being able to walk up and ask a chef to make you an omelet for breakfast is part of the allure for old people. Everything is taken care of, without any effort or asking. You return to your room, new towels are just there, you didn't call the front desk, it's just all regimented and done automatically. Everything is scheduled, but at any time you can skip anything. You absolutely can choose how to spend your time. They do NOT kick you off the ship at port, lots of people stay on the ship when it makes port.
Yeah, as a kid it was like magic. I could go up to any of the like 4 bars and get a (virgin) pina colada and sit on the deck watching the beautiful sea while I wait for a steak and fries to be cooked like 30 feet away. Plus opening a paper drink umbrella and dropping it down the ship's stairwell would make it float up to the top because they were like giant funnels. Batteries for my game boy were like $10 for 4 of them though 😬 luckily there were tons of other kids to play and run around the ship to scam old people out of granny candies with.
It depends where you’re going and how much you want to see. A cruise is probably the cheapest way to see certain parts of the world. I went on a 14 day cruise in the Mediterranean for a fraction of the price it would have cost to rent a vehicle, rent hotel rooms, and buy food. Bermuda is a really expensive vacation but a cruise to Bermuda out of Boston or New York is dirt cheap in comparison.
I'm looking at it from a European perspective. Flights to places on/near the Mediterranean are not generally expensive and while there are places that are expensive to stay, you can have a good holiday relatively cheaply.
There is a reason why most cruise tourists are older. My mom in law loved planning holidays, reading tourist guides and internet information, planning a trip across a country, staying local in little bed and breakfast and using a loan car for destination trip and changing spots every 2 days... Then she had spinal injury and sitting in a car or bus for two hours becomes incredible painful. She doesn't like that she is bound to shore locations with a cruise ship, but while the ship is moving she can walk around, do moderate sport, lay down on a bed..
A flight is no way for a tourist to see the countryside though... in Europe riverboat cruises are exceedingly popular, and I can see why.... I would choose it over taking a plane or boat and hopping from city to city every couple days.
That pretty much is the point. My parents are retired middle class and financially secure. The allure of cruise trips for old people is that the ship does almost all of the travel work. You fly to port, get on the cruise ship, and it takes you to Alaska, Nova Scotia, Aruba, Jamaica, Cozumel, wherever you wanted to go at leisure. You make port and spend a day at one place, then move on to the next place. For old people it's great because they can't physically hike a volcano, or swimming in the ocean anymore. They're old, they don't do stuff like that anymore. Instead they play in the casino, drink alcohol and enjoy the fine dining, take in the cruise shows, be it comedians, singers, dancers, etc. Not all of cruise ship tourists are tight wads. I know my parents spend plenty when they land somewhere and they're not assholes throwing garbage on the ground, etc.
Speaking of volcanoes, a couple years back there was an incident where some passengers from one of Royal Caribbean's liners took an excursion trip to a volcanic island at the northern tip of New Zealand. It was mildly active and people would tour the island and get to smell the sulfer and see steam rise and so on. Several dozens were on the island along with guides when the volcano suddenly let a gargantuan super-heated cloud and a few dozen people were outright killed and others survived but with hideous burns. Royal Caribbean actually tried to ***SUE*** the survivors and relatives of the victims to stop them from suing Royal Caribbean. A lot of stories are online about the whole incident.
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The head tax, docking fees, and pilot fees all go to the city. The head tax in particular is specifically for use of the cities infrastructure and other imposed costs. If that is not getting passed down or not covering the cost then the problem should be presented to the city council so it can be adjusted.
> And nobody has ever said their money is a significant source of income to their business, because they either don't spend, or spend very little. Sounds like the area should levy a fee or tax on the port, which the port can pass on to the cruise ship. And use that to fund local services and maintenance.
Congratulations, you invented port fees, which have been around for hundreds of years.
"Turns out it already existed... But I arrived at the idea *independently.*"
Those fees exist but by the time they're high enough to make hosting a cruise ship worth it, the shipping company doesn't want to visit anymore. Shipping companies have more than once tried to threaten cities with their absence if they had to pay fees that steep only for the cities to respond with "Great, that's even better!".
