A Greek Getaway, That SeaDream Situation, And Travel Picks

Another summary of recent travel news and travel-related activity on this site and elsewhere on the internet. You know the format by now, unless you’ve never read one of these posts before, but what sort of crazy person wouldn’t have done that!?

New Travel Content

Let’s start as always with what’s been published on the site recently.

A photo reprocessing post was put up taking one of the very first cruise photos I ever snapped (from way back in 2008 when the world was fresh and young and had that new world smell straight from the dealership) and playing around with one of the newest features on the latest build of Photoshop, the Sky Replacement tool. Fun, if of little practical use typically for the sorts of pictures I take, but you can see the pleasing (to me) results here: Diamond Princess Sky Replacement.

Two more posts have been published which complete the first half of our short, West Country break we took back in September. A Few Plymouth Pubs and Plymouth Seafront and the National Marine Aquarium won’t hold too many surprises if reading titles prepares your mind for the content within like some kind of normal human being, but they do round up our time in Plymouth. Coming up over the next few weeks will be some accounts of a flying visit to Sidmouth, three days in Weymouth, and a brief trip to Beaulieu that made up the remainder of that short escape from work.

Greek Getaway

Speaking of short escapes from work…

We had the first two weeks of November booked off. It should have been a cruise but you know what a bastard 2020’s been for travel plans, however we decided to keep the two weeks off because we have to use up a fair portion of our annual leave and figured we’d do something like book a few days in hotels or possibly have a mini-tour of Scotland or Wales. That was what we were going to do right up until three days before our break when, thanks to work being a right pain in the arse for the pair of us, I thought: fuck it, let’s see where we can fly off to this weekend.

Now, this is something we’ve never done before. We are life’s long-term-planners when it comes to travel, mostly through the need to coordinate time off with our respective works. We are also not exactly enamoured with the whole hotel resort type of holiday and yet that’s what we did as well. Essentially, I was after a quick flight and transfer and hotel stay somewhere that wouldn’t require laboratory Covid results in advance or need a period of quarantine either abroad or following the return (although we could have coped with a quarantine on return if that was the only option as we both work from home). Long story short, we managed to get away just ahead of the UK’s lockdown (announced a day after we booked) for a week in an all-inclusive resort on the north coast of Kos. It was a break that was spent half the time at the resort, relaxing, and half the time in Kos Town exploring ruins and frequenting a bar that specialised in Greek craft ales. We had a lovely time. Write-ups will come in due course.

The SeaDream Situation

I thought I’d share a few words on what’s happening with SeaDream. In case you don’t know right now or in case you’re reading this at some point in the future then a brief summary is that while cruising has been mostly limited to some short European itineraries with a few cruise lines, SeaDream made some waves (yes, nautical puns are absolutely free on this site) by putting on a transatlantic cruise from our home city of Portsmouth to the Caribbean ahead of starting up cruising there. There’s been a lot of media interest because some bloggers got some freebie promotional trips out of it and now there’s been a Covid outbreak on board.

It’s frustrating as someone who studied mathematical probability and statistics at college and university and who understands more than he ever wanted to know about viral propagation thanks to the education this year has provided for free. The frustration is mostly with other people’s reactions.

Here’s the thing: SeaDream could have done everything right, using all available tests and precautions, reducing the likelihood of an infection getting past tests as much as humanly possible short of mandatory Hazmat suits, and there still might have been an outbreak. That’s probability and the novel nature of this particular virus for you. The reactions ranging from blaming the cruise line to blaming the passengers to loudly proclaiming this is all evidence to support evidenceless biases against cruising in general are just so damn predictable it’s simply not worth engaging with it. Those people won’t be persuaded by argument and doing so on public forums just serves to entrench opinions and make gradual comprehension and acceptance on either side less likely.

But I am saving some frustration for SeaDream too. You brought some of this on yourself when you sought some promotion and engaged with bloggers too early in my opinion. Hindsight is wonderful, but you only needed to look at the European cruises which kept things low-key to start with, making sure everything was working correctly, ramping up slowly, not making a huge song-and-dance about it all. Adding the egos of bloggers keen to show off what they were doing when few other people could instantly shone a spotlight on something reviled by a lot of people who were still having that tired trope about Petri dishes parrotted at them by the clueless and lazy; that’s going to create a culture of envy and anger just itching for something to go wrong. I understand why it was done. It was a gamble. It backfired. There’s a sliver of blame for SeaDream there from me.

But mostly, always remember: shit happens. And if a handful of cases on a yacht has got you furious and demanding nobody ever cruise again or the company has ruined it for everyone else but you’re not making similar claims about public transport, shops, schools, and politicians in the same week that saw an additional million new cases of Covid infections in America alone then you’re a dick.

Travel Links

With us being away I haven’t had a lot of time to catch up with what’s been published by other travellers recently (and, of course, there’s not a lot of travelling taking place anyway) but tradition demands some links to other people’s content so here are a few I’ve spotted and deemed worthy of a share.

Those two weeks at the start of November that should have been a cruise should have been a cruise with Paul and Carole as our cabin neighbours. It wasn’t to be but to make up for them missing our incredible company here’s a link to their recently revamped website that’s worth a good look around for all things cruising and camping: Paul & Carole Love to Travel.

We’re big Rugby League fans and one of our potential future trips was going to be to Toronto in order to see a Super League game over there and to allow me to check off Canada from the visited list. And then 2020 happened and Toronto dropped out of the league and the other teams voted to not let them back in and all those plans evaporated. But, Toronto could still happen at some point and if it does then the wider area covered in Incredible Places in Ontario to Visit this Winter by Devin might just come in handy.

A new travel blog is always welcome and Andiamos Amigos is just that. We’re fond of seeking out ruins when we travel and there are a couple of posts from Chris and Lynne’s visit to Turkey (which we’ve yet to hit) which do the same thing. Here’s one with plenty of information if you’re thinking about travelling there at some point: Olympus – A Roman, Lycian Town.