Rhodes

OK. For the record, we’re having a fabulous holiday. We have nothing negative to say about the whole cruise experience. So, please accept this as a comment, only.
Since we’ve been on the ship, we have been in a number of situations where we are seated next to groups of others – usually Americans. We now feel there is a malcontent on this ship – maybe all cruise ships, since we’ve found nothing to be malcontent about. Every time we are sitting next to some Americans, people are complaining about a myriad of things. It’s very depressing to think that people can only talk if they complain.
Of all the people we’ve met so far on this trip, the ones we’ve enjoyed the most are Harding & Roberta Brown.

They could be our parents, but we have made a nice connection.



In any case, we had a fabulous time in Rhodes – loved the town. We left the ship at 1:00 and walked for the next 3 hours. Every corner was a new photo op. We spent most of the time inside the ancient city, but also walked down the port to the beach.


To reiterate – this is a very picturesque town. The cruise ships have also discovered this, so it’s also a very crowded touristy town. I’ll let the pics do the talking. Tomorrow – Santorini!

Rhodes

Athens

Friday June 5 was spent at sea, as we sailed from the Amalfi coast to Athens, Greece. It was definitely a smooth sail with brilliant skies, calm seas and temperatures in the mid to high 20’s.
After a leisurely morning with a late brunch at the Grand Dining Room, we managed to find a spare pair of lounges around the pool, where we spent most of the afternoon. Although we’ve met some nice people on this cruise, it seemed obvious that on a cruise like this, that there was bound to be some snooty types, who have lived “entitled, country club” lives. A bit of this haughty behaviour reared its ugly head today – not directed towards us - on a day when everybody was forced together. This unfortunately confirmed what we had already anticipated.
We ate for a second time in the Polo Grill tonight and had a couple in their 80’s at the table next to us who had just gotten married by the Captain. The dinner itself was good, but considering the hype about this restaurant, the food is not any better than on the rest of the ship.
We skipped the entertainment tonight but will give it go tomorrow night.
Saturday morning we went to breakfast just as the ship entered the harbour of Piraeus (Athens). We have been promised pretty good weather for the rest of our journey and today started off with startlingly blue skies and an anticipated high of 32 degrees.
Our planned tour today started just after noon, so we caught an early lunch before we disembarked – can’t miss a meal don’t you know.

We took a tour about town before going to the Acropolis. Our first stop was the original Olympic Stadium – on the way we also saw the new stadiums from 2004 – where the Olympic torch begins its journey every two years. It is an interesting U shaped stadium, which is primarily used for Olympic ceremonies.

Next, we were off to the Acropolis that looks down on the rest of Athens. This ancient city is getting some serious renovations as they continue to reassemble the stones that make up the various buildings, so that they more closely resemble the original structures. I guess there had been some pretty shoddy patching up in years gone by, since virtually everything we see today has been a restoration, after Christians tore the temples down since they were pagan – how enlightened. In the Parthenon alone, they have recently put 440 stones into their proper place. Of course the British Museum has the entire top of the Parthenon – and I don’t think they’re giving it back – so they’ll never have a full restoration.

The day was as hot as promised, so we were glad to get back in the air conditioned bus for a bit as we saw some more Athenean highlights. We were finally let out for a stroll around Athen’s oldest commercial neighbourhood, the Plaka, which is generally made up of tourist shops with a few tavernas thrown in for good measure.
At each destination, when we have a tour, we pick up local guides. Today we learned that in Greece one goes to University to become a tour guide and after four years, if you’re good enough, you can become a guide in any part of Greece. Needless to say, Greece has a bit of history, so the task of being able to share the history of the country with tourists in an entertaining fashion, is daunting to say the least.

By 6:00 we were back at the ship and headed straight to the pool for a cool-off. By this hour the pool is fairly deserted, so it was quite nice.
After dinner, we went to the show that featured a young man who has done a lot of off Broadway work, but never quite made it to Broadway – thus, the cruise ship. Anyway, he had a good voice and performed an entertaining show.
Tonight was another attempt at Skype with Canada. The sound still wasn't very good, but as least we got a picture. Oh well, we tried.

