Azura prices – going down?

I’m not the only person to think that P&O have got the prices for Azura (coming into service in April 2010) wrong – they’re way, way too high. (I blogged about this before.) Looking at the current (2010/Mar 2011) P&O brochure, prices for Azura seem to be around £150 per person per night (pppn), whereas Ventura, a virtually identical ship, is coming in at about £125pppn. That £25 pppn extra amounts to £350 per person over 14 nights, £700 for two, which is a significant amount of money, especially as the actual cruise experience will be very similar on the two ships.

Of course P&O often seem to charge high prices. Next year, however, they will be under some pressure. Celebrity’s Eclipse (the third of the Solstice class) will be based in Southampton, doing a mix of cruises pretty similar to the standard P&O fare: 14 night cruises to the Baltic & western Med, 16 nights to the central Med, and 11 nights to the Canaries; and prices on Eclipse, at least at the beginning of the season, aren’t far above £100 pppn for a balcony cabin. Up at P&O price level there will two Cunard ships, Queens Victoria & Elizabeth, and I’ve heard a lot of people say that if they’re going to spend that much money they’d rather do it with Cunard than P&O.

It’s beginning to look as if this pressure is telling. I received a sales leaflet through the post today from Ideal Cruising, through whom we’ve booked several times already. This leaflet is all about Azura in 2010, and it shows some significant reductions. Balcony cabin prices are quoted as £1899 for 14 nights in the spring as against £2499 in the brochure; 16 nights in the central Med in the high season is £2269 as against a brochure price of £2899. So perhaps Azura’s inaugural season isn’t selling as well as P&O would have liked.

More pictures from the Solstice cruise

I’ve added some more pictures, from Athens, Naples/Capri, Kusadasi, and some more of the ship itself. They’re at the same URL as before.

These pictures were slides to begin with, and were scanned differently (larger) than the other films. The scans needed a bit of post-processing, hence the delay in getting them up.

Pictures from the Solstice cruise

I’ve had my photos back, and I’ve posted some of them on-line.

In general I’m pleasd with them. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere in the blog I took the Leica on the cruise, and this is a camera with little automation (that’s part of its attraction). Although it does possess basic metering, the user has to understand the results the meter is presenting, and I think I was a little off on some occasions – some under-exposure. However, against that I have to say that I am thrilled with the detail that the Leica lenses have recorded on the film – that’s the reason for user a Leica.

I’ve posted some scans on Picasaweb: here’s a link. Try comparing the Santorini 2007 pictures (taken with a Nikon DSLR) with the Santorini 2009 pictures (taken with the Leica).

Photography on the Solstice cruise

A couple of weeks or so ago I posted here about (among other things) my indecision over which camera system to take on the cruise. In the end I did indeed take just the Leica and my three lenses, plus of course a selection of films. These included several rolls of Ektar 100 print film, a couple of rolls of a Fuji 800 print film (for inside Hagia Sophia) and a few older rolls of Kodak 100 slide film. I shot seven rolls altogether, and they’re currently with Harrisons Cameras in Sheffield for processing. I’m also getting low-res scans done, so next weekend I should have some results to show.

However my pre-cruise GAS attack (hint: GAS means ‘Gear Acquisition Syndrome’) came on with redoubled vigour while we were away; I kept seeing all these people with seriously good (and expensive) DSLR systems. Given an absolutely free choice, I have a strong feeling that an EOS 5DMkII + 24-105 f4 L lens would be mine – I saw several people shooting with just this combination. Tasty. (And heavy, too, I’ve no doubt.) Since returning I’ve been scouring the retailers’ websites researching prices. Message to self: “You do not need a new camera. You do not need a new camera. You do not need…” Will it work? We’ll see.

What made it worse was that Val, somewhat to my surprise, ditched her compact digicam and took a small EOS film SLR with her – an EOS 300N (I think) plus its 28-90 kit lens. She said she preferred using this to the digicam. Once or twice I got to play with it, and I have to say I found the EOS very familiar in my hands: everything was exactly where I expected it to be, and it just felt right. Oh dear….

