Another round-up of cruise and travel diary entries recently added to the site along with any other changes of note and the usual articles and videos that have caught my eye online since the last time I wrote one of these “keeping the site ticking over and fresh” posts.
Peru Travel Portfolio
All the posts covering our two days in Peru during our Star Princess cruise in March are now complete.
Our first day saw the ship docked near the coastal city of Pisco in the Ica Region of Peru but it was inland that we headed on a Princess Cruises excursion to see the Inca administrative centre of Tombo Colorado. Hot, dusty, and a must-read if you like trapezoid shapes half as much as I suspect.
The Ica Region was home to the Paracas culture, the people who would in time become the Inca, and as we came back from Tambo Colorado we got to see the national reserve in the area with its very interesting ecosystem and, during the cruise away from the port, a prehistoric geoglyph that predated the similar and more famous ones you might know as the Nazca Lines. You can read more about that and see some photos here: A Princess And Pictures Of Pisco And Paracas In Peru.
Our second day in Peru was spent in Lima, with our cruise ship docked in the port of Callao overnight. If you’re going on a cruise that visits Lima then the information in the first post in particular may be of some use to you as it explains where shuttle buses will take you and why you can’t make your own travel arrangements easily (at time of writing) at the port.
We started our day in Lima with an excursion to Miraflores; one of those ones that simply drive you to a place and give you free time to explore on your own. It’s here that we ran into Paddington Bear so if that’s the thing that’s drawn you to this post then that will be what you might want to read. You might like the writing on Paddington’s statue.
In the evening we took another cruise excursion into central Lima, this time to see the Magic Water Circuit fountains light show. The Peruvian capital’s traffic issues almost ruined that for us but we ended up enjoying the experience a lot. We did, however, shelve our plan to take the ship’s shuttle bus back into Lima overnight as a result.
The last post featuring photos and write-ups from Lima simply covers the morning departure from Callao and the first of three sea days en route across the equator and towards Central America.
Latest Content
Since the last of these summary posts where I mentioned I’d started the new feature I’ve added another post revisiting an older photo. I’ve given the photos in this feature their own portfolio category now so you can see the latest picture (of Gamla Stan in Stockholm) plus any others over time by viewing Photo Rework.
Something very different from the usual travel-related posts (although, technically, a lot of it involved travelling to London so maybe it’s still “on brand” (urgh!)): I’ve been trying to make a concerted effort to break up the monotony of posts on the same theme one after another and one thing led to another and I happened upon a load of photos from back when my wife and I used to attend real-life meetings with people we only (barely) knew on the internet. And back when everyone warned that you should never do that. This was when I was an active member of the Something Awful forums with a fondness for Photoshopping pictures. So, if you’d like to read a bit more about my history on the internet, see my “skill” at Photoshopping, my perhaps not-quite-so-politically-correct creations, and photos of the sort of people who inhabited forums during the early part of the 21st century (brace yourself) then take a look at my Something Awful Memories.
Site Changes
The home page has had a bit of a tweak with the wording expanded both on the header image and in the explanation blurb beneath it. The travel portfolio and cruise diary posts are still as they were but the single, latest blog post that was listed has been replaced by the last six blog posts instead in a smaller format but one that still displays responsively for different device widths. As with the text alterations, the change to show six blog posts with extracts is to increase the word count on the main entry page of the site.
In light of the fact that people have recently commented on the site in unprecedented numbers (four in a day is a shock because most people lack enough concentration to read a paragraph let alone leave some feedback on an entire post, and even if they were really two each from two different people (thanks Gav and Sanna) it was great to see) I’ve gone crazy and enabled comment-liking. This was mostly because one of the comments didn’t need a response but I wanted to indicate that I’d read it and appreciated the interaction. I do the same thing on Twitter if someone quote tweets something I’ve posted but it’s a trickier thing if they only retweet there as the like appears to be a like against the original post on Tweetdeck and that looks a bit too self-congratulatory to me.
