Live from the Sojourn - 21 Days in the Med

[Visitors4]

Fletcher, thank you for your posts - they are all good, informative reads! We are sailing on a similar itinerary next year on another cruise line, and look forward to reading about your experiences.

 

[joiedevivre]

Do you know the price of using steam room ? Thx

[Fletcher]

6: The Ghost of Debra Winger

 

I’m puzzled by how many CC people ask who the top brass are on any given cruise.  It seems quite important to them and I’d like to know why because it really doesn’t matter much to me.  So specifically for @markham and in the spirit of public service broadcasting here goes - our Captain is Tim Roberts, our Hotel Director is Luca Di Matteo and our Cruise Director is Ryan Bishop.

 

We think the most important people on a ship are the cabin stewards who keep us clean and tidy, the chefs who feed us and, perhaps the most important of all, the person who gives us all those brilliantly made, life-saving teas and coffees at Seabourn Square.  On the Sojourn right now it is the wonderful Dragana from Serbia who probably has more interaction with passengers than any member of Seabourn’s crew.  She is absolutely terrific and I wanted you to know that.

 

Today we have been in Tangier, Morocco, and we had to put our clocks back an hour.   My memory goes back a little further than that, to 1978 in fact when we stayed at the El Minzah Hotel.  It was so expensive we couldn’t afford to have lunch there.  After that we took a public bus to the ancient city of Fes, one of the most exotic places we have ever seen and you might imagine how that looked in 1978.  I remember we shared the bus with some goats and chickens and we had to pay bribes every now and then so that our luggage remained on the roof of the bus.  This was travel as cultural immersion.  It was like a drug.  We went to lot of mad places at this time - Algeria, Syria, Libya, the USA.

 

In Tangier we used to go to a Salon de Thé every afternoon, drink mint tea and read the International Herald Tribune.  One day the front page carried a photo of Angkor Wat in Cambodia which had reopened its doors to tourism.  That door closed again fairly quickly but as soon as it re-reopened, in 1992, we were there.  It was tough at times but we did it.

 

There is another cafe in Tangier that has a special place in my heart, the Cafe de Colon which is a major location for one of the most elegant, haunting and sophisticated movies ever made, The Sheltering Sky (1990), directed by Bernardo Bertolucci and based on the 1949 novel by Paul Bowles.  In the movie Bowles himself sits in a corner as Debra Winger and John Malkovich, playing Kit and Port Moresby, sip their drinks, ponder their alienation and their desire for the exotic, sensate world that surrounds them.  Travel for them turns into a sort of suicide mission and Debra ends up living for a while in the fantabulous mud brick village of Agadez in Niger. I went to New York three years later to interview Debra for a magazine and she was fiercely smart, a stunning person.  I think she gave everything she had for that movie and its failure upset her deeply.  She gave one more amazing performance, in Shadowlands, and sort of retired after that.  Her ghost still haunts the Cafe de Colon in Tangier.

 

Cruise Director Ryan had told us that face masks were mandatory in Tangier and we would need to take photographic IDs, like our passports.  Needless to say, no one was wearing a mask and no one asked for our ID.   And this being a Friday almost all the shops in the Kasbah were closed.   This had downsides as well as upsides - although we missed the buzz of the bazaar we also missed all the hassle.  The old El Minzah hadn’t changed much and I doubt it’s worth five stars.  And Tangier is just a workaday city.  All the tourists go to Marrakech these days and the super-hotels.   

 

This evening our slush barge, the Sojourn, sailed through the windy Straits of Gibraltar for the fourth time and for the first time in daylight.  So now I’ve seen it, been there, done that.

 

I leave you with one more thought from Tangier.  Pedecaris alive or Raisuli dead.  Good night.

 

 

 

[galeforce9]

6 minutes ago, Fletcher said:

6: The Ghost of Debra Winger

 

I’m puzzled by how many CC people ask who the top brass are on any given cruise.  It seems quite important to them and I’d like to know why because it really doesn’t matter much to me.  So specifically for @markham and in the spirit of public service broadcasting here goes - our Captain is Tim Roberts, our Hotel Director is Luca Di Matteo and our Cruise Director is Ryan Bishop.

 

We think the most important people on a ship are the cabin stewards who keep us clean and tidy, the chefs who feed us and, perhaps the most important of all, the person who gives us all those brilliantly made, life-saving teas and coffees at Seabourn Square.  On the Sojourn right now it is the wonderful Dragana from Serbia who probably has more interaction with passengers than any member of Seabourn’s crew.  She is absolutely terrific and I wanted you to know that.