I’ve been doing some reading…

A couple of months ago I happened to read a report in a daily newspaper announcing the 2009 Booker prize ‘long list’ – 13 books which were under active consideration for the shortlist, from which the eventual winner would be chosen. I’ve generally ignored Booker prize candidate novels in the past. I did try a couple one year – “Flaubert’s Parrot” which was shortlisted, and Hotel du Lac which was the winner, and I couldn’t get into either of them. I couldn’t even read “Midnight’s Children”. Given all this, I’d decided that literary fiction was obviously not for me, I’d be best sticking to my scifi and thrillers. But over the years I’ve found myself getting more & more impatient with poorly-written books; the quality of Neal Stephenson’s books, or Iain (M) Banks’, for example, is so much better than the average book in these genres. Anyway, when i read the report my eye was caught by a comment to the effect that not only were the books well-written, they were also ‘jolly good reads’, so I decided to investigate and bought four of the eventual shortlist: “Wolf Hall”, “The Children’s Book”, “Little Stranger”, and “The Glass Room”. So far I’ve read the first three. It’s been an interesting experience.

“Wolf Hall” was the first I read. At first I had trouble with its present-tense narrative, but I soon became accustomed to this. It could be described as a historical novel – it’s set in the court of King Henry VIII, from the point of view of Thomas Cromwell – and I found the story gripping. Part of this was because english history teaching normally presents Cromwell as a thoroughly Bad Person, but this book portrays him as a man of extraordinary abilities and charm – which is likely, given that although he was a commoner he rose to be Lord Chancellor, among other high offices. There’s also a frisson because you know how the various characters’ stories will end: Ann Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Thomas More, all these and more are major characters. And of course there’s Cromwell himself; we know that he’ll meet his end on the block, although this novel ends some years before then, with him almost at his apogee. I also found another aspect of my reaction to it interesting: the writing is so rich, so full-bodied (so to speak) that I couldn’t read more than five or six pages at a time, I had to stop (even if only for a few minutes) and digest what I’d just read. This was a great introduction to the exercise.

Next I read “Little Stranger”. This was altogether harder going. It’s very well written, technically, but the problem I found was that I simply didn’t like any of the characters. The book (set just after the second world war) includes characters from the upper class (or at least the gentry), middle-class professionals, who are generally unsure of their place, and various lower/working class characters. On one level it’s the story of a disastrous relationship, doomed because the two people in it have absolutely no common ground, and furthermore either cannot see this, or (more likely) are too constrained by social pressures to be honest with each other. On another level it’s a sort-of ghost story, but (correctly, I think) this is never explained or made explicit. (Althoug there may be a passage near the end thaty it might be worth readin again.) As I say the book is well-written technically, in that the author writes these unpleasant and unsympathetic characters, and their relationship, perfectly, but I didn’t warm to any of it. In the end I was reading it to see just how awfully it would end for them all. Answer: about as awfully as it possibly could. There is one other ‘character’ in the book, a crumbling stately home, and I suppose it was in reading the description and evocation of this that I came closest to warming to the book.

I’ve just finished “The Children’s Book” (I took it on the Solstice cruise, to read on sea days). This was another dense and complex book to read, with a cast of thousands – well, several dozen. Again it’s historical, set between 1895 and 1919, with the bulk of the narrative set in the late 1890s and early 1900s. It describes the events in the lives of children (and later adolescents & young adults) from several different families, all involved in the Arts and Crafts and other progressive movements of the late 19th century, as they grow up and mature. I certainly cared about these characters: they are finely and sympathetically-drawn, and the developing story of their growth, their involvement with each other (in various ways), is well written. Perhaps the female characters are better-written than the majority of the males. For example, there are several seduction scenes, each one involving the same man but different women, and in each case the woman’s position – her reason for allowing herself to be seduced at a time when the sex act could have serious or even fatal consequences, her reactions to the event and her decisions after the event, are all well written and I could empathise with them; but I gained no real feel for the man’s motivation in his pursuit of so many women (other than the obvious one). I could also find fault with the way that some characters appear, are well-drawn, and then seem to disappear (for example, one called Arthur Dobbin). There are horrors present: there are obviously episodes of serious sexual abuse going on in one of the households but (perhaps wisely) the author does not make us voyeurs, and almost at the end of the book there is a brutal chapter in which the the western front is evoked in all its dreadfulness, and several of the major characters are killed. I think this serves to remind us just how awful the great war was; characters that we have come to know and love are simply wiped out, not really with heroism but as a result of blind duty at best, and of chance, accident and error in most cases.

As for The Glass Room, I’ve only just started it so a report will have to come later.

I’ve certainly enjoyed the exercise. I shall look out for more books of this quality and, it should be said, size: both Wolf Hall and The Children’s Book are longer than 600 pages.

Disembarkation

Well, we left Solstice at about 9 o’clock on Friday morning. We were one of the last to leave – I overheard one of the team managing the disembarkation saying a few minutes earlier “we’ve got about 85% of the passengers off at the moment”. So it really is a quick operation on turnround day. Incidentally Solstice was already docked when we peeked over the balcony at about 5:30.