The Amalfi Coast

This morning, we woke up off the Amalfi coast. Talk about spectacular! What used to be lazy fishing villages before WW2, are now tourist hotspots. The scenery might have something to do with it.

We anchored off the town of Amalfi and then tendered into town to pick up our tour, which consisted of another boat ride, this one to Positano, a tour there, a boat ride back to Amalfi and a tour of Amalfi. The villas and hotels reaching up the Amalfi coastline are truly a sight to behold.

The boat ride took about ½ hour and if we thought Amalfi was impressive, Positano blew us away. Of course, this is the town used as the backdrop for the movie Under the Tuscan Sun and it is “photo op” after “photo op”. There is a lot more colour in the houses here than Amalfi, but then Amalfi has a good deal more history.



After touring ourselves about in Positano, we headed back to Amalfi where we had an extensive tour of the cathedral and its museum. After that, we did some shopping for typical Amalfi items like ceramics, cottons and linen paper. Another item they produce here is Limoncello – lemon liqueur. They grow the largest lemons I have ever seen and apparently they are relatively seedless

We caught the 1:30 tender back to the boat and managed to make the end of lunch time – phew, didn’t miss a meal. The rest of the day was spent looking back at the town of Amalfi – not shabby!

I haven’t talked a lot about our dining, other than it’s been superb. Tonight’s dinner in the Grand Dining Room is worth some mention. We started with a consommé for me and crab appetizer for Dawn. Following that, Dawn had the consommé and I had a Boston lettuce salad with gorgonzola and candied pecans. Main course was the piece de resistance of the meal where Dawn had a seafood medley with one each of a shrimp, mussel, scallop, octopus and clam. I had ostrich. You may ask, does it taste like chicken? I will answer that it tastes more like venison and was done medium with a nice finished glaze. For dessert Dawn had a strawberry almond cake and I had a molten chocolate thing that was right up my alley. I should mention that the wine with dinner was a chef recommendation of a Uruguay viognier. I have to say it was outstanding and our sommelier, who had not yet had it, tried a bit of ours in her tastevin and agreed. Dining on this ship is definitely an experience!
My next post won’t be until Athens, since we’re at sea from tonight until Saturday. I’m being optimistic about this since it appears that the satellite internet in the Mediterranean is less than wonderful.
For entertainment this evening we had a magician, who baffled the audience – an interesting job being a magician on a cruise ship.
Tonight we lose another hour of time as we pass through the Straights of Messina and on towards Greece.

Olbia, Sardinia

After our long day yesterday – well, it seemed like a long day anyway – we slept in this morning, long after our ship had docked in the port of Olbia, Sardinia. This area is relatively modern, most development starting in the 50’s, so it doesn’t have the charm that Ajaccio in Corsica had. I fact, after breakfast we took the shuttle into town and within ½ hour, we’d seen anything worth seeing.

I guess tourism here is a fairly recent thing and most of the beauty lies out of town. So, back to the ship we walked, and that was the highlight of the day, with most of the afternoon spent around the pool. Skies were a fabulous blue for most of the day, with a few clouds rolling in over the bay at mid-afternoon and the temperature got up into the 30’s. La vie est belle!

As we weighed anchor the ship’s dance band started performing at the pool. Since we were already parked there, we had good seats. To leave the port a pilot must come on board to guide the ship safely out of the harbour. The interesting part is when he has to exit the ship, which is coming up on full steam. Also, the Moby line which is a big Mediterranean line for Italians has most entertaining graphics on their ships.



In the evening, we had a meet the captain cocktail party. We have a crew on this ship from 48 countries and they are all super nice. During that meeting, we met an Australian couple, with whom we had dinner – once again fabulous. Following that, we heard our operatic soprano entertainment director perform and then did some dancing before cashing it in. Once again, la vie est belle!