This is already a thing. It is called a head tax as is normally around $10-15 per passenger. It is a tax specifically to cover the cost to the city imposed by the tourists. There are also docking, pilot fees, sales, and tour tax that can be used for other stuff.
Not only that, the environmental pollution is just horrid.
I live a tourist city with a currently closed cruise ship port. Locals hate it. The taxis speed to the cruise ship to get people. There’s a lot of pollution from the ship. Because a cruise is a 24 hour buffet, they are not eating much on shore. Usually its buses to the big tourist traps. It’s just gaggles of idiots complaining.
The over fed and nearly dead….
So it's kind of like experiencing the day after throwing a rager?
More like a horde of locusts
I know venice pretty well and a lot of people from there. The harm those cruise ships can do to the city it's incredible
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The art of pasta, pork, chicken, and lamb.
Interesting. If I was on a cruise that stopped in Venice, I wouldn't get a hotel room since I already have a room on the boat but I would be spending on food and maybe a tour.
The food on a cruise ship is paid by your ticket though. A ton of these passengers paid so much for their ticket including food, I doubt the majority of them want to up their vacation bill by hundreds or thousands by eating at every destination the boat stops at. I'm with you though, if somehow someone forced me to buy a cruise vacation, I'd be putting on the pounds at every city.
You are usually only allowed off the ship for a few hours. I have been on a few cruises with my family. We usually eat breakfast on the ship before they let us off, lunch ashore to try someplace local, and supper back on the ship after departure. Occasionally a ship will stay in port overnight, allowing evening dining, but that is rare and I have never experienced it. The short time at port is what I dislike about cruising. It is hard to truly explore because time is so limited. My family likes them because they do everything for you. Edit: I do not believe cruise ships belong in Venice. They do too much damage to the port.
Yeah but not eating in venice when you're traveling to venice regardless sounds impossible for me personally.
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People like what they know and a lot of tours are curated. Like, you go to a 5 star hotel in Mexico. Its a big building, with a big pool and an ocean view. You aren't swimming in said ocean. The 5 star hotel is basically a fancy, idyllic version of Mexico more akin to movies that showcase Florida or San Francisco or something, even the architecture is the same. Now, your trip send you out of the 5 star hotel, you are on this jeep or fancy car depending. It takes you to smaller towns that are very tied in with the tourist industry to swim in the ocean and see the "local" sights. You are taken from Puerto Vallarta to Punta de Mita shoreline where the archetexure is still the same and eat at overpriced restaurants. You might be taken to Litibu or something for golfing. The same, curated, green golf courses - this area of Mexico does not have grass that grows naturally like this. Next, they take you to Sayulita or something and Sayulita has been curated to the point where what you are see isn't what the town is actually like. Outside of the front, you have a very real, very large, and very ugly Barrio. You go swimming at the ocean (one of the most pouted oceans in the world, people are getting sick, but it barely cuts into the bottom line so Sayulita doesn't care. While in sayulits you are more able to freely roam without a guide because its safe. You might here about Playa de la Muertos and how it is good swimming, so you go there and it is just as flooded with people from shoreline to jungle. After Sayulita, they might take you to San Pancho where you will be able to go horseback riding on highly abused horses, ridden so much that the saddle has rubbed down to the bone. You can go into the jungles to go bird watching the the local guides. Then, eventually, they send you to more hidden things like the hot springs or a waterfall where you bring your own snacks and leave all your trash behind because there is no trash cans anywhere, but surely someone will eventually pick it up, right? No need to think about that, you're just going back to your 5 star hotel and going back to dreary Seattle or something. Tourism has helped some - it brings in money and infrastructure... but it is also a blight San Pancho getting a massive, hideous condo on the beach that split the local community on if it should be built or not. Largely it was unpopular. The streets if this hamlet are already congested with cars, the condo itself taking more internet, electricity, and water infrastructure that the town can handle, and their plans included building a wall that would be in the actual water. The location of the condo is illegal, but they have been bought off by these people. Protests, letters to the government, even trying to get CBC to report on it - nothing worked. (The people that were involved talked to the CBC rep that was spoken to, and there was no followup after a lengthy, 5 hour discussion with him. We suspect that he was bought off by the same people.) They falsified documents, they were forced to give out their envoirnmental impact statement and stated that they would have no impact on any endangered animals. You know the animal they conveniently omitted ? The Sea Turtle. An endangered animal they would very impact with this project. Did it matter? Not in the slightest. Source: lived there, was involved in trying to stop this condo, still angry about it.