After disembarking, the day proceeded like a charm until we hit Heathrow, which we did at 3:30 or so. After that it turned into a slow slog, and we didn’t get home until 10:30, very tired indeed. Since then we seem to have been doing an awful lot of washing & ironing.

So what did I think of it altogether? We’ve come away thinking that it was probably our best cruise. Solstice is a beautiful, high-quality ship, the food and the company were both excellent, and the itinerary was to die for. We were also blessed with excellent weather – warm sunshine (75-85 degrees/23-28 degrees or so) which was hot enough to make you feel it but not so hot it was uncomfortable.

I think the effort that both journeys took has rather put us off fly-cruises for the time being. If we do one again we’ll look for ways to fly from an airport nearer home – there must be a way of flying to the Mediterranean from Manchester or East Midlands with a reasonable amount of luggage. However it’s not something we need to address in the near future – next year will be a P&O year, with two cruises (one long, the other short) from Southampton. Then we’ll see if Eclipse (or a sister ship) will be based in Southampton for 2011.

Naples

Today was Naples, and yet we had another great day. After a slightly cloudy start the afternoon turned out sunny and warm. We went to Capri on our own. We went there three years on the first Galaxy cruise, as part of an excursion, and liked it a lot, but on that occasion we were constrained, of course, by the excursion timetable. Two years ago on the second Galaxy cruise we wanted to go back, but because Galaxy docked in a different location we were unable to do so. This year everything turned out right.

I’d researched the times of the fast ferries yesterday, so we knew which ones we were aiming for: 08:35 across and 15:25 back. We left the ship just before 8 o’clock and probably took less than 10 minutes to walk round to Molo Beverollo, the fast ferry port. We probably could have caught an earlier boat at that time, in fact, but we stuck to the plan and bought tickets (16 euros each, one way) for the 8:35. It was already docked but not yet boarding, so as soon as they opened the gangway we were among the first group to board. The journey took 50 minutes from pushing off from Naples to docking in Marina Grande on Capri. Note that even on a weekday in October, the ferry was pretty full – I think there were various tours, not all from Solstice, on board. After disembarking at Capri the first thing we did was buy tickets for the ride back, for the same price. Then we got a bus up to Capri town, and then another bus up to Anacapri. By this time it was 10 o’clock and time for coffee.

Later we explored Anacapri, and after that went up to the top of Monte Solaro on the chairlift (8 euros each, return). We got off at the top and had planned to walk down but we couldn’t find the top of the path, and in any case it was steeper than I’d expected, so after exploring the mountain top we simply went back down on the chairlift. Then we had lunch in Anacapri, went down to Capri town, walked out to the Giardini de Augusto and sat down in the sun, looking down on Marina Picolo.

Eventually we decided it was time to go down to Marina Grande. Our first thought was to use the Funicular, and we bought tickets for this, but there was quite a long quere and were anxious to get down to the harbour so we found a marked path down and followed it. The sign said ‘10 minutes’, and that was indeed what it took us, but I have to say that we are fairly brisk walkers so slower walkers might take a bit longer. We found the walk quiet and cool – the path is north-facing so out of the sun and not many people use it.

At Marina Grande our strategy of getting the return ticket in the morning paid off. The harbour was heaving – there were a number of ferries to various places leaving at around that time. We found the right spot on the quayside, where the boat was waiting but not yet boarding, and joined a number of other people. A large number of people were walking past us to other docking positions, following various tour guides. Then chaos struck: a vehicle ferry arrived and started off-loading. What you need to know is that the quayside at Marina Grande is very narrow. Not a problem with only people walking along, but with vehicles trying to drive against the flow of people it becomes a complete mess. We had to press up against the wall at the back of the quay; other people had to stand right on the edge of the quay to allow the vehicles to edge their way through. The fast ferries that were in port, including ours, had to raise their gangways because they were protruding too far onto the quay. In the meantime floods more people were walking onto the quay towards the vehicles. And this is in italy, of course, so there was a huge amount of shouting, gesticulating, arm-waving, etc, going on all the time. Eventually the crew of our boat (or, Val thinks, possibly a policeman – certainly someone in uniform) decided that the vehicles would have to wait – they were going to board their passengers. So in a gap between two small trucks, they lowered the gangway and people surged forward. Even more shouting, gesticulating, etc, etc, ensued. Eventually we were able to board, feeling quite hot and bothered. The boat left on time and got back to Molo Beverollo on schedule – once again it was pretty much full. Then it was just a short walk back to Solstice before our last afternoon gelato…

Since then we’ve been packing, reviewing and wincing over the on-board account, and getting ready for our last dinner. Luggage has to be outside the cabin by 11pm.