 

Today we have been in Tangier, Morocco, and we had to put our clocks back an hour.   My memory goes back a little further than that, to 1978 in fact when we stayed at the El Minzah Hotel.  It was so expensive we couldn’t afford to have lunch there.  After that we took a public bus to the ancient city of Fes, one of the most exotic places we have ever seen and you might imagine how that looked in 1978.  I remember we shared the bus with some goats and chickens and we had to pay bribes every now and then so that our luggage remained on the roof of the bus.  This was travel as cultural immersion.  It was like a drug.  We went to lot of mad places at this time - Algeria, Syria, Libya, the USA.

 

In Tangier we used to go to a Salon de Thé every afternoon, drink mint tea and read the International Herald Tribune.  One day the front page carried a photo of Angkor Wat in Cambodia which had reopened its doors to tourism.  That door closed again fairly quickly but as soon as it re-reopened, in 1992, we were there.  It was tough at times but we did it.

 

There is another cafe in Tangier that has a special place in my heart, the Cafe de Colon which is a major location for one of the most elegant, haunting and sophisticated movies ever made, The Sheltering Sky (1990), directed by Bernardo Bertolucci and based on the 1949 novel by Paul Bowles.  In the movie Bowles himself sits in a corner as Debra Winger and John Malkovich, playing Kit and Port Moresby, sip their drinks, ponder their alienation and their desire for the exotic, sensate world that surrounds them.  Travel for them turns into a sort of suicide mission and Debra ends up living for a while in the fantabulous mud brick village of Agadez in Niger. I went to New York three years later to interview Debra for a magazine and she was fiercely smart, a stunning person.  I think she gave everything she had for that movie and its failure upset her deeply.  She gave one more amazing performance, in Shadowlands, and sort of retired after that.  Her ghost still haunts the Cafe de Colon in Tangier.

 

Cruise Director Ryan had told us that face masks were mandatory in Tangier and we would need to take photographic IDs, like our passports.  Needless to say, no one was wearing a mask and no one asked for our ID.   And this being a Friday almost all the shops in the Kasbah were closed.   This had downsides as well as upsides - although we missed the buzz of the bazaar we also missed all the hassle.  The old El Minzah hadn’t changed much and I doubt it’s worth five stars.  And Tangier is just a workaday city.  All the tourists go to Marrakech these days and the super-hotels.   

 

This evening our slush barge, the Sojourn, sailed through the windy Straits of Gibraltar for the fourth time and for the first time in daylight.  So now I’ve seen it, been there, done that.

 

I leave you with one more thought from Tangier.  Pedecaris alive or Raisuli dead.  Good night.

 

 

 

Well said 

[sfvoyage]

12 minutes ago, Fletcher said:

On the Sojourn right now it is the wonderful Dragana from Serbia who probably has more interaction with passengers than any member of Seabourn’s crew.  She is absolutely terrific and I wanted you to know that.

 

Another big fan of Dragana here.  She is great, so bright and charming, and with personality galore.  I especially love how she is no meek pushover and can stand up to bad behaviors, such as self-entitled queue-cutters, and put them in their place... back to the end of the queue!

[markham]

Fletcher,

 

Thank you for advising about Captain Tim Roberts and HD Luca di Matteo. They are friends but after these couple of years I have not seen them on our cruises on Ovation and Odyssey as those ships have their own teams. And I don't "do" facebook...  For one thing and for my group of cruiser friends, these 2 roles are extremely important in setting the tone; they are warm, engaging and personable. I was with Captain Roberts on his first Seabourn command just about 6 years ago now. He proved most engaging and likable, and that personal characteristic does not necessarily apply to all new-to-Seabourn captains!

 

We hope to see Captain Roberts and HD Luca this July on Sojourn in the Med.

 

Happy and healthy sailing!

[Fletcher]

7:  Making the most of Motril

 

When we see the Sojourn from a distance, alongside in Gibraltar or Tangier for instance, or here in Motril, it looks sleek and luxurious.  And that impression lingers in various places on the ship.  Even the pool deck looks beautiful . . . until the passengers arrive and mess it all up, lounging in their various stages of decomposition, slathering themselves with toxic chemicals, gulping down 42 percent alcoholic beverages, gorging on huge platefuls of saturated fats, glued to their smartphones or tablets.  Is this what several millennia of evolution has led us to? And then we gaze across to the shore which, in one direction is fairly blameless, and in the other there’s a cement factory.  Oh joy of joys, this is the essence of luxury cruising.  We have missed it so much.