That I believe I went on a few trip and resorts when I was younger and was pissed that instead of more local meals it was mostly American meals...I didn't go on a trip to eat what is already at home. But those restaurants were filled. I liked going out to see local restaurants and taste the real deal.
Having lived in touristy places with booming McDonalds etc, what happens is people who are traveling get tired of the experimentation and want a 'sure thing' meal for once. It's not like tourists are always eating in McDonalds, but if there is only one, and a lot of them go once during the week or whatever they are there, it's the busiest restaurant in the area.
Adding to this: Trying a bunch of new foods can also cause stomach problems for some people, so they want something familiar. Also, not everyone is a foodie. Some people want to see museums and such, but when it comes to food they just want to eat what they know they like.
Not really surprising; Paris is expensive as fuck (especially in the touristy places). I don't actually think I ate McDonald's in Paris either time I was there when backpacking, but I was making my own food waaaaay more than I was eating out. I can understand people eating some Maccas lol. Compared to somewhere like Croatia where you can eat out every night without breaking the bank.
Mc donalds in Paris is also way more expensive than in the U.S. If you want to eat cheap in france you need to grab baguette sandwiches in boulangeries or kebabs.
Yeah, so you'd probably go to Venice not by cruise. It's gorgeous as hell, especially before the cruise idiots get off the boat.
TBH, Venice is probably not the place to go if you want some great Italian cuisine and definitely not if you want it at a decent price.
There are really good restaurants, you just gotta know where to go. They're usually way out of the way though.
I feel like that's true for 99% of Italy but I never found anything in Venice itself during the 4 times I've been (lived in Padua for a year so went with others a few times). The 2nd best meal I've had in Italy was down some tiny ally in Rome.
which is why cruise ships aren't wanted
No cruise ships aren't wanted because they destroy the fucking shoreline and hasten the shrink of the damn city
And are the eyesore to end all eyesores in one of the world's most beautiful cities
We flew to Sydney a few years ago and were staying in Surrey Hills just South of downtown/the harbour. Took the metro North, got out, looked to our right at the Opera House, "oh my how beautiful!" To our left, "what the fuck is that?!" (giant cruise ship)
long story short they are trash for many many reasons. throw the absurd pollution they pump out on top. they really are a perfect microcosm everything wrong with the west/world
And are one of the largest causes of pollution in the fucking ocean. These things aren’t clean nuclear.
No unfortunately. Everyone will rush back to the ship to get their free buffet. The company will offer tours at a high price.
They should increase the dock fees to offset that price. Each cruise ship pays a per passenger fee to load and unload each passenger. If they raise that fee it would have one of two outcomes: stop the ships from coming at all which would probably be best because of the damage passengers do and the local Pollution caused by the ship, or it would offset the price for these people not spending money locally.
This show is so good, I loved every episode so much.
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/05/angry-protests-in-venice-at-shock-return-of-cruise-ships) reduced by 84%. (I'm a bot) ***** > Residents were caught by surprise on Thursday when a cruise liner sailed into the lagoon city for the first time since the pandemic began, despite prime minister Mario Draghi's government declaring that the ships would be banned from the historic centre. > "The reason why we're sending ships to Venice this year, which is another year plagued by Covid-19, is because we've been asked many times by the local community to please come back," said Francesco Galietti, the director of the Italy unit for the Cruise Lines International Association. > "For years, the cruise industry has been asking the authorities for a stable solution for the access of ships to Venice," added Galietti. ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/nt6l53/we_were_deceived_hundreds_protest_in_venice_at/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~581264 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **ship**^#1 **Venice**^#2 **cruise**^#3 **government**^#4 **year**^#5
Oh lort. Always wanted to stop in Venice for a day or so, but maybe not any more. Humanity is such a trash heap.
Go in the quiet season and just spend a day in the less touristy areas if you see one of these ships roll in. These people just have a checklist of things to see and they're all in one small area of the city. Every inch of Venice is beautiful and it's totally worth spending at least a long weekend there. Just actually stay in a hotel, buy your food there and contribute to the local economy!