Lucca

This whole “go to bed in one port and wake up in another” is a phenomenon
worth getting used to. So far, cruising appears to be a pretty nice lifestyle and the Insignia seems most accommodating, with the finest amenities and superb staff. In other words – no complaints – other than questionable internet service. But every time I’ve expressed concerns about their service, they credit lost minutes back to my account – so we’re good.

This morning we woke up as we were docking in Livorno – not a particularly pretty port, especially compared to Monaco. There was, owever, the original fort not far from the boat that was picturesque.

Livorno was not our objective for the day. We were off today to see Lucca, an historic walled town, once the centre of the silk industry in Europe. Now they make toilet paper. Oh well! They also have tourism, with 60 churches inside the walled city and some other interesting sites like the birthplace of Puccini and a most unusual amphitheatre.

Puccini began his rise to fame as a church organist in Lucca and I have to tell you, I’ve seen Puccini’s organ and it’s pretty small. No wonder he felt the need to overcompensate with all those operas.

The amphitheatre in Lucca was used for many purposes over the years – fort, pork market, prison and finally the locals decided to build their house on the walls. So today, the entire amphitheatre is houses. They’ve done a nice job of retaining what remnants of the original structure were remaining, with little stone highlights here and there, very nicely tying the whole settlement together.

From Lucca, we drove to Montecarlo – the Italian one – to a family owned farm and winery. Here, we were treated to a Tuscan snack along with samples of their predominantly white wines. Needless to say, some of their wines made it back to the bus.
The drive back to Lucca, took us quite close to Pisa, so we got another look at poor Italian workmanship, which they have turned into a huge tourism industry. Clever guys!
The afternoon was spent around and in the pool, as the weather had turned fabulous once again.

This evening we dined with our newfound Iranian friends and a couple of lawyers from California. We ate in the Polo Grill, another one of the reservation restaurants, but we’re both feeling that good food can be found anywhere on this ship, so the whole big deal about the two reservation restaurants in missing us.

Monaco

One day on the water and nobody’s puked so far. In fact, on our sail from Rome to Monaco, I can’t say I felt any movement at all. Dawn would concur. Only when the ship is at port have we noticed any swell and then minimally.

I mentioned yesterday that the food on board is exceptional, so even though we weren’t planning to disembark in Monaco, we did, just to get in a good walk and burn off a few calories. As it turned out it was a fabulous morning and they were very few tourists in town. Plus, it was a holiday, so the regular commercial traffic was non-existent, which made for a delightful walkabout.

From the ship, we were a short walk from the old city and the palace, so that’s where we headed. Nothing new, but the flowers were quite spectacular on hedges and balconies and the buildings in town are truly beautiful.

On second thought, we did see something new on this trip. We found Princess Grace’s grave in Monaco’s Cathedral. She’s buried alongside Princess Ranier, their tombs bedecked with flowers.


They were tearing down the grandstands from the recently finished Formula 1 Grand Prix which winds around Hercule Harbour, but much of the course was still discernable, including pit row, with the stacks of discarded tires.

We’d pretty much walked the town by noon hour, so headed back on board the Insignia. We had the ship to ourselves for the first couple of hours, before tours began returning so we visited the library for additional reading materials and then parked ourselves at the pool for the remainder of the afternoon. I think we’re starting to get into vegie mode and I think we like it.
This evening we had reservations for one of two smaller restaurants, Toscana, which served, as one would assume from the name, Italian fare with all the courses. We were determined to have something from each course, just like the Italians. We did pretty well with 5 courses, but didn’t manage to finish all of them. I forgot to mention that we went to the bar Martinis for Happy Hour and met a nice American couple, with an Iranian heritage, who we will probably see again on the trip.
After dinner we went to the lounge for live entertainment for a while, as the ship pulled away from Monaco. The city is spectacular at night and any pics I took don’t really do it justice. But, we’re on our way now to Livorno.