It’s that fairly irregular time again where I give a brief (relatively speaking) overview of what’s new on the site, what’s been happening recently in the world of travel, and what’s caught my eye online that I feel should be shared.
Site Content
First up is news about this site. From a technical perspective there have been no changes to speak of although I’ve noticed on three occasions now that the site has massively slowed down and each time that turned out to be a corruption in one of the database tables. A quick repair sorted that out but the cause isn’t known; is the culprit my host or one of the site’s plugins? That remains to be determined.
A minor change has been made to the social icons at the bottom of the page which now include a link to a Pinterest page specific to travel rather than my personal one. I haven’t really used Pinterest and I’ve no intention of making garish pins with huge amounts of text on them – tried that a few years ago and it was a drag – so I’ll just categorise and drop images and links to posts in there because every little helps and I’m happy to do the least amount possible in that respect. I’ve barely started adding pins so far so that will take a while to build up and if there’s any noticeable engagement from the platform then I’ll make sure to let that be known in a future update.
Content-wise, there’s a new main image on the home page now (it’s the featured image on this post too). I like to change it up every now and then to keep the site looking fresh. The picture is sunset just after departing Livorno on our recent Emerald Princess cruise.
Speaking of that Emerald Princess cruise… the first few travelogues from that cruise have now been published in the travel portfolio section of the site. Travel diaries to date include:
- A Hotel In London To A Cruise Ship In Barcelona where you won’t be very surprised to learn that details of the trip starting with our pre-flight stay near Heathrow through to embarkation of Emerald Princess in Spain are covered.
- Emerald Princess Sea Day And Dining At Crown Grill will similarly hold no shocks for those capable of reading titles and discerning the content therein as it documents the first day aboard ship which was spent sailing down the Mediterranean in fabulous relaxation.
- The third post in the travel series to be published is the first of two covering the second full day aboard the ship. This morning/afternoon portion of the day is filled with our Gibraltar Highlights as we explored the British territory on foot and by cable car, meeting monkeys, wandering through a colourful cave, and discovering local gin.
I’ve also added in a new Photo Rework post which explains some processing I used to do a lot in street photography (an old hobby of mine) in case you’re interested: Photo: Jazz Audience Of One.
One last and potentially cryptic note regarding content: thank you to those who sent messages via a number of social media messaging platforms regarding Barry. As someone pointed out: I don’t think Barry will interact much with me any longer. To be fair, Barry rarely did anyway. He’s not alone and I won’t lose any sleep over it and will do what I always do where it concerns people who mostly only respond and boost their own content without selflessly engaging which is to stop liking, sharing, and commenting back.
Travel News
There’s not a lot of very interesting travel news that’s really grabbed my attention recently apart from Princess Cruises suddenly naming their new ship – the final build of the Royal-class vessels – along with an ahead-of-schedule completion date and some details of its first season of cruises.
The ship will be called Discovery Princess and the announcement was a bit weird for me as earlier in the week I’d been taking part in an entertaining Twitter conversation called #CruiseHour where a question had been to give a name to your ideal fantasy cruise ship. I chose Discovery because I’m a sci-fi nut so the connection with both 2001: A Space Odyssey as well as Star Trek: Discovery was too much to pass up. Strangely, I’d forgotten that we’re booked to cruise on Marella Discovery at the end of this month too.
Discovery Princess’s first season cruising schedule triggered an initial surge of joy in us as it was announced she would include a round-South America cruise. We’ve loved our cruises around South America as you might possibly be aware so this seemed like a good chance to get some more of the continent done. We were hoping to do a section of the trip north of Argentina and Uruguay, covering Brazil and potentially some other countries on the way up to Florida. That hope looks to be dashed based on the cruise itinerary details we’ve now seen. Instead of 14 or 15-day cruises which would just about fit in with taking two weeks off work the minimum cruise sections appear to be 16-18 days in length. That means eating up 60% of our annual leave in one chunk and, worse, right at the start of 2022. That’s eleven months of the year to survive on only a couple of weeks of holiday so we’re sadly going to have to give that a pass subject to winning the lottery. It’s made even more galling when you look at the price and realise it’s possible for my wife and I to do the same itinerary on an older ship in the fleet in a suite for less than the price of a balcony for one of us on the new ship. We just can’t justify that sort of price differential on the fact it’s a new ship; the ship just isn’t the most important thing when it comes to spending that sort of money and taking that amount of time off. Discovery’s other cruises – European, Caribbean, and in the region of Los Angeles – simply don’t appeal. A pity but c’est la vie.