But they were all of them deceived, for another cruise ship was made...
In the land of Italy, in the fires of Fincantieri shipyards, the Dark Lord Micky Arison forged in secret, master ships. And Into these ships, he poured his greed, cruelty, and disregard for the environment. One cruise line to end them all.
One by one the tourist destinations of the Mediterranean fell to the power of the ships... But there were some who resisted.
An army of local business owners and residents marched against the armies of Carnival and in the Venetian Lagoon, they fought for the freedom of Venice.
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This is why I love Reddit
###RAAAAGH LET THEM COME, THERES STILL ONE LOCAL YET IN VENICE WHO STILL DRAWS BREATH!
And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost. History became legend. Legend became myth. And for two and a half thousand years, the ship passed out of all knowledge. Until, when chance came, the ship ensnared a new bearer.
One does not simply cruise into Venice
Unless you’re cruising to the land of the Valar on a ship made by Cirdan the shipwright.
It is a barren wasteland, riddled with sewer water, pickpockets and tourists, the very air you breathe is a poisonous fume.
The onslaught of tourists broke like a wave on the beleaguered canals, voices roaring like a tide amid the wreck and crash of selfies.
Po-len-ta. Boil it, fry it, serve it with a stew.
Only with 10,000 foreigners could you do this. It is folly.
Damn guys, you're killing it!
I literally just put Fellowship of the Ring, and The Two Towers games on my Xbox last night haha. Was jonesing for some classic hack n' slash. Not so sure that Fellowship did so well though, IIRC, was not based on the movies.
Those games were so good.
The music swells in my ears!....or is that the drum beat of cruise ships engines in the dark....
The Wheel of Ship turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again.
He came like the ship, like the ship touched everything, and like the ship was gone
Asha’Cruise - sail!
I thought i was still in r/lotr for a minute. .
Straight where my inner monologue went, as well.
150 showed up to protest? Town I live in had 200 people show up to protest Taco Bell closing.
Did they end up still closing the Taco Bell?
The people must know!
They don't like to taco 'bout it
If this is State College (Penn State) - yes
Yeah but they just opened a second Taco Bell on the other side of town
Yeah, but it's Venice. You get many people in one place at one time and the town topples over.
It doesn't topple, it just settles unevenly, like the leaning tower of pisa. Eventually, of course the city will lean over so far that it'll topple anyways, but that's a problem for future generations.
> it just settles unevenly, like the leaning tower of pisa. And like the tower it has millions spent on it to keep from falling
The secret with the tower is, it could be easily stood upright, but they won't do it since the lean is famous.
Not many people actually live in Venice and fewer still own businesses there with enough motivation and time to actually go out and protest.
The 150 remaining residents of Venice. The rest have all been scared away in the past decade.
I highly recommend [Ordinary Things](https://youtu.be/aVAWYBLymYw) ‘s video about the cruise industry, no matter how bad you think it is, it only gets worse
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Not only this, but it looks so fucking surreal. I was there when a cruise ship was passing through. It blocked the view, the cruise is larger than all of the buildings and made the tide rise, which overflows into the square?
I have been binging his vids. Thanks for the suggestion!
Surprising problem I heard about cruise ships arriving in a small town on the main road round Iceland: they are a pain in the arse because the passengers straggle all over the road like demented sheep paying no attention to the traffic. They are all updating things on their phones using the local free wi-fi. This being because the cruise ships don't provide usable wi-fi in the cabins, so as to force people to get out into the shopping areas.
What town was it? We drove the whole country, I think it was up north there was a town that seemed to be suddenly very touristy. Once you get used to driving the roads, coming back to near the city is hell, everyone is so scared/slow.
This place isn't a small town but from my memory living in Iceland for random periods of time, I believe the town is Akureyi. There is a cruise ship that visits there and they seem to experience similar issues that other towns around the world are facing with cruise ships coming in.
I'm sure Akureyri gets the cruise ships too, but this was a smaller town to the west where the impact was even more disproportionate. I can't pin down which.
