It’s time for another summary blog post covering all that’s new on this site plus any travel news I feel like imparting and the usual collection of travel content that’s caught my eye recently.
Latest Travel Content
Since the last blog post summarising site changes I’ve added four new pieces of content and not a single one involves a cruise ship at sea! I know! I’m as shocked as you!
First up was details of a trip to Amberley Museum in West Sussex, a bit of a spur-of-the-moment visit for us just to get out of the house in January. A very enjoyable place and we’ve made some plans to return there at least once more this year because they’ll be holding a real ale festival there.
Next is an account of our party night aboard Fred Olsen’s Black Watch. Yes, it’s a cruise ship, but no, it didn’t go anywhere. This was the Saturday night before Christmas and a chance to spend the night on the ship, have a look around it, eat some fancy food, and enjoy music into the early hours of the morning, all without leaving the confines of Southampton docks.
I’ve recently started the travelogue series regarding our first experience of cruising with Marella Cruises, something we did back in November when we travelled from Naples, Italy to Aqaba, Jordan, passing through the Suez Canal on the way. The first post in that series features our pre-cruise hotel stay near Manchester Airport as that was also a novel experience for us. Following on from that is the first day exploring Marella Discovery while it was still docked at Naples and our initial impressions of it.
Website Changes
Tying in with the addition of a post about Fred Olsen Cruises and the start of posts about Marella Cruises, lines with which we’d previously had no contact, I’ve added Fred and Marella sections now into the Cruises menu on the site. Without wishing to spoil the upcoming travel posts covering our Marella Discovery experience it would not be inaccurate to say that we’re quite keen to expand that menu under Marella with some more ships and cruises in the future. We’re already keeping an eye on 2022 itineraries (which is the earliest we can book any cruises for) and are hoping we can find a Marella option that hits a few of Cuba, Belize, Honduras, Panama, and Colombia; that’s an area we’ve not cruised before and would love to tick off some of those countries, especially Cuba.
I’ve added a few new sites to the travel content aggregator on the Cruise and Travel Feeds page after stumbling upon some decent writers recently. I won’t tell you who, though. I’ve also removed some as well as they just hadn’t updated their sites in so long or, in one case, had suddenly shut down their site along with all social media presence. I’m not going to pry into what happened there.
I’ve also switched the display of the travel feeds into a grid style instead of list as I realised that the list option looked terrible on mobile devices. It looks a lot better now.
Upcoming Travel Excursions
We have six cruises scheduled for this year (see Future Cruises for details) and have just recently got around to booking excursions for the first two of those.
P&O Britannia in April will see us cruising on a new ship for us but hitting no new ports at all. We’re hoping that we’ll be able to get a shuttle into Bilbao when we’re docked at Getxo so that we can visit the Guggenheim at our leisure and not be rushed through some of the exhibits as was the case when we visited on our Sapphire Princess cruise in 2018. That cruise also saw us visit Guernsey and A Coruña which Britannia will be hitting too (it’s a very similar cruise itinerary as you might have guessed); the former is dead easy to do on foot (after tendering ashore) and we’ll be looking at free shuttle options (our Select fare price for the cruise should entitle us to this) for the latter as we never explored the port last time. That just leaves Cherbourg and our previous experience of Cherbourg left us underwhelmed. We’ll be hitting this port twice this year, the second of which with potential options to tag along with people we’ll know on the cruise, but for this one we decided to book an excursion instead and so we’ll be taking a full day out and a long drive plus steep walk to see Mont Saint-Michel. Looking forward to that.
In June we’ll be on Enchanted Princess as it makes its way from Civitavecchia to Southampton. We’ll be doing our own thing in Gibraltar (most likely taking a boat out to see if we can spot any dolphins) and after researching all the options available while in Toulon we’ll be winging it there as well because nothing we saw really grabbed our attention enough. It looks like a couple of Euros will get us across from the port to the main city so we should be able to find some historical bits and pieces to satisfy us on our own.
For the remaining ports we’ve booked trips. We’ll be heading into Florence for a guided tour then a few hours on our own when the ship hits Livorno. We haven’t got any firm plans but think there will probably be plenty to keep us occupied. We’ve seen the highlights of Barcelona before so have picked a trip to head inland and visit the Santa Maria de Montserrat Abbey instead. Its location in the mountains outside Barcelona looks stunning. The final port is Lisbon and will be our first time visiting anywhere in Portugal. We’ve gone for a general highlights driving tour which will allow us several hours at the end where we can do a bit of exploration on foot of the city itself. And by that, I mean pub crawl.