Peruvian Artwork
Another discovery! I was tidying up around the house recently when I uncovered a piece of artwork that we bought while we were in Peru. I’d completely forgotten about it and forgotten how much I liked it. We’re fond of modern, abstract designs and the bold colours here and hints of native imagery are really attractive. We bought this at a market stall alongside Star Princess when we were docked near the Paracas National Reserve and while the signature indicates it should be in landscape mode we prefer the portrait arrangement. We just have to get around to getting it framed and work out where in the house to put it.
Travel Discoveries
And so to the travel-related content online that’s found a way into my heart recently…
Rick and Andrea recently spent three weeks aboard Emerald Princess in the Mediterranean. The last of those three weeks was the week we were aboard too so if you’d like to see what the ship got up to before we embarked, see what ports the ship visited while we were there and before I write up about them, or see if you can spot us in the video of the deck party then check out Our Mediterranean Cruise – Our 21 Day Epic Adventure.
In September 2018 we took a short cruise aboard Arcadia, a mixed cruise with some very good bits let down by some inconsistent service and gripes about food quality. This year two sets of prominent cruise bloggers and vloggers we know were also on Arcadia at slightly different times and they’ve both just released some videos of their experiences. Two very different types of video here but both amusing for different reasons.
A completely different video from Gavin and Luke covers their first day aboard Arcadia at the start of their cruise and some ever-so-slight overindulgence in the P&O drinks package. Slurtastic.
Another ship now and a detailed tour in word-form of the Azamara Journey with plenty of details about the Azamara cruise line too: Gentle luxuries: an Azamara Journey review. Azamara aren’t a line we’ve cruised with yet. They look fancy, they have good itineraries, they look like they’d appeal to us… but the size still presents a problem and then there’s that White Night evening they put on that sounds like it’s a promotion for the KKK. I’m sure we’d love a cruise with them; they just don’t quite feature in our shortlists right now.
Finally, at the end of our cruise to Jordan at the start of next month we’ll be breaking up our return trip home from Manchester airport with a couple of nights in Chester, somewhere new in the UK for us to explore. With that in mind I had a hunt for some Chester-related blogs which was easier said than done although I did finally find a few with perhaps this one – A Weekend in Chester – being the most detailed. Still not sure what we’re going to do for certain but you can guarantee that some historical sites will feature and some real ale drinking too.
Thanks for the inclusion 😉 It’s funny you should mention the unsavoury undertone of the white night.. we had our first ever white night on MSC and hubby just kept saying “this could be so problematic”. It was a nice night, good party, annoyingly we had to cut it short because next morning we were disembarking. And it looked nice.. but.. still 😉 I’m kinda torn because I would love Aza for the luxury, the food, and hubby would enjoy the chilled atmosphere… but being smaller there really isn’t the choice I am used to on larger ships.
Yeah, we’ve taken a look at Rich and Helen’s promotional work for Azamara and, as you say, it all looks very nice but we’re just not quite sure it’s a great fit for us. We’ve got used to a little more variety in onboard activities than they appear to be able to provide. I know that all lines target a demographic and hope to pull in customers from around the edges but the core they’re going for isn’t really us. We’re a fraction too low-brow for them, I think.
I grabbed some brochures for Azamara at the last DC travel fair, but we haven’t booked anything with them. AA & I are booked solid for cruises thru 2021. After that, I’d love to give some non-American lines a try. It gets a bit tiresome to go on a cruise and be surrounded by one’s own countrymen. It seems to defeat the purpose of traveling abroad. Silversea should be a change for the better. I hope.
You certainly don’t do things by half when it comes to cruise lines. While we like the look of a lot of those luxury lines’ itineraries they just have ships that are too small for what we really like, and those prices per person per night are a little unpalatable. We’re also booked through 2021 but on very different cruises to you I imagine. Next year will be mostly close to home, hitting western Europe across several trips and only one of them being a little different from usual in that we’re doing a brand new ship’s inaugural cruise. 2021 is completely different though with us managing to do a circle of the world (fly to Japan, cruise to Alaska, fly to the UK from Canada) then up into the Arctic Circle later in the year to catch some midnight sun in Norway. I know what you mean about not cruising with your countrymen so much. It’s why we limit our cruises with P&O over here but why we like Princess. One of our favourite cruises was last year on Diamond Princess where over half the ship were Japanese; that’s the sort of cultural experience we really like.
An excellent article. As with any new ship, I’m certainly not surprised by pricing for “that new car smell“ to be at a premium ????