 

Motril is a clean, tidy nothing place and a gateway to Granada which is most definitely a something place.  And that something is called The Alhambra, one of the world’s most celebrated and thus most touristed sites.  It’s up there with the Pyramids and the Taj Mahal. If only the Emirs and the Moors and other big moustaphas had built it by the sea then we wouldn’t have had the hassle of driving the 40-odd miles north to marvel at it.

 

We longed to wander through the maze of palaces, courtyards and pavilions, soaking up the Islamic architecture and the lavish azulejos, and then strolling up to the Generalife Assurance Company to wander through the lavish gardens with their cooling pools and fountains.  And then, as the finale to all this, driving over to the town itself and the Mirador San Nicolas for the most dramatic and iconic view of the whole ensemble, complete with the mountain backdrop which is at its best on a clear evening in February and we are here in September.

 

We began by booking a tour from a local operator.  It would be a minibus with perhaps ten other passengers.  It was reasonably priced.  Then we got spooked by Covid and its apparent liking for minibuses filled with a dozen tourists.  So we cancelled our tour.  We looked into taking a public bus and we didn’t look long.  Then we considered Seabourn’s own excursions which which were enticing but they would be coaches filled with 50 possible hosts for the virus and, more importantly, they did not go to the viewpoint.  So we nixed that.  Finally we thought about a private car and realised we could buy a new Ferrari for the same money.

 

Then friends said stay away from the Alhambra. It’s a horrendous visitor experience, just one ghastly super-spreading crush of human bodies and selfie narcissism. So we thought, we have already been to the Alhambra, long before the days of mass tourism, we stayed several days there, and we saw it at its best.  This is how we came to spend the day in Motril and after an hour in the town we arrived at an opinion.

 

Motril is a clean and tidy nothing place and we are happy bunnies, basking in the warm sun,  looking down from Deck 10 to the pool deck and out across to the cement factory.

[Mr Luxury]

A view to die for Fletcher.

The cement works not the Alhambra.

[SLSD]

Another great travelogue.  Mr. SLSD even stopped his own writing to listen.  

Edited September 24, 2022 by SLSD

[Catlover54]

". . . .  Even the pool deck looks beautiful . . . until the passengers arrive and mess it all up, lounging in their various stages of decomposition, slathering themselves with toxic chemicals, gulping down 42 percent alcoholic beverages, gorging on huge platefuls of saturated fats, glued to their smartphones or tablets.. . ."

 

LOL!  But for the decomposing pax, there would of course be no point to the existence of a pool deck in the first place, and the chemicals being slathered on are designed to help slow, no matter how slightly, the dreaded decomposition.

And as for the smartphones or tablets, we all know they are using them to read threads about SB voyages on CC. 🙂

 

But I hear you . . . .

 

BTW, I agree to stay away from the Alhambra in the modern era.

[JodiandFrank]

This is one of the most enjoyable threads/posts on CC!  Thank you Fletcher for your humor and quirky take on travel.  Have you had the opportunity to take in any of the shows?  We will be joining the Sojourn in Lisbon and cruising it to our home in Miami.  The Trivia and entertainment are what we enjoy most…..and, I can’t wait to meet Dragana! 
looking forward to more of your postings.

Hugs, Jodi

[Fletcher]

8: Enclave

 

Whenever Argentina wants to rouse its populous to indignant patriotism it starts berating the UK over the Falklands.  And when Spain wants to rouse its own population they nag the Brits over Gibraltar.  Give us back The Rock they say.  Oh go away say the Brits, don’t be silly.  And of course Spain conveniently forgets that it owns two little chunks of Morocco, calling them Ceuta and Melilla, which Morocco desperately want back even though Morocco didn’t really exist when Spain was stealing bits of North Africa from feudal warlords whose antecedents once owned large chunks of Spain.  And then there is the disputed territory of the Western Sahara, a sizeable sand dune that lies between Morocco and Mauritania.  Where would we be without such territorial squabbles?

