Zammit Family Cruise - Part I

I don't often talk about my family in these blogposts (ha ha!) but I happen to have a very large family, most of whom are based in Malta. That's because my mum has six brothers and sisters, all of them married and most of them with two or three kids each. This is the Zammit family: we are loud, we are crass, we are hot tempered and when we are all together we are a force to reckon with.

So you can imagine the terror on the faces of all the in-laws (including boyfriend's) when it was decided that for my grandmother's 80th birthday, 24 Zammits would be embarking on a four-day Mediterranean cruise!! My uncle promptly filled his suitcase with Valium and my aunts bravely fought their tendency towards sea sickness and we very excitedly announced to my gran last Christmas that this was happening and, not to worry, it's an all-inclusive!!

I spent all of February and March hopping from one foot to another in impatient anticipation. Most of the family were flying to Milan with the cruise-provided flight on the last Saturday of March, but we had decided to fly to Genoa and experience the joy of Italian rail to get to Savona. We were met there by the aunt and cousin who live in Holland, and another uncle and his subsection of family who had just arrived from a pre-holiday holiday in Venice. Standard...

Italian railroad

Savona is a cute little town an hour west of Sicily. It is quite industrial and of course there are plenty of ports and docks there for all the fancy boats and cruise ships that trail in. We were staying in a brilliant hotel called NH Savona Darsena which was a two minute walk from our dock Costa Crociere and is one I would thoroughly recommend. Although there are no tea or coffee facilities in the room, which I hate. Europe though.

Italian butcher - something for everyone

We got to the hotel around half six and were eager to go straight out to a bar and start the holiday proper. It was lovely walking by the sea around the hotel, and we soon came across a bar slash pub nearby to wet our whistles. Once I'd ordered my glass of delicious Italian wine, I was super happy to realise it was a proper Italian bar, where with every drink they bring over a massive plates of cheese, olives, meats, you name it. It's so different to drinking in the UK, where after a couple of glasses you feel like you're going to pass out because your stomach is missing a good cheesy lining. Just saying...

Pre-dinner cheese

Anyway, the rest of the fam soon rocked up and they were on form. My uncle was clearly in a celebrating mood and the next thing we knew it was nine o'clock and we wanted a bit more than cheese and crackers to eat. So we headed over to a restaurant that had received a thumbs up from our hotel and, whaddaya know, it was heaving! They gave us a smile and a wave, and told us to return at 10pm. So we went off on the pretext of going for a walk and headed back to the pub!

Me and the fam

When we did eventually get seated around 10, it was totally worth it. My cousins and boyfriend didn't seem overly impressed with the menu (which I suspect was due to it being in Italian) and all ordered pizzas. However, my aunt, uncle and I all went for the priciest thing on the menu: the full fish platter for the awesome price of 20 euro. And I'll let you know, girls and boys, that was one of the best decisions of my life. Check out the picture below...this food was incredible! I don't know half of what was on the plate, but it included the best tuna and swordfish steaks I've ever tried, plus the scallops were out of this world and the octopus...oh the octopus. I could eat just that octopus every day for the rest of my life!!

Look at that fish dish!!!

Boyfriend's calzone

By the time we finished eating the restaurant was aching to close, but we still managed to sneak in a post dinner amaretto before heading back to the hotel. After that it was bedtime, so that we could wake up fresh and early for cruising.

I'll take a break here, let you all go and rest your tired reading eyes, and talk about the actual cruise in my next post. If you get bored in the meantime, don't forget to check out Monday's new post on Nicky's Maltese Recipes