Sun, sea, and ships

We got back from holiday late on Monday but I’ve been so busy I’ve not had a chance to write about it, until now.

Regular readers however won’t be surprised to hear we went on a cruise.

I think we’ve exhausted most destinations from Southampton, a list that includes the Baltics, Iceland, Denmark, the Norwegian fjords and, to the south, Portugal, Spain, Gibraltar, the Mediterranean, and the Canary Islands.

Places we’ve visited, albeit very briefly (as is the way with cruises), include Copenhagen, Stockholm, Oslo, Helsinki, Tallinn, St Petersburg, Reykjavik, Cannes, Lisbon, Dubrovnik, Saranda (Albania), Heraklion (Crete), Santorini, Lisbon, Tenerife, and Gran Canaria.

There are several more but I’ve forgotten them because it’s a bit of a blur now.

Post Covid, when cruise ships were still not allowed to dock in many ports overseas, we also embarked on a no-stop ‘sun’ cruise from Southampton to the Bay of Biscay, and in 2017 we went full transatlantic to New York via Halifax in Nova Scotia.

The ‘no-stop’ cruise in 2021 was arguably the best of the lot for two reasons. One, it was fantastic to escape the country for the first time since Covid.

(The previous year, after the first lockdown, we were happy just to catch a ferry to Arran off the west coast of Scotland.)

Two, the concept of a ‘no-stop’ cruise appealed to me because all I really want to do on holiday is eat, drink, and read.

On two other occasions we had to fly to our embarkation points - Venice and Vancouver - but I prefer not to do that because it prolongs the travelling, and the general hassle.

Sometimes however it’s unavoidable and this time we flew to Trieste in north east Italy from where our ship took us to Zadar and Split (in Croatia), before sailing on to Malta, then Sorrento in Italy, before we disembarked in Civitavecchia, an hour’s drive from Rome where we caught our flight home.

This was our third cruise on Queen Victoria, and our sixth on a Cunard ship. We like them because, while they’re not exactly small (the number of passengers ranges from 2,000 to 3,000), they are smaller than many modern cruise ships.

The Icon of the Seas, for example, which is currently the largest cruise ship in the world, can accommodate 7,600 passengers with 2,350 crew across 20 decks.

Today some ships arguably look more like Las Vegas hotels, whereas Cunard ships are not just smaller but more elegant (in my opinion). Book the right cabin (or ‘stateroom’) mid ship and you don’t have to walk far to the nearest dining room, coffee lounge, or cocktail bar.

Nor will you be tripping over young children because there are fewer things for them to do with the result that there are relatively few on board. (Nothing against young children. I just don’t want to go on holiday with other people’s!)

Anyway, I’ve written at length about the pros and cons of cruising - usually in response to some derogatory comment - so I won’t bore you again because I know that people have fairly entrenched opinions on the subject and it’s not my job to persuade you either way.

As it happens, I’m far from an evangelist on the subject but I did enjoy our latest holiday, and it wasn’t just the weather, which was occasionally too hot!

Having been on Queen Victoria for two previous cruises we felt very much at home, and we limited our excursions to a few gentle walks (Split was a pleasant surprise) and a single coach trip to the ruins of Herculaneum, which are similar to nearby Pompeii.

Herculaneum sits directly beneath Mt Vesuvius which erupted with such force in 79AD that the ancient Roman town was buried under 20 feet of mud and ash and effectively ‘frozen’ in time before it was discovered in 1709.

Even today, only a quarter of the original Roman city has been unearthed, partly because of a lack of funds, but also because the modern Herculaneum (Ercolana in Italian) has been built above the remains and people would lose their homes if they continued excavating.

Nevertheless it’s an extraordinary sight (and site), albeit on a smaller scale than Pompeii which is one of the reasons we chose Herculaneum for our visit - fewer visitors!

News of the Government's plan to extend the public smoking ban to pub gardens and other outdoor areas was an unwelcome distraction, but that’s another story which I mentioned briefly here.

I’ll return to it shortly.