A day at sea on a luxury liner is a day to relish. Especially crossing south from the Aegean into the Med, round the ‘udders’ peninsulas that hang beneath Greece, under the foot of Italy, ending up in the Straits of Messina.
But what a ship she is, the Queen Victoria!
Cunard in their kindness organised a shuttle round the waterfront to St Mark’s Square at some cost! So I dragged poor Sue 1 km on foot out of the port to Piazza la Roma, a transport interchange where road meets canal. For 6.5 Euros each way you can catch the public waterbus to St Mark’s, or for 14 Euros you can do it on a 24 hour tourist pass. A no-brainer!
So here we are on the Grand Canal with dozens of tourists and locals, floating past markets and galleries, hotels and bridges, starting with the Bridge of Sighs. At the Rialto Bridge we hopped off, took some pictures and walked through to St Mark’s Square. Of course you don’t actually buy anything there because the price of everything doubles as you approach within 100 metres of the place.
We passed several tourists dragging cases up and over the little bridges. Later we discovered that these poor people had booked into Venice’s hotels, and of course were unable to get within access of their destination – so they just had to struggle. Note to self – never book into a hotel in old Venice!!
Walked round the waterfront to pick up the return waterbus. (You just hold your ticket in front of the little scanner things – tell that to an older American guy who couldn’t understand why nobody had checked his ticket! Modern technology – pah!) Travelling the entire length of the Grand Canal was a rare privilege we were very grateful for, and which we wouldn’t have experienced had I not been so parsimonious!
I should add that one of the waterbuses we rode on had an all-woman crew – I called them Cagney and Lacey. I’d really like to tell you about how great they were but I know I’ll be accused of something or other – so I’ll just leave it there!
Back on board Queen Victoria, it was time to ‘let go aft’ and set sail. What a feeling as the massive ship manoeuvred unaided from her berth out into the lagoon. I understand the ship has a modern electric propulsion system which makes a tug more or less redundant – but more of that later.
We sailed very sedately along the waterfront heading for St Mark’s Square, with the best imaginable view of the low-rise city Venice from the deck ten storeys high. It was breath-taking. As we passed the Doges Palace the crowds lining the water watched us watching them. Slowly out towards the Gulf of Venice and the Adriatic.
Next stop Dubrovnik.
Sue and I have been married for forty years. Yes I know it’s unbelievable! I find it incredible that she’s put up with me that long. So anyway we decided to mark the occasion with a ‘once in a lifetime’ experience we will always associate with this anniversary. Only problem of course was, as always, it was going to be expensive.
But still we committed. We booked a cruise around the Mediterranean on the new Cunarder ‘Queen Victoria’, as novices to cruising and certainly unused to receiving 5-star treatment. Sue deserved it of course – I had never been good at red roses and champagne so this made up for forty years of neglectfulness.
The trip was always going to be breathtaking – and so it turned out. On Wednesday August 13th we flew to Venice and with the absolute minimum of effort found ourselves stepping into the air-conditioned embrace of Cunard and the most beautiful ship I could have imagined. Our cases arrived unobtrusively in our ‘Stateroom’, and from our private balcony we had a view over the city of Venice.
That night we ate in the luxury of the ship’s sumptuous Britannia Restaurant and planned what we would do tomorrow.
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