To finish off here are a few facts & figures. First, the fast ferries: we used the company ‘NLG’, and their boats hold between 350 and 400 people. The SNAV boats looked bigger, and therefore presumably hold more. The orange buses on Capri, and the funicular, seem to have a flat fare of 1.40 Euro per person. However, the bus we got from Marina Grande to Capri at the start of the day wasn’t an orange one, so it may have been an independent bus company, and they charged 1.5 Euros each. In Capri town the little bus station is quite close to the funicular station; there’s a ticket office beside it.

More thoughts about Solstice, and the cruise

Today was a sea day and we spent it very lazily around the pool almost all day – very relaxing. Tonight is the second and last formal night, and tomorrow is the last full day of the cruise. Given that we’re approaching the end I’ve begun to collect my thoughts about the cruise overall. The most important thing to say is that we’ve had a wonderful time: for me it’s been one of the best two cruises we’ve done, more enjoyable than either of the Galaxy cruises and up there with the Ventura cruise. The itinerary has been great. We enjoyed Santorini & Mykonos, the 24 hours in Istanbul was amazing, and although we had some problems with what we did in Athens, it’s another extraordinary place. The weather, too, has been wonderful: apart from some grey skies and a few minutes of rain as we left Istanbul it’s been blue skies and sunshine all the way, with temperatures between the mid 70s on cooler days to the mid 80s on warmer ones. For sun-starved Brits this has been excellent: as Mark from Milton Keynes said during the Athens trip “this has been our summer….”. Tomorrow we plan to return to Capri from Naples, and hopefully that will be as memorable a day as the others.

As I mentioned in a previous post there are aspects of Solstice that I’m not completely happy with, but to be fair these are just about my preference. I’m quite confdent that Solstice meets her design brief perfectly. Let me run down a few points that I may not have mentioned.

First, we have really enjoyed the food on this cruise. As I’ve suggested I don’t think we’re especially ‘fine diners’ so it’s not surprising that what we’ve had in Grand Epernay this cruise has been just right for us. We’re both of the view that the food has been better this time than on the second Galaxy cruise, and possibly also better than on the first one. In fact Val’s view is that it’s been the best on any cruise. I think also that our opinion of Muranos is hardening a bit – the food there wasn’t that much better than in the MDR (or didn’t seem so to us), so it was probably something we needn’t (and shouldn’t) have bothered with. This is very much a personal thing, of course: if you’re someone who finds the MDR food underwhelming, you may well Muranos & Tuscan Grill worth the extra.

Second, there are design touches all over the ship that add to the feel of quality. Around the pool deck would be one area: the cabanas, couches and so on are a definite plus. Another area would be the Ensemble Lounge/Michael’s Club; these are both very elegant places. So too is Cafe al Bacio. We also thought the Oceanview cafe worked well; the choice of food here was wide, the quality was good, and it was good to get away from the traditional ‘buffet servery’ approach. I particularly noted the consistency of design of all the plates & dishes.

Today I walked round the ship looking at the art on the landings and lobbies. It’s easy to ignore what you’re seeing, and indeed much of it you won’t see unless you look for it: there are between 4 and 8 pieces on each floor by the main (aft) lifts, and if you never get out on any of the cabin floors except your own you’ll never see the artworks on those floors. As I said I went round this morning and looked for them, and liked what I found.

But I have to end with a question, and it’s about the Lawn Club. It’s cool concept, but it’s an awful lot of space; we’re sure that better use could be made of it. I’ll be surprised if it survives for too long, or even appears on Eclipse.

Athens

Today was Athens, and we had a private excursion arranged someone in our Cruisecritic contact group. The plan was to meet around 8 o’clock and get into Athens before the crowds.

It was bit after 8 am by the time We all met up in the car park at Piraeus. Some confusion was caused by the fact that the itinerary said that our arrival time in Athens was 8am whereas in fact we docked sometime before 6am – we were already docked when we woke at that time. Also there was some confusion amongst the crew – Guest Relations suggestd at about 7:30 that the ship would be cleared and passengers could go ashore at 8 am; but down on deck 2, at the gangway, the crewmembers there were happy to allow people ashore immediately. So we could have got away before 8am.

