Three weeks into the new year and new decade before a blog post outlining the latest content on this site and elsewhere relating to the escapist world of travelling! Shocking performance!
There’s nothing to report with regards to changes to the site structure so right on with travel content added since last year that you might have missed.
Emerald Princess Cruise
The travelogue posts covering September’s Western Mediterranean Cruise on Emerald Princess are now complete. You can follow that link to view them all although the additions since the last blog post listing what was new will be shown below. A full review of the cruise as a whole may appear at some point too but I feel in the mood to document another venture or two before then, at least. Suffice to say, there were no complaints at all about the cruise, no bad food, no problems with service, and all the excursions were as good as we’d hoped. Always nice when that happens. The Mediterranean is rammed to the rafters with things to see and we’ve barely scratched the surface of exploring that part of Europe either by land or sea although we’ll get another chance to see some of the same area in June of this year when we cruise back to the UK from Italy on the inaugural journey for Enchanted Princess.
The final content from this Emerald Princess cruise was as follows:
- Emerald Princess Deck Party includes pictures and video showing the party atmosphere on the pool deck at night on the penultimate night of the cruise. While we’re not in any way actual party people usually I’d wanted to experience this again as video footage I’d taken earlier in the year off South America had been lost.
- While docked in Livorno we took a full day’s excursion that started with a visit to the medieval town of towers, San Gimignano. It’s a place that is quite striking in its appearance and has some very famous gelato too if that’s the sort of thing that interests you.
- The town of towers was followed by a break in the Italian countryside for some wine tasting. Yes, it’s true that we did know what wine tasted like already but it’s always nice to be reminded several times a day and the occasion included an amusing tale about hard cake and dessert wine that I captured on video.
- Our excursion concluded with a trip to Pisa which I’d imagined would be okay but not spectacular yet am happy to report was very wrong about; I’d love to go back and see more of the city because it’s so much more than just a leaning tower, although the tourists around that particular attraction are almost reason enough to return on their own.
- Last Night Aboard Emerald Princess will not surprise you with the content contained within. There is a particularly nice sunset whilst departing Livorno, though.
- The final travelogue post from the cruise covers our Disembarkation Tour of Rome. This is mostly just a visit to St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican City but it’s a pretty spectacular place to see and this excursion has certainly put Rome on the map of places we need to revisit and explore properly in the future.
Recent Travelling, Potential Travel Breaks
With there still being twelve weeks until our first cruise of 2020 we’re looking for nearby activities to break up the hell that is working for a living. We’ve managed to get away for just one whole afternoon recently in a bid to escape the winter blues. That was a drive to the next county over and a look around the open air museum at Amberley. It was cold but dry (a rarity in recent times) and the museum was a little gem. Actually, a large gem. Loads to see and do and we’re planning a return trip later in the year when it’s warmer and some other attractions close to it – a stately home and a Roman villa – open to the public. A review and plenty of photos will make an appearance in the general travel travelogue posts probably fairly soon.
We’re in the mood for weekend breaks close to home during February and March, the sort of thing we can drive to within an hour or so on a Friday night, spend a couple of nights in a hotel with the destination as a base for exploring during the day, then returning on the Sunday. At the moment we’ve got half an eye on Weymouth as we’ve never been but we’re open to suggestions or warnings.
Astoria
There have been the usual announcements about new ships or changes in cruise lines over the past month or so and you can see some of them covered in the syndicated content on this site by the blogs that reproduce most of the press releases but the one that caught my eye – and something I kinda knew about anyway – is that CMV will be losing Astoria from their fleet after this year with the upcoming addition of Pacific Dawn from P&O Australia.
We’re obviously glad that we got a chance to experience a short cruise on Astoria when we did but as a cruise ship she didn’t really suit our style of cruising, being a little too old in places and far too small for us and the durations of cruises we prefer. Pacific Dawn will be a much better vessel in that respect and, importantly, while a big ship as far as CMV is concerned she’ll nevertheless still be small enough to dock at the newly-extended Portsmouth Port which opens up exciting walking-to-the-ship possibilities should CMV run any itineraries out of it.
Travel Reads
And to cap things off as usual, here are a few links to things I’ve read relating to travel over the last month or so that I’d like to share. You’ll notice that there are no videos linked here this time around and the reason for that is I’ve seen a whole lot of decent videos recently so I thought I’d post another blog update within the next week (if I remember) and concentrate just on some of the best video content that’s just been published or which has caught my eye. As always, it’s my site and my rules.
Paul and Carole’s guide to Petra gives you a little bit of background information about their Marella Cruises excursion to the world heritage site back in November. You will probably know already that we were on the same cruise with them and also visited Petra although on a different tour so this will give you a chance to see what their experience was like ahead of me writing up about our trip to Petra which hopefully won’t be too far away now.
This detailed write-up about the Thousand Island Lake in Taiwan has certainly given us food for thought (or tea for thought in this case) for when we next hit that country. So far, we’ve visited twice and explored up near Keelung but we had already thought that if we returned to Taiwan we’d want to see the capital. That’s still likely to be true but if there’s a chance to venture a little farther afield and take in a trip like Flo did then we’ll jump at the chance. Stunning scenery and what sounds like a fascinating trip.
All-round good egg on the internet, Pip, now has a travel podcast out which is ideal to listen to when you’re commuting or working and are worried that you may not be thinking enough about travel: Travel Goals Podcast.
Finally, a review of a trip to the south coast of Iceland and a visit to the black sand beach which brought back a lot of memories of our own time there just over a year ago. I’m pleased to say that we had better weather although it’s one of those countries where you could argue that any kind of weather fits the breathtaking landscape perfectly on any given occasion.