 

Today the Sojourn was in Melilla and I have to say this was the biggest draw for me of the entire itinerary.  Melilla is home to some 90,000 people and covers a mere five square miles.  It has air and ferry links with Spain, it is on Spanish time and has the Euro.  I love strange places like this and Melilla did seem strange, partly because this was a Sunday and everything was deathly quiet and closed, one long siesta.  The only people out  and about were Sojourners and the odd dog walker. This is a Seabourn speciality - Tangier was shut last Friday, Motril was closed because it was a Saturday and now Melilla, shuttered on a Sunday.

 

Captain Tim, in his delightfully droll way, admitted he hadn’t been here before, he didn’t quite know where it was, and he couldn’t pronounce the name. Fortunately we did know all that sort of stuff and we took an early shuttle bus to the Plaza de Espana and began a little walking tour.  If you are not interested in architecture then I doubt you will find Melilla remotely interesting.  We like fancy buildings and almost every one you see here has a flourish or curlicue to commend it.  Most of them date from the early 20th century and could be described as Modernist with Art Deco, Gothic and Islamic elements thrown in for fun.  And when you consider where this place is and how marginal it is you think it might just be someone’s vanity project, like Portmerion for instance.  There are also shades of Havana, though the buildings here aren’t falling apart.  It all looks quite prosperous and possibly preposterous.  Sadly, there is a disgusting 70s building down by the harbour that just ruins the cityscape.

 

There is also a massive castle, mostly dating from the 18th century, but built on much earlier foundations when this whole area was a battleground.  Today Melilla remains something of a battleground and rather than a chain of forts to defend itself  it has a massive razor wire fence surrounding it to deter migrants desperate to reach the EU.  Many of them originate in the Sahel but Morocco itself regularly inflames the situation by encouraging its own citizens to emigrate and brave the wire, the police and the navy patrols.  Only last June about 2000 would-be migrants, most of them Moroccans, rioted with around 25 killed.

 

I really enjoyed our brief visit to Melilla, despite the dull and grey weather. Captain Tim came back on the blower to say how pleasantly surprised he had been with Melilla and so had all the guests he had spoken to.  How nice is that.  Tomorrow we are in Cartagena, mainland Spain, which boasts an impressive Roman theatre which is closed on Mondays.  And yes, you’re guessed it, tomorrow is a Monday.

 

Our Covid level of alert was raised yesterday from one to two.  Ryan asked people to wear masks inside the ship and on tour buses. It seems that very few are heeding his advice.   

[BuckGood]

On 9/23/2022 at 4:20 PM, Fletcher said:

6: The Ghost of Debra Winger

 

I’m puzzled by how many CC people ask who the top brass are on any given cruise.  It seems quite important to them and I’d like to know why because it really doesn’t matter much to me.  So specifically for @markham and in the spirit of public service broadcasting here goes - our Captain is Tim Roberts, our Hotel Director is Luca Di Matteo and our Cruise Director is Ryan Bishop.

 

We think the most important people on a ship are the cabin stewards who keep us clean and tidy, the chefs who feed us and, perhaps the most important of all, the person who gives us all those brilliantly made, life-saving teas and coffees at Seabourn Square.  On the Sojourn right now it is the wonderful Dragana from Serbia who probably has more interaction with passengers than any member of Seabourn’s crew.  She is absolutely terrific and I wanted you to know that.

 

Today we have been in Tangier, Morocco, and we had to put our clocks back an hour.   My memory goes back a little further than that, to 1978 in fact when we stayed at the El Minzah Hotel.  It was so expensive we couldn’t afford to have lunch there.  After that we took a public bus to the ancient city of Fes, one of the most exotic places we have ever seen and you might imagine how that looked in 1978.  I remember we shared the bus with some goats and chickens and we had to pay bribes every now and then so that our luggage remained on the roof of the bus.  This was travel as cultural immersion.  It was like a drug.  We went to lot of mad places at this time - Algeria, Syria, Libya, the USA.

 

In Tangier we used to go to a Salon de Thé every afternoon, drink mint tea and read the International Herald Tribune.  One day the front page carried a photo of Angkor Wat in Cambodia which had reopened its doors to tourism.  That door closed again fairly quickly but as soon as it re-reopened, in 1992, we were there.  It was tough at times but we did it.