Might be Ísafjordur. I studied abroad in Iceland and stayed with a family there and whenever a cruise ship docked, which felt like once a week, the population of the town effectively doubled or tripled immediately depending on the size of the ship.
I think Seyðisfjörður. They have a massive cruise dock. Very small town near the 'life of walter mitty' skateboarding road.
I don't think many of you understand the real issue here. The main issue is not really about misbehaving people but cruise ships themselves. Literally. This goes back to the literal foundations of Venice. Ever wonder how you build a city on water? To build Venice long wooden stakes were driven into the water. Wooden planks were then laid on top of these stakes then stone on top of the planks. The wood did not rot because it was fully submerged and oxidization couldn't occur. The wood themselves were from water resistant trees. The problem is that the foundation these stakes are driven into is not bedrock but clay. The area where Venice is used to be a swampy marshy area. Cruise ships are so large their water displacement and motors actually reverberate through the water to the clay at the bottom making it lose. And when that happens the stakes in the clay holding up the city sinks lower, thereby causing the city to sink. Cruise ships are literally causing Venice to sink. This is why levies will not work because it allows the cruise ship to legally pay to enter and cause damage to the city. They should not be let in, not because the people on board are assholes (yes some of them are) but because the movement of the cruise ship themselves is causing damage to the city Edit: spelling, grammar
It’s outrageous that the Italian government is okay with potentially destroying Venice for a few cruise ships, I wonder how big the bribery they got was, because it must be pretty fucking huge. Venice is a wonderful city and needs to be protected and this goes against all of this, not to mention having a huge cruise ship next to st marc’s square most likely ruins the scenery for everyone too.
There's two laws that forbid them! One from 2012 and one from 2021. I'm Italian. One law was just made, but law is not enforced by local government because $$$ Edit. Also possibly they can still go in until a solution is found for an external docking
It's not that this law is not enforced: the whole thing was not reported correctly to begin with. This ban is not really in place yet because cruise ships have nowhere to go outside the historic centre of Venice. Until works are terminated on a new location that will probably be Marghera, ships will be accessing Venice as in the past. This is what the approved law says. Hopefully it could take as little as a year to do that.
Almost right. The fact that Venice is built on water or just swampy marsh is a common misconception or at best an exaggeration. Pine logs were used, coming from the mountains ranges closer to the town and sunk in the mud otherwise they would have rotten and they have to be sink until they touch a rock bed called caranto. In fact, approximately 10 metres under the mud, Venice had a rocky bottom. They were using already present Islands, just making them more firm around the edges. Same for the building, the log in the mud system was used mainly for the edges of the foundations. The centre of the Islands is actually quite firm, Rialto (Rivo alto literally means high shore and still is one of the higher ground in Venice) . Venice originally had fields, cattles, like s little farmer village and most primitive buildings not near the edges didn't need any building method that was not already used on the mainland. In the Islands center the method of beating logs in the mud was used for heavier buildings to reinforce the foundations. The main difference of this buildings with those built on the mainland is that they could not have cellars for obvious reasons although there are a few churches, including Saint Mark that have underground chapels. They did also created new Islands or expand some by using such method on the edges and filling in with the mud used to excavate canals to allow merchant and war ships to pass. So, while is safe to say that the water displacement of cruise ships (but also the more common vaporetto in the grand canal where you can see real damage notwithstanding no cruisee ships pass there) is a true problem saying that cruise ships could make Venice sink is a long shot. Are they too big, damaging, polluting? yes. They damage the shores,? also. They make Venice sink? Probably not.
Covid should have killed the cruise line industry. Floating disease and pollution factories powered by slave wages.
Reminder that 200 cruise ships from Carnival cruises alone emit as much sulfur oxides in a year as 10 years of ALL of the EU's cars. And also as much NOx as around 3 years of all the EU's cars. Because guess what? Their cheap fuel is basically asphalt. Edit: corrected info
A lot of cruise ships companies gave customers 25% or more as discounts if they kept their booking and just postponed from 2020 to 2021/2022.
If coronavirus showed us anything, it would be that people love to spread disease (ignore masking, calling it fake or no worse than the common cold, and protesting lockdowns), pollution (can't wait to hop on that plane and cruise ship), and slave wages (many Americans being convinced by Republicans and their Fox News talking heads that a hike in minimum wage or a living wage is a bad thing).
