On Cruises On A Sunny Day I Like To Swim Many Times A Day, Even Though I Am Aware That Unless You Are With A Ship, Your Pools Are Always A Bit Of A Joke.
The moment I had unpacked, I rushed from my cabin up to deck 8 to check the pool.
On cruises in the sunshine I like to swim several times per day, although I know that unless you are on a monster ship, the pools are generally a bit of a joke. On my previous two cruises, on ships of an analogous size, they’d been little but sufficient. This one looked the size of our kitchen table. Oh God. Why didn’t I check? All my fault.
I was with Seabourn, on their good ship Odyssey, or yacht, as they like to call it, as they’re really sophisticated and superior. But then all of my previous cruises had also been with sophisticated operators – Silverseas and Regent Seven Stars.
When I started cruising, just over a year back, I was told these were the three top-quality cruise lines floating. And it’s true. All are the last words in taste and luxury.
The food on all three is fantastic, with good wines, and as much champers as you can sup, all a part of the inclusive bill, which, naturally, isn’t cheap. Staff can’t be faulted, and they all have about one worker to every guest.
On the Odyssey that night, after a sumptuous dinner, I slid directly to sleep – then straight awake again about 1am. I could hear 2 Americans in the next suite, speaking and laughing.
I went out on my balcony, and closed the doorway, but I could still hear them all night – they kept it up till I was hollering. They were never drunk or playing loud music – just not going to bed at 10pm like ordinary human beings and sleeping silently till 7am.
In the morning I asked to change cabins – no chance. The ship was full ; 437 on board and no spare suite. I told myself that was it, I had done with cruising, I’d stick to hostels from now on, or tents.
But the next night there had been silence from the Americans. They appeared to have settled down, though they don’t often left their cabin. Goodness knows what they were doing, but I have spotted that on all cruises about a third of guests do nothing and go nowhere, in spite of all of the lavish entertainment.
Although I don’t like games, spas and quizzes and I often find the music too loud and uninspiring, I never struggle for things worth doing onboard because I’m making a point of meeting as many fellow guests as practical.
On this cruise I accepted all dinner invitations that came my way, including one from the Danish captain of the Odyssey and another from a Romanian dancing couple. Funny how, on each of the three cruises I have so far attempted, the main dancers were a pair from Eastern Europe.
One of the good things about travelling alone on a cruise is that you never need eat alone – the invitations flow in, formal outlined cards for dinner dropping thru the door, so you are feeling frightfully crucial.
Most of all, I go on a daily excursion – even when it’s an extra, which it was with Seabourn.
My 6 expeditions came to £349. I know you can do it cheaper by hiring your own taxi or getting a bus, but it is nice to have decisions made and stuff organised, and you can be sure you see the best bits.
When I’m on my Jan holidays in the West Indies, I get furious when a cruise liner arrives, blotting out the harbor and disgorging lumpen groups who confuse the pavements as they blindly follow some shouter with a flag or umbrella. But when I’m one of the lumpen ones, it quite entertains me to be led around.
The top flight lines keep the groups tiny, the guides are good and your fellow guests are of wonderful quality as well . On Odyssey, I chummed with a New York lawyer and his spouse, the bro of a Belfast peer, an English lady who invents games and toys, a Mexican who owns a football club and our previous envoy to Mexico who, I later uncovered is a Lady.
The cruise started from Venice – and the departure was shocking. I’ve been to Venice many times, but I do not remember seeing any cruise ships.
Yet we sailed right past all of the wonders, gaping into all of the palaces. We crossed the Adriatic to Croatia, stopping at Zadar for a tour of the well-preserved old city.
The most unusual thing was a modern creation, right on the front – a sea organ. Don’t ask me how it worked, but they have somehow landscaped the esplanade leaving 35 holes for the sea and wind to blow and surge thru and make music. Due to the random nature of waves and wind, the music is always different. Scary.
We did Dubrovnik and Kotor, an amazing walled city in Montenegro.Then on to Greece, stopping at Corfu and Santorini, where I took the wire car up the sheer cliff, scaring myself firm.
At Katakolon I selected an excursion to the location of the first Olympics. I’d never realised the site was so great, more than a mile across, with so much still remaining of the temples, pillars, gyms and athletes ‘ quarters.
The stadium is oblong so you had to run forwards and backwards. For a long race you went up and back down twenty-four times. I also never knew that the ancient Olympic games, which happened, as now, every 4 years, attracted athletes from every area of the Greek empire – and were held for about 8 centuries.
See, cruises can be academic as well as delightful.
And exhausting. I did so much, conversed with so many folks, that at the end I was looking forward to rest. And I did come to grips with the pool. If I picked a point when it was empty, I managed ten strokes, going slowly, with the wind against me.
My three cruises have totally dispelled the bias I once held – that cruises are for the aged, the bored, the unimaginative.I now know they come in all kinds and sizes and prices, catering for all interests, writes tagza.com.
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