Tom Burke’s Blog

It’s astonishing how much excitement a small spiral-bound booklet can deliver. Of course it was necessary to read it immediately from front to back, and then back again (well, apart from the legal stuff on pages 19, 20 & 21 – I know I ought to look at that but somehow I never get past line 2). It all looks right: they’ve got our names right, the right cruise dates, the right cabin (which means that the Upgrade Fairy has not waved her wand over me), the right sitting for dinner, and the right excursions. Whew!- looks we’re going on a cruise.

The only dilemna comes with the flight arrangements. We have a direct outbound flight from London to Rome – we specifically asked for this (and paid a bit extra) because last year we shared a table with a lovely couple from Merseyside who flew from a regional airport to Rome via Paris where their luggage went astray, and it was three days into the cruise before it caught up with them. But going home we are with a different airline, Lufthansa, and going via Frankfurt.

It’s not the change at Frankfurt that has us a bit nonplussed, it’s the different baggage allowances that is causing us some problems. Because these are all flights within Europe we are limited to one checked-in bag each, with a low weight limit; 23kgs with BA but only 20kgs with Lufthansa. Last year we really needed the 23 kgs – the bags weighed in at 21.5 and 22.5 kgs when we checked in. This is going to be a problem!

Watch this space for news on what we do….

It’s a funny thing, this business of looking forward to things, isn’t it? We booked our cruise on Galaxy in July last year, and for most of the eleven months since then it’s been the most important thing on my personal horizon. But here I am with just under four weeks to go, and I’m almost discounting it…. Not that I’m not looking forward ot it, or don’t want to go – far from it, I know that I shall have a great time. But I have also got two more cruises booked, and it’s the second of these (12 nights from Southampton to the Canaries on P&O’s Ventura in September 2008) which is largely filling my thoughts right now. But I’m sure I shall write much in future blogs about that cruise.

There have been some ways in which I’ve been encouraging my interest & cementing my enthusiasm to our cruise on Galaxy. I’ve found a couple of good webcam sites for two of my favourite destinations, Mykonos and Santorini. The cameras are live, of course, so they do keep to Greek time, which is 2 hours ahead of BST and 7 hours ahead of EST. But I managed to spot Galaxy at Santorini a few days ago, and at last found myself wanting to be back there.

Roll on 22 June! – I know that when I walk onto Galaxy that day I won’t be thinking of anything else.

Well, having been cruising since, oh, 2005, and having done the grand total of 3 cruises, I thought I had my likes and dislikes sorted out. I like smaller ships (which I define as under 100,000 tons or less than 2000 passengers), and I dislike sea days – I get absolutely stir crazy. (I was prowlng the decks all day on Galaxy last June on the run from Sicily to southern France – couldn’t relax at all.) Oh, and if you want to cruise somewhere warm, e.g. the Med, then it makes sense to fly there first rather than waste time sailing there on the ship from a UK port. Which means that our decision to book a 12-night cruise on P&O’s Ventura to the Canaries in September 2008 goes against all these preferences.

(For information, Ventura will be the same size and class as Princess’ latest big ships, e.g. Emerald Princess – 113,000 tons, and somewhere between 2,500 and 3,000+ passengers, depending on how many cabins have more than two passengers. The cruise, which departs from Southampton, will feature between 4 and 5 sea days: almost three days at the beginning, another one between the Canaries and Lisbon, and a final one for the last part of the cruise, from Vigo back to Southampton.)

So why the change of heart? Well, my wife has indicated to me that while she found our recent short holiday in Rome very beautiful, she also found it very unrelaxing – she says she came back more tired than when she left. (I was in seventh heaven, of course). And she’s also suggestd that having to get up at 4am in our Heathrow hotel, in order to check in at 5am for the first flight to wherever so we can be absolutely sure we’ll get to our embarkation port before the ship leaves, is not the best way to start a holiday.

So in September next year it will be a leisurely drive from Yorkshire to Southampton, arriving at our scheduled embarkation time. And, seeing as we can take as many bags as we can fit in the car, I can take a whole load of books to read instead of just one or two (one of which I’ve usually read before the end of the first day). Hmm – I shall have to see: perhaps I can the advantages of this after all.

I’ve recently been booking excursions for our forthcoming 10-night cruise on Galaxy, during which we will be calling at Messina, Athens (Piraeus), Mykonos, Kusadasi, Rhodes, Santorini and Naples.

Some of these are easy – in my view there’s no point in arranging anything at Mykonos (unless you want to go to Delos, of course, and you can arrange a trip there from the quayside at Mykonos) or Santorini. So we’re doing our own thing at both of these calls. And at Kusadasi the choice is Ephesus or nothing, it seems, so Ephesus it is.

But what about Naples and Athens? For Naples, most of the comments on the main discussion forums recommend visiting Pompeii or the Amalfi coast – indeed, there is at least one excursion that will allow you to do both in a day. I’ve never been to either of these places, and I would like to do so someday. But I’m not sure that arriving at, say, Pompeii on a coach full of cruise passengers, which is itself just one in a line of such coaches, for a quick 90 minutes’ visit, will tell me anything about Pompeii that I don’t already know from the books I’ve read. I’d rather wait until I have the opportunity for a more leisurely visit when I can give the place the attention it deserves. So we’ve decided to do visit Capri (which is where we went last year, on an excursion) and take our time over the island.

Similarly with Athens. I know that the Parthenon is one of the glories of classical Greece, european culture & world architecture, and I’ve never seen it. But once again, I’m not sure that the context of a cruise line excursion, along with possibly thousands of others, will be at all rewarding. So we’re going to Ancient Corinth & the Corinth canal instead.

Am I wrong? Is it worth seeing these iconic places anyway, regardless of negative elements involved in the context of the visit?