 

There is another cafe in Tangier that has a special place in my heart, the Cafe de Colon which is a major location for one of the most elegant, haunting and sophisticated movies ever made, The Sheltering Sky (1990), directed by Bernardo Bertolucci and based on the 1949 novel by Paul Bowles.  In the movie Bowles himself sits in a corner as Debra Winger and John Malkovich, playing Kit and Port Moresby, sip their drinks, ponder their alienation and their desire for the exotic, sensate world that surrounds them.  Travel for them turns into a sort of suicide mission and Debra ends up living for a while in the fantabulous mud brick village of Agadez in Niger. I went to New York three years later to interview Debra for a magazine and she was fiercely smart, a stunning person.  I think she gave everything she had for that movie and its failure upset her deeply.  She gave one more amazing performance, in Shadowlands, and sort of retired after that.  Her ghost still haunts the Cafe de Colon in Tangier.

 

Cruise Director Ryan had told us that face masks were mandatory in Tangier and we would need to take photographic IDs, like our passports.  Needless to say, no one was wearing a mask and no one asked for our ID.   And this being a Friday almost all the shops in the Kasbah were closed.   This had downsides as well as upsides - although we missed the buzz of the bazaar we also missed all the hassle.  The old El Minzah hadn’t changed much and I doubt it’s worth five stars.  And Tangier is just a workaday city.  All the tourists go to Marrakech these days and the super-hotels.   

 

This evening our slush barge, the Sojourn, sailed through the windy Straits of Gibraltar for the fourth time and for the first time in daylight.  So now I’ve seen it, been there, done that.

 

I leave you with one more thought from Tangier.  Pedecaris alive or Raisuli dead.  Good night.

 

 

 

Thank you for your comment about the upper crew! I Never understood why some people Have to have their pictures taken with the senior crew members, who are they trying to Impress? 🤦‍♂️

[BuckGood]

Thank you for your posts! We are So excited to rejoin the Sojourn again for our 19 night Las Palmas to Miami October 30! 

[markham]

Buck, no one said anything about taking pictures with senior officers. Our Seabourn friendships go back a long ways and they are legitimate.

 

BTW, and about your own picture, what look were you going for?

Happy and healthy sailing!

[Fletcher]

9: The Romans were here

 

Today we were in Cartagena, the last of our four Spanish ports of call.  It was a whole lot prettier than any of our stops before and also a bit lighter in the morning as we have gone north.  The tours out of town offered a choice between wine tasting, a monastery and a horse show, so we just walked into town, hoping the Teatro Romano might be open.  And it was! Especially for Sojourners.  We got there at 10am, paid 12 Euros, and had the place to ourselves for maybe half an hour.

 

There are a lot of extant Roman theatres in the world and this is one of the best, not up there with the likes of Aspendos in Turkey, or Bosra in Syria, or Orange in France, but extremely evocative and right in the city as it would have been in the days of Augustus.  I liked the sensitivity of the restoration which allows the visitor to appreciate the scale as well as the details, from the height of the scenae frons to the deep curve of the cavea.  I also thought the whole museum arrangement utterly outstanding, a brilliant contemporary design. Obviously a lot of money had been spent on it.

 

After the theatre we wandered along to inspect the sad but eloquent remains of the Roman amphitheatre.  I always have a special affection for  amphitheatres and have been to almost all of them.  They weren architectural marvels  and the venues of such cruelty yet that was accepted in those days and needs no apology.  This arena had most of its flimsy wall supported by scaffolding and seemed to be undergoing some sort of restoration.  It was still breathing but only just. Until the 1980s it was used for bullfighting.

 

Cartagena has many layers of his history and we thoroughly enjoyed our brief visit.  It’s not a touristy sort of place and lacks any nearby beaches.  The harbour has a lot of fortifications, some of them dating from the Franco era, a heavy Naval presence, a yachting marina and a slightly hidden petro-chemical plant.  Sail Away in glorious weather, viewed from the observation lounge, was a treat.

 

Tomorrow we are at sea, heading to Corsica.

 

 

 

[Fletcher]

10: Rougher than the Drake

 

What is a sure sign you are on a five star luxury line?  Maybe the paper bags placed discreetly by the elevators.  It was quite choppy this morning as we began our day at sea, heading east towards Corsica.  The Balearics of Ibiza, Mallorca and Minorca were off our starboard side and made a lovely passing scene.  The Sojourn was racing along at 18 knots to maximise the performance of the stabilisers.  There wasn’t a bird or a boat or a sea-going mammal to be seen.

