Tom Burke’s Blog

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.

Yesterday evening’s dinner was open seating, though I was suprised to find that it was still in two sittings: 6:15 and 8:45. However, the arrangement was that diners could arrive at any time after the start of the sitting for 45 minutes. All diners were seated at an appropriate table as they arrived – normal tables weren’t in operation.

We were sat with two French-Canadian ladies, and they were everything that their compratiots of the first evening were not. The conversation flowed in a combination of english & french – mainly english I have to admit as one of the ladies spoke excellent english – but we had a go with our memories of school French, and between us we all got on very well. Alll in all an extremely enjoyable meal. After dinner I thought it would be interesting to go out for a walk into town – the gangway was open overnight – and I decided to walk across Galata bridge, to see what could be seen. What could mainly be seen were hundreds – quite literally, several hundred – of Turkish men fishing off the sides of the bridge. They seemed to be catching just small fish, and keeping them – I got a strong feeling that this was economic fishing, not fishing for sport. There was a strong fishy smell, too, so I didn’t linger. None of the men fishing looked well off, so this was a reminder that things can be pretty precarious in Turkish society, and that in comparison I was a rich westerner.

This morning we went back to the main historic district and visited the Hagia sophia. Again, I won’t write too much about the building, other than to say that it is every bit as stunning as I had expected. From the outside it looks quite confusing, with the shape of the dome almost obscured by other structures, including some heavy buttresses erected by the Ottomans to support what had become by that time a dangerous structure. But inside it is simply a huge open space, beautifully proportioned, and with that colossal dome in the middle. There was one little disapointment: the paintings on the surface of the dome are being restored and to do this there is a very large scaffold rising from the floor to the dome ceiling, and this did affect the vistas through the basilica. But a building this old must need constant maintenance so I won’t complain. Both today and yesterday at Topkapi we saw signs indicating that Istanbul is Europe’s ‘City of Culture’ in 2010, so it may be that the work we saw at both sites is in preparation for that.

After Hagia Sophia we simply walked back to the ship, handed in our boarding cards, and had lunch. So all we saw was the Topkapi Palace & the Hagia Sophia, but I don’t regret not seeing other things. First, they’ll still be there should we ever return to Istanbul, and second it was very enjoyable being able to take our time over both visits; lingering over some parts and moving quickly through others.

Sailaway was at 2 o’clock and we departed on time. As we sailed out, P&O’s Aurora sailed in. She was a few minutes late – she was due to dock at 2pm and it must have been 2:30 by the time she even approached the quayside. But this gave the two ships the opportunity to sail slowly past each other, and Aurora looked very much the classic ship as they did so. Up on Solstice’s Sunset Bar I heard a few appreciative comments about Aurora. This afternoon we’ve just relaxed on board, mainly inside. It’s been cloudier since lunchtime, in fcat we sailed through a rain storm at one point. It did’t last but the cloud has and it’s been a lot cooler than on previous days.

Finally, I think we may have found our ‘comfortable bar’ – the one where you feel at home as soon as you sit down. It’s the Passport Bar down on deck 3. Thanks to being near the sea we could see the waves through one of the windows, so that please us a lot. We’ll try it this evening for the pre-dinner cocktail.

It has been a very long time since I last posted anything here, which is not good! All I can say is that as our interminably long, wet, cold summer dragged on  – a ‘barbecue summer’* it was not – I found it increasingly difficult to turn my thought to anything other than just getting through it. But these last few weeks have been very pleasant – while it hasn’t been warm it has been dry and mostly sunny; today for instance the temperature is about 17 or 18 degrees (upper 60s for those still working in old money) but we have bright sunshine, and I spent a very pleasant hour on the bench at the bottom of the garden in the sun.

At last our cruise is just about here – we leave for Heathrow tomorrow lunchtime, and fly to Rome on Monday morning. Then we have 11 nights on Solstice! It can’t come soon enough, it seems to have been a very very long wait this time. This is odd because last year our Ventura cruise started on exactly the same day – 28 September – but I don’t remember the summer crawling along anything like so slowly.

There has also been some agonising about picture taking on the cruise. As the year as gone on I have hardly used the Nikon DSLR at all – I certainly haven’t bought anything new for that system. My plan (less than 24 hours before leaving…) is just to take the Leica, the the three lenses I’ve got (35mm, 50mm & 90mm) and some rolls of film, and see how it goes. But I still feel awfully tempted to go out and BUY SOMETHING!!! Surely that would make my photography better…. Of course I know it won’t, and the big advantage of the Leica outfit is that I can’t blame any shortcomings in the images on the equipment, they’ll be down to me. So that’s the plan. The one big drawback to using the Leica is that it’s back to film, so getting images onto the web takes a few more steps.

Finally, I hope to blog from the cruise, so bookmark this space.

* : Back in May the UK’s Meteorological Office promised us a ‘barbecue summer’, and mentioned temperatures of 30 degrees or above on occasions. I haven’t seen temperatures anything like that; it’s been cool and cloudy for most of the summer. Bah!