Social Media Drama (Yes, Again)
Next year we’ll be cruising on Enchanted Princess on its preview voyage so every now and then something that mentions the newest addition to the Princess Cruises fleet of cruise ships will catch my eye. Recently, that was a Facebook post on which someone named, let’s call her, Eva commented:
Looking forward to sailing on her November 2020 just hope Megan [sic] Markle isn’t chosen to name her!
There are two main types of people who don’t like Meghan Markle: racists and Daily Mail readers (and I think we can all picture how much of an overlap there is in that particular Venn diagram). Neither are pleasant and nor was Eva’s comment. I remarked on Twitter that I hoped Eva injured herself before the cruise.
Cue Mr Interfering Know-It-All (not his actual Twitter handle):
Eva is perfectly entitled to her opinion, whether or not you agree with it, and there is no call for your rudeness.
So, Eva can have a rude opinion and express it but I can’t have a rude opinion and express it according to Mr Interfering Know-It-All? Could it be that Mr Interfering Know-It-All shares Eva’s opinion? Could it be that Mr Interfering Know-It-All is a Daily Mail reader? Or worse? We’ll never know for sure because, after a quick back-and-forth where I suggested Mr Interfering Know-It-All bother somebody else twice, he blocked me just before I had a chance to do it to him first.
While it was my last, this hadn’t been my first interaction with Mr Interfering Know-It-All. He’d come to attention several times when his opinion on just why other cruise bloggers were wrong about something had to be imparted from his pedestal of greatness. Tweeting about going on a cruise? Yeah, he had a view on burglars straight from the pages of a tabloid. Tweeting about cabin types? Yeah, he could tell you a thing or two why you were wrong to spend within your means. And so on, and never jokingly, never in a way that hinted at sarcasm or encouraged discussion. Don’t get me wrong: I love a strong opinion as much as the next person but that’s why I have my own website where I can ensure only a handful of people will ever read about it; public displays of superiority in forums is just plain bullying and I don’t respond well to that sort of action. It would be fair to say his name cropped up in many a private message with other bloggers over the last year or two. I’m happy to say it won’t any more.
Cruise And Travel Views
And now for the customary look at what I’ve been nosing at online recently.
Tanya’stravelblog (all one word for some reason, although I can’t really talk) is a new RSS subscription of mine. I discovered Tanya’s site through a comment on Facebook because last year she happened to take a very similar cruise to one we’ll be taking in 2021 – Japan to Canada – albeit on a different ship. She writes in travel diary-style just like me and she writes with humour too and her accounts of cruises mostly with Princess are fabulously entertaining reads.
Sticking with that 2021 Japan to Canada cruise for a moment brings me to a Twitter account that’s worth a follow if you’re a cruise or travel blogger on the platform: World Traveler. He doesn’t have a website, which is a minor pain, but he documents his cruises on Twitter and produces Twitter Moments to group them all together. It’s probably the best example of the Moments feature I’ve seen online and he’s got some great cruises documented, including, of course, a Trans-Pacific cruise on NCL that hits a few of the same ports we’ll be hitting.
Moving from Twitter to Facebook brings me to The Indirect Travel Link Blog Swap Party for people who want to potentially improve their SEO. It’s not something that I really bother too much about – as you can possibly tell by the way I regularly sling links out to other people without seeking anything in return and don’t just look to see how an interaction might simply benefit me – but I know it might be of interest to anyone who’s seeking some way to pretend they’ve got more influence than they really have or snatch that additional page view that always pleases the ego. For me, it’s mostly a source of potential reading material for decent content as it can be hard to discover the great posts when they’re buried in the Twitter firehose, and I’ll be happy to share links to relevant and interesting content I discover there as and when I find some. I won’t rule out using it as a promotional tool amongst the other bloggers there because it’s nice to have your writing read but that’s not the priority.
Is Cruising For A Backpacker? is one backpacker’s first experience at cruising, a 9-nighter from Sydney to New Caledonia aboard Carnival Spirit. Did Helen enjoy it and would she cruise again? You’ll have to read the article to find out.