Last stop of the cruise - Sorrento and Pompeii

Apologies to those of you who have been stranded in Sicily for the last week.   It was a long journey from Italy back to Canada over 2 days, and when I got in I was exhausted and there were a heap of jobs to do like unpacking and laundry.  But here is my final entry for this trip.

Our final port of the cruise was Sorrento.  We were docked here for 2 days.  This is the captain's home port, so he anchored of Capri for breakfast on the first day and we had a smashing view of the island. 

I'd been to Sorrento before (albeit 40 years ago) and I was looking forward to a nice gelato in one of the ice-cream shops and to doing a bit of shopping.   Of course, last time I came here it was by car, not by ship.   So I hadn't anticipted the fact that the town was a few hundred feet up some sheer cliffs from where the ship was docked.   Fortunately, there was a shuttle minibus to take us up the tiny switchback road to the centre of town.  But it was a nail biting ride over cobblestones and not for the faint of heart.

After a ride like that it was nice to sit down for a ice-cream treat and to just stroll the streets of this picturesque town. 

Sorrento was a 2 day stop and on the 2nd day we were booked on an excursion to Pompeii.   I'd thought the minibus up to town was bad, but this was an hour's journey on tiny roads up and down hills being surrounded by people on scooters who all seemed to have a death wish.   I'd made the mistake of sitting at the front of the bus, so I got a bird's eye view of all the oncoming scooters.  By the time we got to Pompeii I had no fingernails left.   

I'd been to Pompeii 40 years ago as well.  Back then it was a lot less developed and we spent practically the whole day there and strolled at our own pace.   These days the site has been commercially developed and was absolutely heaving.   I've just come across the phrase "over-touristed" and Pompeii was definitely that.   You need to be fit to get around here, there are constant steps up and down and the limestone streets are uneven and slippery.   That said, there are some amazing things to see, if you can manage it - but I'd advise you to go by yourself and take a full day over it rather than having a guide who is trying to get you around all the major points of interest in about 90 minutes and is therefore setting a frenetic pace.

After that it was back to the ship for an evening of packing followed by 2 days of travel.  The ship docked at Civitavecchia on disembarkation day (which is the closest port to Rome).  We had an hour's journey by car to Rome airport before flying to Heathrow. It was 6pm by the time I got into Heathrow and too late for any flights to Canada that day. So I stayed at the Hilton in Terminal 2  with a lovely view (just in case I forgot where I was) and flew back to Montreal the next day. 

Watch this space in September for my Rail trip of Switzerland. 

Sicily

Today we docked at Siracusa in Sicily.  Sicily  sits at the junction of the North African and European plates, so it has a lot of volcanic activity. 

There were excursions into Siracusa itself, but we'd  chosen the excursion to Mt Etna and Catania.  This was an 8 hour excursion so we set off early. It was a long journey by coach  from the port to the city of Catania.  To be honest  I think it would have been better not to have bothered with Catania at all and just concentrated on Etna. The traffic was terrible  and it took ages to get into the centre of town. The city looked scruffy and the main square was overrun by rather suspect looking individuals trying to sell things to you.  We had a look around the cathedral  but it wasn't as impressive as the other cathedrals we've  seen  on this trip. About the only interesting thing was that there seemed to be statues of elephants everywhere. 

We reached Etna around noon.  The highest point the buses can reach is about 6000ft,  you can go further up by cable car, but still not that near the top (Etna is 10000ft). There are craters on the lower slopes though, including  the Silvestri crater, which we were able to walk up to from the parking lot.

We had an excellent  late lunch at the Nicosia winery, before  another long drive back to the ship.  

Today's fascinating fact is that Sicily used to be home to a miniature elephant, called elephas falconeri which went extinct about 250,000 years ago.  Ancient Greeks came to Sicily and found the skulls of these elephants. The skulls had a large hole in the centre where the trunk would have been, and this was the origin of the Greek  myth of the Cyclops. 

Malta

Today we docked at Valetta,  the capital of Malta. 

Denise and I were booked on the Island Panoramic tour, which was basically  a  tour of the island by bus.  What I learned  was that Malta is not a very big island and that it's almost completely  urbanized.   The guide  would say things like "We are now leaving village  X and entering  village Y", but there was no green space  between the 2 'villages'.

Our first stop was a place called  Marsaxlokk, which was a fishing village. The fishing boats were all painted bright colours and there was a Sunday market where  the were selling a variety of  things, including  fish.

Malta gained independence from Britain  back in 1964. But there's  still a few things around that remind you of Britain.  They drive on the left. They all speak English  (as well as Maltese) and signage is almost  completely  in English.   They also have red telephone boxes and Costa Coffee and  even an M&S (sadly it was closed on Sunday). 

We had a couple of photo stops  at various beauty spots, including the city of Mdina, which was the capital until 1530.

Finally, we stopped at Mosta, to visit  the Basilica of the Assumption of Our Lady, which is also known  as the miracle church because  a bomb came through the dome during WWII while there were hundreds of people inside praying  - but the bomb failed to go off. If you  look closely at the photo  of the dome you'll see an area where the paint is not the  same, which is where the bomb came through.  They keep a replica of the bomb at the back of the church.

The outside of  the building  was also used in the filming of Game of Thrones.

Then it was back to the ship, where we had a superb meal at the grill where we cooked our own meat on a hot stone at the table.  After that we went to the chocolate extravaganza event that was being held on the pool deck to get dessert. 

At Sea

 Today's fascinating fact is that we have Rod Stewart onboard  (well a look alike anyway)

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We are exhausted so we blobbed......