Solstice's first appearance at Santorini

There have been two developments of some note on the Celebrity front in the last week or so. First, Solstice (about which ship I have blogged before) started its first European cruise last Monday (4th May). This is the first of a series of 11-night itineraries from Rome into the eastern Mediterranean and Aegean seas, with calls at Santorini, Mykonos, an overnight stay at Istanbul, Kusadasi, Athens and (on the way back to Rome) Naples. These itineraries alternate with a 10-night version, which basically leaves out Istanbul but adds Rhodes, to provide a 3-week repeating pattern of cruises throughout the summer and autumn. These cruises were the ones that Galaxy did for the last two years, and we did the 10-night itinerary in 2007.

On Wednesday afternoon Solstice arrived at Santorini, and I was able to grab a webcam image of her in the caldera there (shown above). Roll on 28 September! – that’s when we embark on her for our 11 night cruise.

Also this last week, Celebrity has made significant changes to their Mediterranean deployments for 2010. It all began at the weekend, when all the Mediterranean cruises scheduled for Solstice and Equinox disappeared from the celebrity.com website. A day or two later the position became clearer. For reasons still unexplained (but probably to do with falling bookings from cruising americans) Celebrity have decided to keep Solstice in the Caribbean all year round next year; therefore her 2010 sailings in the Mediterranean (originally announced as a repeat of the 2009 programme) were all cancelled. Equinox has been shifted to replace Solstice on the 10 & 11 night eastern Mediterranean sailings, thus canceling her originally-planned 12-night Barcelona-Venice/Venice-Barcelona cruises. However there’s no replacement for her, so those cruises are cancelled. There was then some confusion for UK-based cruisers as it took Celebrity UK until Friday to respond to the itinerary changes which had already been announced on the Celebrity US website; indeed, on Friday morning the Celebrity UK website (celebrity.co.uk) still had the Solstice cruises in their 2010 Mediterranean brochure.

There’s no change to the northern Europe programme, however, which means that Eclipse will be doing her planned programme of cruises from Southampton.

I received the Azura brochure from P&O this morning.

The itineraries are not what I was expecting. There are no 14-night western Mediterranean cruises (surely, P&O’s bread & butter?); instead, all seven Med cruises are 16-nighters to the eastern Med (Venice). There are also some 14-night cruises to the Baltic, some 11 and 12-night cruises to the Canaries, and a few shorter cruises. I wonder if these itineraries are intended to dissuade families from choosing her? Azura does have family facilities but (as I’ve posted before) they aren’t marketing them especially strongly. 16 night cruises are unattractive to families because they are more expensive, of course, and also because they tend to not fit well with family holiday schedules. I also see that none of Azura’s cruises begin on a bank holiday weekend; again, cruises that begin on a bank holiday, especially 7-night cruises, are attractive to families, and Azura doesn’t have any of these.

I’ve also looked at the prices. I’m still working through it all, but it’s clear that they are high. Part of this is due to the longer cruises, of course, but that’s not the whole story. P&O seem to be looking for about £150 per person per night for a balcony cabin, which is a lot. This is markedly higher than the prices for Ventura’s first season in 2008: compare the price for A010 on Azura with that N811 on Ventura (both of these are/were 16 night E Mediterranean cruises in high season, so are quite comparable). Balconies started at £2249 for the Ventura cruise, while for the Azura cruise the start price is £2619 (after deducting the ‘early bird saving’). That’s a difference of almost £400 per person, call it £750 for a couple – total cruise price would be £4,500 on Ventura, £5,250 on Azura – that’s a significant difference, more than 15% more.

My conclusion is that I don’t think we will be cruising on Azura in 2010. I’m also starting to worry about the prices P&O will be charging for the rest of the fleet. The general brochure (which will contain these prices) should be published in early April or thereabouts.

In the meantime I’m still looking at those Celebrity prices for 2010: around £1400 per person for 14 nights from Southampton to the western Mediterranean on Celebrity Eclipse, or a bit more, including flights, for 12 nights from Barcelona to Venice (or vice-versa). These look to be much more attractive deals than what we currently know about P&Os plans for 2010. I await the rest of P&O’s 2010 details with interest.

It’s the middle of March, and the cruise lines have begun announcing their itineraries and prices for – 2010! First off the mark (I think) is Celebrity, who published their summer 2010 European brochure (at least, the on-line version) about a week ago. I gather that P&O will announce 2010 itineraries & prices for Azura in about a week’s time, and the rest of the fleet sometime in early April. nd Fred.Olsen have got a printed Preview brochure out, and are taking bookings from the 18th.

Let’s go back to Celebrity. By summer next year they will have three Solstice-class ships in service and all three will be in Europe. The newest of them, Celebrity Eclipse, will be delivered from the Italian shipyard in spring next year, and will spend her first season cruising out of Southampton. These will mainly be 14-night cruises to the Baltic and western Mediterranean, with the occasional longer (eastern Med.) and shorter cruise (Iberia mini-cruise) thrown in. In other words, exactly the sort of cruises that Azura and the rest of the P&O fleet will be doing.

Price-wise, Celebrity have laid down a tough target for P&O to match. Their brochure prices aren’t uncompetitive but at the moment they are reducing all prices by up to £200 per person. Plus there’ll be free car-parking at Southampton for all bookings made this year. Thanks to these offers my usual on-line TA, Ideal Cruising, have quoted me a price of under £1400 for a 14-night western Med cruise in September, for a balcony cabin on either deck 7 or 8.

I’m looking forward to seeing what prices P&O will be publishing in a few weeks.