 

On the pool deck at 10am there was something called Baggo which caused much screaming and yelling and applause.  This is what a Disney cruise must be like, I thought.  Further confirmation was provided at 11am when Ryan and his team staged something called snack and spritz, maybe not quite that, which involved snacking and spritzing and splashing, not into the pool today because it was, as I have said,  quite choppy.  However, this didn’t stop Ryan jumping fully clothed into the pool to a trickle of applause.  We observed all this peculiar human behaviour from our eerie on Deck 11.

 

At midday came the big news of the day.  Captain Tim, in his becalmed drollery, came on the blower to announce that a weather system was waiting for us near Corsica and that had put paid to our planned stop at L’Ile Rousse.  We would be going to Calvi instead.  Whoopee!!  I never understood why we were going to L’Ile Rousse anyway because the only place of interest around here is Calvi.  We had planned to take a little train from Rousse to Calvi which would have been fun but now we’ll miss the train and just step aboard a tender in Calvi itself.   We should have another cruise ship with us, the Marella Discovery 2 with 1800 pax.  I’m sure they also do spratz and splish.

 

I’m really looking forward to Calvi.  They say Christopher Columbus was born there.  There is also a citadel, a beach, some restaurants and they speak French.   That’s a fabulous combination, like salade niçoise.

 

At 5pm came the bigger news of the day.  The sea was rougher than The Drake. Skipper Tim, reassuringly  in the doldrums, has told us that Calvi has been nixed because he could never hope to operate the tenders.  He blames the Mistral.  That was a Maserati wasn’t it?  Now we are going to Ajaccio, the biggest town in Corsica and the birthplace of Napoleon.  We have the AIDA Cosma and Regent Seven Seas Explorer with us.  Maybe some others taking cover.  The Sojourn has already issued an info sheet on Ajaccio and organised a shore excursion.  The paper bags are still in position.  The ship is heaving.

 

 

 

[SLSD]

1 hour ago, Fletcher said:

Now we are going to Ajaccio, the biggest town in Corsica and the birthplace of Napoleon.  We have the AIDA Cosma and Regent Seven Seas Explorer with us.  Maybe some others taking cover.  The Sojourn has already issued an info sheet on Ajaccio and organised a shore excursion.  The paper bags are still in position.  The ship is heaving.

 

 

 

We.  enjoyed Ajaccio.  

[Mr Luxury]

Make sure you know which lifeboat you should be in.

[Fletcher]

 

11: Maison Bonaparte

 

Last night was a shocker.  The ship was pitching and rolling quite a bit and fortunately I felt nothing more than a brief period of nausea that was soon dissipated by a Jack Daniel’s in the Observation Lounge.  Dinner was in the Colonnade  as usual and we were in bed by 9pm.  That was when all the fun started.  Our incredibly quiet cabin suddenly went haywire.  It sounded as if we had a bunch of builders in our room who dismantled all the furniture, threw it against the walls, and reassembled it with JCBs.  The banging and creaking was astonishing and it didn’t subside until about 3am as we passed through the storm belt.

 

Dawn broke to a grey and wet Ajaccio.  This looked like a big, traffic-choked city.  The enormous AIDAcosma ship was beside us but there was no sign of the Regent ship.  We had breakfast in the Colonnade, waited awhile and then put on our lightweight rain gear, bought for the Amazon rainforest where it never rained.  When we ventured out into Ajaccio it was tipping it down.  The pavements were awash. Still, everything looked so . . . French.  Cafes, cigarettes, Citroens, dogs, shabbiness, but still somehow a little bit chic.  No buildings worthy of the name - an apology for a cathedral, a weed-ridden, garbage sale of a citadel and, down a grotty side street, a house in which Napoleon Bonaparte was born in 1769.   A few years ago we visited the house in St Helena where he died a prisoner.  Apparently he died of arsenic poisoning because of the wallpaper in his bedroom.  And in a few days, aboard the Sojourn, we can visit the house where he spent his brief exile on Elba.

 

There have been countless books and several movies about Napoleon, including a new one by Ridley Scott due later this year.  I have never fully understood the whole Napoleon thing or why he remains so venerated in France.  After all, didn’t he repeatedly lead the French to a succession of colossal military defeats?  He just seemed to me to be a dumpy, ugly, balding megalomaniac who brainwashed an entire nation and set out to conquer the world.  Thank God we don’t have people like that around anymore.

