This morning, just after 5 am, as the sun rose over Monument Hill and vanquished the cerulean sky, AIDAmar – a cruise ship with lips – quietly slipped into Fremantle’s Inner Harbour.
AIDAmar, Fremantle, 9 January 2023. Credit Fremantle Shipping News, Michael Barker
Her beaming smile, red puckered ‘kissing lips’, flashing eyes and beckoning waves, are a characteristic trademark of all AIDA ships.
This is a transit visit to Fremantle; AIDAmar’s last port of call was Adelaide. She sails again this evening at 5.30pm and heads to Geraldton.
AIDAmar is on a 117-day round trip; she departed Hamburg, Germany on 26 October 2022. She has visited Spain, Canary Islands, Cape Verde, Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, Easter Island, French Polynesia, Cook Islands, Tonga, Fiji, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Sydney (for the New Year fireworks), Melbourne and Adelaide.
After Geraldton, she will visit Mauritius, Reunion Island, South Africa, Namibia, Cape Verde, Canary Islands, Portugal, France and home to Hamburg on 20 February.
AIDAmar was christened in 2012 and is Italy-flagged. She is 253 metres long and has a beam of 32 metres. And she’s powered by two large engines producing around 37,000 horsepower. Her 1097 cabins can accommodate 2686 passengers. She carries a crew of 609.
On this voyage into Freo she has around 1600 guests. 700 are on pre-booked tours which means we can expect up to 875 visitors plus crew members in and around Fremantle today.
Here’s a great gallery of more shots showing AIDAmar arriving in Freo this morning.
She is the sixth Sphinx-class AIDA liner, with sister-ships AIDAblu, AIDAstella and AIDAsol. AIDA Cruises is Europe’s largest German cruise lines and is owned by Carnival Corporation.
The ship took five years to build – she has a large luxurious SPA facility, a real birch forest and an onboard brewery. Besides the ship’s staff and crew, AIDA cruise passengers are also served by ‘Pepper Robots’ – these humanoid robots speak three languages, greet and guide passengers upon embarkation and can interpret human emotions by analyzing voice tones and facial expressions.
In 1996, AIDA Cruises became the first cruise company to introduce painting of a cruise ship bow and hull. For two decades all AIDA ships have been wearing smiles across the oceans – large puckered lips on the bow and an eye and waves on both starboard and port hulls.
So head on down to the port during the day to see this colourful ship or this evening at 5.30pm to watch her sail away.
* STORY and photographs (unless otherwise credited) by our Shipping Correspondent, Jean Hudson @jeansodyssey. Jean is also a regular feature writer and photographer here on the Shipping News. You may like to follow up her informative Places I Love stories, as well as other feature stories and Freo Today photographs, right here.
WHILE YOU’RE HERE –
PLEASE HELP US TO GROW FREMANTLE SHIPPING NEWS
FSN is a reader-supported, volunteer-assisted online magazine all about Fremantle. Thanks for helping to keep FSN keeping on!
** Don’t forget to SUBSCRIBE to receive your free copy of The Weekly Edition of the Shipping News each Friday!
