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!
Awoke looking out over what could only be a Greek landscape. Funny how geology and vegetation, sun, rain and culture all conspire to identify an area. The harbour contained QV and a Thompson vessel, so expect about three thousand additional population on the island this morning. Bus to the town of Mykonos round the bay. Walk along the waterfront, the bars and restaurants all have that ‘morning after’ feel – owners washing off the tiled ground with water washing into the sea, a few broken bottles, a dazed look to the few customers enjoying a coffee or an early beer. The town is freshly coloured white and blue, very narrow streets just wide enough for those little motorised carts that chug about, a few pleasant green corners. From the waterfront the island is crowned by the four skeletal windmills shown in all the postcards, and a few charming small white chapels stand open for visitors. We loved the charm, the quaint streets and blue-and-white buildings, but didn’t care for evidence of the boozy night before. Outside the harbour sits a grand four-masted sailing ship, and over there the Queen Vic. How DO they manoeuvre that massive hull into such places?
After taking in the town we go back to the ship. Along the quay from QV, an inter-island ferry is disgorging cars and ruck-sack toting foot passengers by the score. It had been my dream for my retirement to go island-hopping in the Greek Islands, to be one of them. Not too sure now. Sue says she’d refuse to live out of a ruck-sack nowadays, and I’m not convinced life would as idyllic in these quaint places as I imagined. Maybe this taste of the Mediterranean has achieved its first goal. I now know where we probably won’t be going again.
The ship sails away from Mykonos and turns north. Runs past the coast of Turkey through what I’m told are the cleanest seas in the Mediterranean area.
After dinner that night we have entered the Dardanelles, that narrow strait between Turkey to the South and the Gallipoli Peninsula to the north, which links the Aegean to the Sea of Marmara. This is beginning to feel quite exotic. The Greek name for the Dardanelles, Hellespont, echoes of classical history, of Troy located near the western end of the strait, of Hero and Leander, Xerxes, Alexander the Great, the Ottoman Empire, and of the Battle of Gallipoli, where more that 200,000 lost their lives in 1915, including countless New Zealand and Australian troops.
Over night we’ll sail across the Sea of Marmara and in the morning Istanbul, which it is my personal dream to visit.
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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