Our Mediterranean Adventure -Fall 2013

(Apologies for the delay in publishing our notes.  We’re sure we could provide a variety of excuses, but we are just happy to share this with you at long last.)

We had a short visit to Lyon in the Fall of 2013, leaving after less than six weeks.  Anna’s mother had read to her about the wonders of early civilizations when Anna was a child and had “infected” her with the desire to actually SEE some of these places herself.  Since Anna had been wanting to visit some of the famous sites and sights in the Mediterranean area, we hit upon the idea of a cruise as a good way to do it.  With a cruise, there is no traveling between hotels, with all the packing and unpacking, plus we could have the option of organized tours available if we wanted.  We had had a good experience on the Cunard liner Queen Mary II while coming home from Europe in 2011, and had been impressed with the organization and management.  David has not been at all impressed with the professionalism overall of the cruise industry, what with the various mishaps that have occurred over the past few years.  The sea is a very unforgiving and dangerous place if you are unprepared; Cunard, with its largely British officers, appears to know more about what they are doing in terms of seamanship.

So, we signed up for a twelve-day cruise on the new Queen Elizabeth going from Venice to Rome with stops at Dubrovnik, Corfu, Piraeus [Athens], Kusadasi [Ephesus], Rhodes, Santorini,  Messina, and Salerno [Pompeii].  We took advantage of the schedule to spend three days in Venice before the cruise and three days in Rome after.  As mentioned before, with the exception of a few very rainy days in London, we have spent time only in France, so this was a great opportunity to make short visits to several other places we’ve heard about for much of our lives.

Except for one rainy day in Rome, we enjoyed mostly dry, temperate weather for the times we were ashore.  We did run into a gale while at sea one day and night, with 80-mile per hour winds.  Even the 90,000 ton Queen Elizabeth did a bit of rolling and pitching, such that it was difficult to sleep that night. 

We met some fascinating people on board – mostly British, including two older ladies who were at our table at night.  They were both widows, one of whose husband had been a Member of Parliament, and the other whose husband had been his manager.  In addition, the daughter of one had married the son of the other which added another layer to their friendship.  They would regale us in the evening with some the madcap adventures they had had ashore that date, including the time they had hired rickshaw-like conveyances in Turkey.  When they came to an alley that was too narrow for that conveyance, they were scooped into wheelchairs which were pushed at a rapid pace up and down the alleyways and into and out of shops.  They were mock-outraged that they had been put into wheelchairs but had all of us laughing through dinner!