Barcelona
Again. I've been here three or four times now. But although I've looked at the outside, I've never actually been into the old Gothic cathedral. So I did that today. It's nice. Especially as you can climb up to the roof and wander around up there.
Otherwise, just another day... ;-)
posted by Simon Wednesday, July 30, 2003
Normal Service is now resumed...
Just sorted out a techincal problem whereby none of my posts were actually appearing. Back now. Well, when I say 'sorted out', I mean 'randomly changed things until it started working'. And now I have a funky title thing.
I was going to write lots of stuff about how things are on this ship, and stuff, but somebody just sat down to have a chat next to me so I'll do that another time!
posted by Simon Tuesday, July 29, 2003
PS - saw Celebrity's ship Millenium in dry dock in Marseilles... I now have a new Ugliest Cruise Ship in the World...
posted by Simon Tuesday, July 29, 2003
Marseilles
My first time here... it's nice enough, although like any large city you either need to know it well or have a lot of time to actually see the interesting stuff... I had a look around a cathedral that had the same black-and-white architecture as the places we go in north-western Italy. Which makes me wonder whether there's an ethnic connection from before France, or especially Italy, was formed. Perhaps similar to the Basques?
We were in Santa Margerrita again yesterday. Having been to Portofino last time I didn't do the same, but instead went on a tour runnign further down the coast to a couple of resort towns. Which was all a bit pointless - the towns were nice, but IMHO no nicer than Santa MArgerrita is to start with!
posted by Simon Tuesday, July 29, 2003
Portoferrio, Elba
Elba being an island off the Western coast of Italy.
Yesterday we were in Naples. I decided that it was too hot to make the trek to Pompeii again, so tried to be a tourist in Naples. This city is notable for it's traffic- crossign the road is a major challenge, it's even possible to get run over on the pavement! It's also a hard city to find your way around without a decent map, and the maps in P&O's port guides tend to be anything but decent. So I went ashore, got lost twice, and went back to teh ship without really finding anything of interest! I did meet three Irish girls on holiday together, and spent half an hour wandering around with them...
Today I just went ashore for a fwe hours and wandered. Found a (stony) beach and read a book there, etc.. It's a nice place.
posted by Simon Sunday, July 27, 2003
Cagliari
That's the capital of Sardinia. It's...hot. Well not surprising, this is the med in summer. I went on a tour to the remains of a Phonecian city (later taken over by teh Romans), which was fairly intersting... this afternoon I'll spend an hour just looking at the town, but not too long as (a) it's very hot; (b) it's siesta time (or whatever it's called in Italian), so everything will be shut!
posted by Simon Friday, July 25, 2003
Atlantic Ocean
Following an overnight in a Southampton hotel, I'm now on board Oceana. It's... big. There are around 2200 passengers on here. But less public spaces - I showed myself around, and thought "is that it?". And boy does this ship move a lot in a small swell... having said all that the Atrium is very impressive, and the theatre is nice. A shame I have the smallest cabin in the world!
posted by Simon Tuesday, July 22, 2003
Barcelona
Yesterday we were in Toulon. THere's not a lot there, TBH. Especially on Bastille Day. On the plus side, for the same reason as all the shops being shut there was a very large firework display in the evening which was launched from a barge not more than 500m from us.
There was no show that night, the idea instead being that there was a big deck party (which this ship does much better than Aurora, BTW) and that we'd leave teh dock around 2130, sail out into the bay and anchor to watch the show. Unfortunately something happeend to one of the engines (don't know what, but it resulted in a 30 min power cut that afternoon - so pitch black in crew cabins!), so we left late. Which was actually good as it made us closer to the fireworks.