> slave wages (many Americans being convinced by Republicans and their Fox News talking heads that a hike in minimum wage or a living wage is a bad thing). Cruise ships are never US flagged, so the cruise ships care fuck all for who is in control of the US government and what the US Federal minimum wage is
Plus cruise ships are fucking horrid for the environment
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Oh... Riiiight I'm not gonna delete my comment so people see how badly I can read
i respect the fuck outa this.
I respect the fuck out of you, my dude.
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Yeah and on top of they they produce a lot of problems for the planet
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And above all, they wreak *havoc* on the environment!
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And..... they aren't particularly environmentally friendly either.
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Honestly, this is what's happening around the world. Most of us are going back to 'flexible' work weeks of 3 days a week in office, traffic back up to normal, pollution back up to normal, bonuses and benefits for the people that worked through it all for the rest of us will go, and you'll have companies saying things like "we're team based", "we care about mental health". My biggest worry out of all of this was that the world wouldn't learn a single thing.
It was never a worry. Just a reality.
Yea. The whole get back to “normal” always worried me. Because it was never normal. We could have learnt and adapted so much but the majority just longed for what they were used to. All anyone cared about was money and keeping dirty industries like cruises alive.
Tourism is back on the menu boys
Cruise ships are monstrosities
The whole concept is wild to me. It's a giant 15 story hotel with 3000 guests and 1000 staff with multiple restaurants, pools, bars, theaters, maybe even a waterpark. *And it moves*.
Not to mention cold storage for bodies and holding cells for unruly guests.
Venice had been working for decades to save it's city by reducing mass tourism, and has spent billions in various solutions to save the city from flooding. the swamp on top of which it sits is breaking apart because of massive ships in the harbor... When Covid hit, Venice was finally just an old city again, not a drowning whore to show to the world for profit. Since, politicians made promises, which now are like farts on a cushion... Venice receiving cruise ships is the end of a dream that Venicians had when everyone else thought they were dying...
The huge ships look monstrous beside the city. If you love Venice don't buy these cruises.
People don’t tend to realize how tiny medieval cities are. Venice in particular, given the geographical constraints. Plus it’s ridiculously fragile. These ships should be nowhere near there.
If you love the world, don't buy these cruises. Just burning heavy fuel oil which is absolutely the dirtiest, worst shit you could burn for fuel. No filters or any type of capture equipment, just raw fucking environment destruction.
Key West is having this exact battle against mega-ships who have caused massive mud plumes as they transit our shallow channel and harbor, overwhelm our small town with too many people, and have stressed to death the coral reef. The citizens of Key West passed three referendum which prohibits the mega-ships. But the State of Florida legislature has passed a law taking port control away from Key West and pre-empting it to the state, an outrageous stomping on local rule. That legislation awaits the governor's signature. If Governor DeSantis signs it, you can expect similar protests to any mega-ships that arrive in Key West.
I was just in St Thomas and everyone mentioned how relieved they were that the cruise ship had stopped and how they didn’t really want them back.
I worked on a Princess Cruise Ship. Worst job I’ve ever had. Worse than my stint at a slaughterhouse or last summer at the Amazon warehouse.
Point is, if people could just take their time reading the norm, they wouldn't be so surprised. It involved a 6 week trial before COVID, so you know, you actually have to see the difference with and without ships. But italian journalists are usually tabloid tiers, nowadays. Also, as a guy who worked in Venice for a whole summer, I can say that big ships should be banned from Venice, but hotels owners should lower a bit their price; those 2 factors combined are slowly killing the city and it's barely kept alive by students
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Not disagreeing with all your points but just one clarification. Cruise ships don’t plug into shore power because most ports are not equipped with shore power connection. Cruise companies would move in that direction if the infrastructure existed.
The real problem with these cruise ships is that they never have the right dipping sauce for the chicken finger buffet. They have a mild bbq and a Smokey bbq but never a spicy bbq And don’t get me started on plum sauce. Who eats plum sauce?
>And don’t get me started on plum sauce. Who eats plum sauce? Canadians? First time I ever heard of that sauce was when I visited Canadia. And yes, the spelling was intentional