In any case, we got going by about 8:15 and drove into Athens. I had assumed that we would be going straight to the Acropolis (to beat the crowds) but that wasn’t the case – we went to other sites first, then we had a drive round central Athens, then a brief visit to the Acropolis Museum to give us the context, and then the Acropolis itself. All of which was good, but had the effect of delaying our arrival at the Acropolis until 11:30 by which time it was heaving with visitors. It took us 30 minutes to reach the actual platform on top, at which point Val & I decided that this simpple wasn’t the rewarding experience that we’d been looking for, so we headed straight back down and waited for the minibus.

Of course, it’s also possible that our actual experience of the Acropolis would never equal our expectations, whatever time we visited it; that we will not, in fact, learn anything more meaningful about it than we already know from books and films. The English writer & philosopher Alain de Botton would certainly agree with this – ‘it is often best not to travel’ is his thesis.

After this experience we drove to the Plaka where we had a couple of hours. We had lunch in a taverna, walked around a bit and took some pictures, and then bumped into a couple with whom we’ve become very friendly on the cruise, Fred & Maureen from New Jersey, and had a quick chat with them. Then back to the bus, and a scenic drive by the sea in a different part of Athens, and then back to the ship by about 4pm.

The morals of all this are:- a) make sure you fully understand what a tour will consist of, and what the itinerary is: b) that on the 11-night cruises Solstice is likely to dock in Athens quite a while before the advertised docking time.

I must make it clear that this is not in any way meant as a criticism of Dave who organised the excursion; I applaud what he did, and truthfully we enjoyed it overall.

Final tip (drawn from experience from other people): do NOT expect taxi drivers at Piraeus to be at all reasonable. There are taxi prices published at the terminal, on a big board. The fare into central Athens is shown as 12 euros. Fred & Maureen got into a taxi at the terminal expecting to pay 12 euros, and just as the taxi was leaving decided they’d better check. 12 euros per person, was the taxi driver’s view, in fact it could even reach 30 euros…. They demanded that he stop the taxi and they got out. I understand they then got a bus into Athens; just 1 euro, but it did go all round the houses.

Muranos

Last night we had a meal in Muranos, and this blog entry is to describe it.

We were sat together on a couch with a small round table in front of us. One of us could have sat at a chair the other side of the table but that would have made conversation difficult so we sat together on the couch. This also presented some issues, however, as the couch was a bit lower than was completely comfortable, so we ended up sitting on small cushions.

We chose the ’standard’ four-course (appetizer, soup/salad, entree, dessert) menu and selected a bottle of wine (a Californian Merlot), plus a additional glass of champagne to start. The choices were not dissimilar to those on the normal main dining room menu. We both had a goat’s cheese souffle as an appetizer, then I think Val had a lobster bisque soup while I had a salad, and for entrees Val had duck and I had rack of lamb. Finally for dessert Val had a chocolate souffle and I just had some cheese. Everything was extremely well cooked and delicious. So why didn’t we absolutely, 100% love it? Well, part of it might be the fact that a lot of the presentation of the food seemed quite fussy; the goat’s cheese soufles came with a sort lattice-work of pasta (?) in a hood over the top of it, for example, and the leaves in my salad came tightly wrapped up in strips of cucumber. Another problem was that the courses were in fact quite large; Val found her chocolate souffle just too big (to her considerable discomfort later). There were a couple of extra small ‘courses’ as well: at the beginning we were given a small helping of a chicken mousse (?) mixed with seafood and a berry topping, and at another point we were given a small sorbet. The end result was that there was a *lot* of food. And a further issue that I in particular felt was that the restaurant itself had a cast of thousands – well, at least dozens. We had separate waiters for the bread (there was bread as well – very good bread I have to say), and this waiter was able to explain all the different breads he had available. Then there was the sommelier, of course; there was certainly another waiter with the cheeses who told me all about the 10 or so different cheeses available, and I’m not sure if we didn’t have yet another waiter who did things with Val’s chocolate souffle. I was constantly waiting for someone else to pop up with something else; and of course they all kept coming back to ask if everything was alright? Everything is fine, and would be even better, I felt like saying, if people would leave us alone to enjoy the food.

Maybe the truth is that we aren’t ‘fine dining’ people – the more straight-forward Grand Epernay experience is more to our preference. It also contrasted with the few occasions when I’ve truly good food in the UK – it’s always been superb to eat but has also been cooked & presented very simply – so maybe the truth is that all the fussiness is not to my taste. So my views on Muranos would be: food, 100%; quantity, 90% (too much, not too little); and presentation, 75% (too fussy for me).

(I’ve just remembered – there was also a water waiter….)