Corfu

Today we docked in Corfu Town. I came to Corfu about 40 years ago, but spent the entire  time  either on the beach or in bars and I hadn't taken any notice of any of the history.  

Our excursion began with a bus ride up to a hill where we could get a good panoramic  view of a local beauty spot called Mouse Island.   The weather was quite cloudy early in the morning  and there were even a few spots of rain. 

Then it was on to Mon Repos Palace. The British had a Protectorate over Corfu  and several other Ionian islands for roughly 50 years from the end of the Napoleonic wars in 1815.   The Greek royal family was closely linked to Queen Victoria and their  new King, George I was a committed Anglophile,  which paved the way for the Treaty of London  in 1864 in which the Ionian islands became part of Greece with Britain retaining use of the port of Corfu.  During the Protectorate, the British  high commissioner built this home  for his Corfiot wife, Nina.  It was subsequently used by the Greek royal family as a summer residence after the  Treaty of London and today's  fascinating  fact is that Prince Philip,  the Duke of Edinburgh was born in one of the bedrooms upstairs.    Today the Palace is a museum, with the ground floor being decorated  as it would  have looked when Nina  lived here and the upper floor laid out to display ancient  Greek artifacts that have been  found in the grounds of the estate. 

By the time we got out of the Palace the weather had changed and it was sunny and hotter than it had been at any point in the trip so far.  We had a quick stop at a place where they produced the local kumquat liqueur and sampled that and some other kumquat flavoured sweets.  Then it was on to Corfu Town for a walking tour where we saw the old Venetian fort.  Like many other places we've visited on this  cruise,  Corfu was also once part of the Venetian empire.

Although we had some free time in town after the tour,  it was too hot to hang  around.  We took the shuttle back to the ship and had lunch at the pool grill before spending the rest of the afternoon in the pool/hot tub or lounging around on the pool deck.   

We've  been  finding ourselves getting  more and more exhausted after each day's  excursions and the very hot weather isn't  helping.  Thank goodness tomorrow  is a day at sea.

Bari, Italy

Bari is the capital of the  Italian  region of Puglia.  Today's  excursion  was a journey  by coach out to the village of Alberobello which is a UNESCO world heritage site.  

Only in this small  area can you find these small conical  roofed houses called  trulli houses. 

Each trullo (singular) is only a single room. So if you want a residence big enough for a family you have to build a group of interlinked  trulli. 

They are built out of limestone using a kind of dry stone walling technique - no mortar or cement.  The reason for this is that the locals wanted to avoid paying the extortionate property  taxes charged by the king. So if they knew the king was coming they could deconstruct the trullo overnight,  leaving just a pile of stone, then reconstruct it again  after the king had moved on.

Many of them have interesting  symbols whitewashed on their  roofs, which usually seem to have some religious meaning.   We had some free time to walk around and do some  souvenir shopping  and then we stopped in the main square and had another radler.

After that it was off to a local masseria to sample some local delicacies.  We had bruschetta, focaccia, 3 different  kinds of cheese and 3 different  kinds of wine.  The masseria also had a very pretty  garden  with a cactus in bloom. I've never seen  flowers this big on a cactus before. 

On the way back to the ship we did the scenic drive through the city of  Monopoli, but I didn't see anyone playing board games.

If anything we were even more exhausted than after yesterday's excursion, so we ate early and went straight to bed.  To add insult to injury we are going to have less sleep tonight as the clocks are going forward an hour  ready for our arrival in Greece. 

Dubrovnik

Dubrovnik has experienced  a huge surge in tourism since Game of Thrones  was filmed here.  Even though it's only early  May the city was very  crowded.  It was also quite hot. I'd hate to think what it's like in August.   There were already 2 much larger cruise ships docked, so Silver Spirit  had to drop anchor a little way off and  we were taken ashore by tender.

I was booked on the Game of Thrones  discovery tour. Which was a 4 hour walking tour taking in the most famous of the filming locations. It was labeled  was being the highest level of activity for any of the excursions and we were told people  had to have a good level  of fitness to do it.  Denise went on a different  excursion  that involved a wine tasting  outside the city.    

I'm  not  a raving Game of Thrones fan, but I thought this tour might include some spots that were a bit different  and wasn't just a walk around the walls.  As it happens  I was correct  as our first stop  was at a fort outside the city.  

There were a LOT of steps to get up to the top of the fort, but once up there we had a great view of the city walls.

After that it was down into the city where we saw various filming spots for famous scenes like the walk of shame.  

Today's fascinating  fact is that the first season of Game of Thrones was filmed  in Malta,  but HBO were thrown out of Malta due to  them  causing some damage  to a famous area called the azure window during the filming of the Dothraki wedding scene.  The mayor of Dubrovnik  told HBO that they could  come and  film the rest of the series in Dubrovnik for free. It was a risky decision  but it certainly  paid off for Dubrovnik in the long term with the huge increase in tourism. 

Finally, we went up on the walls for some good views out over the city and a selection of other filming locations  that were at some of the towers up on the walls.  

After all that I was exhausted and had lost count of the number of steps  I'd been  up and down for  the last 4 hours. I spent a short time shopping in the town by myself before heading back to the ship on the tender.  Denise was still not back, as after the coach had dropped  her off in town at the end of her tour she'd decided to walk around the  walls by herself.   When she did return  we had an early dinner and went straight  to bed. 

What I really  need is a day off but we have another  long tour booked  for  tomorrow  in Bari.  I thought these cruise holidays  were supposed to be  relaxing...