In addition to those travel excursions on the cruises we’ve also tried to book speciality dining on both of them too. Tried to. We’ve succeeded with Princess so we’ve got tables booked at the Crown Grill, Sabatini’s, and La Mer when we cruise on Enchanted. At the time of writing, though, P&O still steadfastly refuse to allow bookings for their dining venues although by all accounts that should have been possible by now. On top of that we should be entitled to complimentary car parking with this cruise but that’s proving impossible to claim as well right now. P&O are not exactly covering themselves in glory here. There are still a few months to go so I’m not panicking and have decided to try emailing them in the first instance regarding both issues just to see how on the ball their customer service team is. They say they’ll respond within seven days. We shall see.
A Portsmouth Saga
In travel news that’s nice and local to us it’s been announced that Saga Cruises will hold the naming ceremony for their ship Spirit Of Adventure in Portsmouth Port in August this year, a first for the city. This is of interest to us not because we can cruise with Saga (we’re a smidge too young for them still, but getting closer…) but because we can walk to the port from our house in under ten minutes so depending on how the ceremony is organised and what time it all takes place we might be able to wander down for a nose.
Coronavirus, COVID-19, Diamond Princess
At time of writing the quarantine saga for Diamond Princess appears to be winding down. There’s not a lot that can be said about the science behind the virus, its rate of infection, its method of receptor-binding, its origins, or what it means long term because this isn’t a science-based website and while I do have a bit of information about all those things this isn’t the right forum for that and the average person wouldn’t understand any of it. Another place that isn’t the right forum is any cruise forum on the internet but that won’t stop you being absolutely bombarded by some of the most inane posts and comments on the subject by some of the most ignorant people who one can only assume want to attract attention and nothing else. I’ve seen people pointing the finger at a couple from Brisbane. I’ve seen people accuse the entire culture of Asia. I’ve seen people suddenly acquiring expert knowledge in air conditioning systems on cruise ships and incubation periods of viral strains. I’ve seen people repeatedly announcing that they’re worried about cruises six, twelve, and even twenty-one months in advance, some of them in regions of the world not even anywhere near the epicentre of the outbreak. People: just shut the fuck up.
What has been pretty clear is that Princess Cruises and the crew and staff and passengers aboard Diamond Princess have been excellent throughout, adhering to the rules set down by Japanese health officials and all doing their absolute best in astonishing circumstances. Holland America have been caught up in all this too and I’m sure they’re doing equally well.
Anyway, let’s connect this little piece of ranting about morons (a favourite topic of mine as anyone who is a friend on Facebook knows) with a link to Diamond Princess content on this site. Because you deserve it.
Travel Views
And so to the regular collection of travel writing and videos that I’ve deemed worthy of a share.
Pip And The City‘s Pip (who else!?) has a new article up regarding a 3-day Sahara desert tour in Morocco. It’s a country we keep looking at and keep not quite getting around to booking but if we ever do succumb to its lure then this sort of excursion as part of a slightly longer stay in Marrakech ticks a lot of boxes for us: Atlas mountains, Berbers, desert, camels, and incredible views of stars at night.
Caroline from Pack The Suitcases shared this post covering 20 things to do in Naxos. Way back in 1990ish I backpacked around a few Greek islands with some friends (covered here: Greek Islands (Scans)) where all we wanted to do was lounge on the beach during the day and hit the bars and pubs during the evening. Naxos was one of the islands and these days I suspect I’d lean more towards Caroline’s itinerary than mine of decades past. At least during the daytime.
60+ Awesome Antarctica Photography Tips by Bella at Passport & Pixels didn’t tell me anything I didn’t know because I’ve been using a camera for longer than I care to recall. But that’s no reason not to take a look at that post anyway because it’s jam-packed with photographs from her recent Antarctica trip and they’re as gorgeous as you already suspect they will be. Antarctica is still a distant dream and for now we can only live vicariously through the trips of others. And begrudge them, shaking tiny fists of fury in their direction.