 

Tomorrow it’s Civitavecchia.  Some people get off. Some new people get on.  Some people just carry on cruising.  That’s us.

 

  

[BuckGood]

On 9/26/2022 at 1:49 PM, markham said:

Buck, no one said anything about taking pictures with senior officers. Our Seabourn friendships go back a long ways and they are legitimate.

 

BTW, and about your own picture, what look were you going for?

Happy and healthy sailing!

WOW, Cheap shot about my picture! 👏 

[whogo]

Thanks for the reports, Fletcher. You are not getting paid for this, you do not have to write so well.

[Mr Luxury]

Did anyone find the Regent ship?

[lincslady]

Confused about the itinerary for Sojourn - I thought she was cruising Barcelona return, finishing today, but note she is just leaving Rome.  I know it is not of vital importance, but would love to know the reason.

 

Loving Fletcher's erudite reports.

[Fletcher]

12: Due giardini

 

There are some appalling people on this ship.  We like having a little drink in the Sky Bar before dinner.  Vijay knows what we want, we chat a little, soak up the view.  Occasionally we engage in conversation with our fellow passengers but it’s not something we encourage.  The other day, for instance, there was this woman whom we quickly deduced was a travel agent because she said she was on a Seabourn ship every month and just spouted cruise guff.  She was mostly talking rubbish, as all travel agents do, and we simply had to correct her when she said that no one ever lands on Pitcairn Island and that was part of its mystique.  I insisted she wrong and she avoided us after that.  Happily she got off today in Rome.

 

Some nights the Sky Bar is not where we want to be, like the night before last when the weather was bad and like last night when there was loud live music and an opportunity for disembarking passengers to photograph all the staff.  We don’t partake in things like that; indeed, we don’t partake in anything.  So  we went for the second night running to the Observation Bar to have a drink and to enjoy the ship’s progress through the Bonifacio Straits.  The weather was fabulous, the view spectacular.  Until this passenger came from the back of the bar and closed all the curtains without a word, completely shutting off the view.

 

Today we are Civitavecchia and we were a little late arriving due to the port being closed because of high winds.  Some passengers had early flights to catch so I hope they had stress pills handy.   With us in port today are the Costa Pacifica (3000), Celebrity Beyond (3950) and the world’s biggest cruise ship, Wonder of the Seas (5730).

 

We hired a car with a driver to whisk us off to visit two very special gardens, both near Viterbo.   The first was the Villa Lante which has been on my wheelbarrow list for decades.  It is the most important classic, formal renaissance-era garden in Italy, built on terraces, planted almost entirely with geometrically placed box (buxus) and yew (taxus) and ornamented by fabulous waterworks.  It’s on a more intimate scale than the Villa D’Este in Tivoli and we had it entirely to ourselves.  It was utterly magical but, I am sad to report, an incurable fungal disease called box blight is romping through much of the hedging and I fear that the Villa Lante will be totally devastated within a few years with no hope of renewal.  It will pass into history.

 

Next up was Sacro Bosco, a totally different experience, originally laid out in the 16th century and essentially a circular woodland walk punctuated by massive stone sculptures of beasts, monsters and various representations of classical myths.  It is fun, it is phantasmagorical, it is surreal, it is quite spooky.  It is simply unique, probably not a garden in the strictest sense, more of a mannerist sculpture park.  It fell into ruin a century or so ago and has been miraculously restored by the Bettini family.  I thought there was something of Angkor about it. My wife thought it was more like Harry Potter. 

 

Our driver, who had a brand new E Class Mercedes, was a bright young man, originally from Romania who had lived in Italy for 20 years.  His English was immaculate.  His initial conversational gambit was about Russia and Ukraine.  We ran into someone on the Sojourn last night, an American, who tried to put the case for Putin and he had analysed it correctly apart from the fact that he overlooked the fear and loathing people have from the now independent states of the former Soviet Union.  They dread the Russians, just like our Romanian driver did.  I also wondered why you seldom see Ferraris, Masers and Lambos on the streets of Italy.  Our driver said it was because the police always stopped the drivers of those cars and demanded to see their tax returns.

 

This was a great day for us and now we await Part II of this cruise with excitement.  Tomorrow it’s Elba, then Amalfi then loads of other tantalising places until we get back to Barcelona on 9 October.  Do stay in touch.

Edited September 29, 2022 by Fletcher