Today is Barcelona... I may go ashore for a bit but I'm not very bothered about this place - I've done the wandering-around-the-town (and getting your wallet nicked) thing here before, and it's too hot outside to want to go further afield to the castle or something.
posted by Simon Tuesday, July 15, 2003
Santa Margarrita
Well, that's where teh ship's berthed, but I went on a tour by boat to Portofino (boat was teh only means of access apart from goat tracks until 1888). This place actually manages to be a beautiful villiage without becoming quaint. Perhaps because it isn't phony - there really are lots of very rich people livign here, including the Italian head of government (in a house formerly owned by Mussolini). Most of the town isn't accessible by car, consisting of narrow alleyways. Very nice walks in the woods above the cliffs - it's that kind of place.
posted by Simon Sunday, July 13, 2003
Ajaccio
...which is the largest town in Corsica. A part of France with it's own language. And some spectacular scenery. Today I went off on a tour around the mountains. Sadly it didn't involve getting off the coach very much but it was very nice to look at...
posted by Simon Friday, July 11, 2003
Gibralter
Actually, in the Med, but we did spend the afternoon in Gib. I've been here umpteen times before, but today did something I've always been intending to do - took the cable car to the top of the Rock (a long queue for this), and walked all the way down. It took about 90 mins with numberous stops, and... ooh, we interrupt this post to go outside and look at one of the nicest sunsets I've seen in eight months of cruising. A simple image, the red-orange sun hovering above a sillouetted mountain range, with a clear sky showing a smooth gradient from blue to red, over a milky-smooth sea. Gorgous. And, naturally, my camera is 10 decks below in my cabin ;-)
OK, back to what I was saying. Walking down was really nice as as soon as we left the main tourist attractions there was nobody there! No tourists, no taxi drivers trying to sell you tourists, etc. About 3/4 of the way down we followed the signs and left the road for a little footpath going down between the rocks (don't look down), and found a gun battery that I didn't know existed.
Very pleasant. Some people find Gib boring, but I like it. Perhaps because of all the history. Everywhere you go, you see military remenanents and wonder what they are. For instance, you might be walkign along beside a cliff and find a block of reinforced concrete stickign out of it. Or next to a path there will be a 8" steel ring embedded in teh rock, possibly with some rusty chain hanging off it. All very curious...
posted by Simon Wednesday, July 09, 2003
Stavanger
I'm stuck on board today, but have peered over the side. We arrived to find an international womens' beach volleyball tournement happening on the quayside next to the ship, giving lots of gleeful people (mostly men) a grandstand view. Stavanger otherwise seems to be a large industrial port, built on a number of islands with bridges. I can see one oil platform in teh harbour, and a couple of ships that from their size must be platform support vessels. No idea what the town itself is like...
posted by Simon Friday, July 04, 2003
Written offline, 03/07/2003
Geiranger
This is in some ways like Andalsnes, except that the fjord is narrower (never more than 3/4 mile wide), higher, steeper and without cloud. The mountains go straight from the sea to snow. The ship is surrounded by walls of green, broken only by the silver lines of waterfalls descending thousands of feet down the mountainsides. And the most amazing thing: we're about 40 miles inland!
Unfortuantely there are three ships in, giving a total of around 5000 passengers (and about half of them American), and the small villiage is surrendered almost entirely to tourism. By teh look of things this isn't unusual; there are two pontoons labelled 'for crusie ship tenders only', and a plethora of tacky ships around them. Abotu 20 mins walk away uphill is a Fjord Centre museum-type-thing. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to visit. in what seems to be normal on this ship, I only had about 90 mins on shore, having been in-port-manning all morning (like every morning this cruise), and having a grand piano to move outside at 1600 for the sailaway party.
IMO everybody visiting Geiranger should do one of two things: either climb a mountain, or hire a sea kayak and explore the fjord that way. Prefereably both. Unfortauntely I didn't ahve time to do either, which was frustrating. I did find a very nice waterfall, but due to its proximity to teh town and the number of people about it was very hard to get any photos without people standign in them holding camcorders. Of course, everybody else was probably thinking the same about me...
Summary: a beautiful place, spoily by tourism. The rest of the fjord is gorgeous, but the villiage of Geiranger is worth missing unless you can manage to arrive when there are no cruise ships in.
---
Later:
I'm sitting on the promenade deck watchign somethign I've enver seen - clouds falling off the edge of a cliff. It looks exactly like a giant dry ice effect, over a front that must be a mile long. Must be all sorts of fascinating physics here... wow.
posted by Simon Friday, July 04, 2003
Written off-line, 01/07/2003
Tromso
I'm spelling this wrongly because I don't know how to do a O-with-a-line-through-it on here. Didn't get long ashore and hence didn't have time to go up teh cable car that I was aiming for. I did, however, walk across a rather large bridge and visit the 'arctic church' (despite what people commonly call it it isn't a cathedral - that's a very yellow wooden building in the centre of town), which was nice in a modern-angular-architecture sort of way.
Tromso seems a nice place, but it's hard to imagine this full-sized city (well, just about. If they called it a town it wouldn't be the most northerly city in the world. And it does have a cathedral) being dark for three months at a time.
On the way out of the fjord I reflected that the middle of summer probably isn't the best time to visit northern Norway. Although you do get a bright midnight sun, it means that you never get sunset colours in the fjords. It seems to me that the people who take the amazing photos that we see on postcards must wait for the right time of year (ideally when teh sun is *just* setting each night so that you have hours of sunset), and sit there for night upon night hoping for an absence of low cloud or fog!
posted by Simon Wednesday, July 02, 2003
Written off-line, 30/06/2003
Off Bear Island
To quote the captain, "Bear Island is about three miles to our port side. It's a pity you can't see it." Our port lecturer, a norwegian, says he has been past the island around 45 times and has seen it three times - this is a very foggy part of the world! He also told me that there really isn't anything special about it, except for looking nice on the itinery of what would otherwise be an uninterrupted sea day. Apparently there are lots of polar bears there in winter, hence the name, but they get there by walking across the ice, and in summer it's a very long swim.
We could tell we were close to some ice as we were sailing through huge numbers of small chunks of ice, a few centimetres across. The fog did lift enough this afternoon for us to see some largeish icebergs in the distance.
---
Later:
At the end of the first show tonight I went outside to find that the fog had cleared, leaving a totally clear blue sky. More accurately, we had sailed out of the fog - the edge of it was visible astern as a vast white cloud filling the northern horizon. No sooner did I get out on deck than I saw a mass of passengers runnign on to deck shouting that they'd seen a whale. I followed and did, indeed, see some whales for the first time. Which made me happy...
posted by Simon Wednesday, July 02, 2003
Written off-line, 29/06/2003
Later: hmm, I just found a map of the Arctic. The only land further north than we are now is the northern bit of Greenland, and a couple of Canadian and Russian islands. We're roughly at the same latitude as the magnetic pole! (except that that is somewhere north of Canada).
Ny Alesund claims to be the most northerly settlement in the world, and looking at this map I can well believe it.
posted by Simon Wednesday, July 02, 2003
Written off-line, 29/06/2003
Ny Alesund
Well... 79 degrees North. What can I say... it's gorgeous. And very cold. I only got about 50 minutes ashore because the captain decided to leave early to go and see a glacier instead. Which is spectacular, admittedly, but as well as costing me time on shore it's meant doing the shows late because the meal times were changed because the itinery was changed, etc... won't finish until well gone midnight tonight.
Still feeling very tired for no noticable reason. And yesterday I had a noticable band of reddened skin around the bottom of my neck. I really hope I don't have glandular fever... though it would explain a lot about the last three years. First chance I'll get to see the doctor is tomorrow morning, of course the chances are that the symptoms will ahve gone by then except for a vague wearyness... but I can't carry on like this - I spent the whole of yesterday yawning and being dopy, then had almost eight hours sleep and crawled otu of bed just as tired as the night before...
posted by Simon Wednesday, July 02, 2003