Our Venice Cruise Chapter 22: Return to Venice
It has been said that all good things must end. Sadly our cruise came to an end. Early in the morning on the last day of our cruise we returned to Venice. The night before we needed to have our bags packed and ready to be picked up. They were taken to the lower deck to be unloaded at the dock in the morning. This helps get everyone get off of the ship more efficiently. It’s sort of a strange feeling. It’s a big sign that the cruise is coming to an end. Also there is a bit of anxiety, wondering if you packed something you need until you get the bag back again, or if you didn’t pack enough and have too much stuff in your carry-on the next morning. I woke up early the next morning. I wanted to see Venice as we sailed past. I went to the upper deck to get a good view. Venice is an island that’s sort of shaped like a fish. Ships enter the curvy narrow waterway around Venice at the bottom of the tail of the fish. They continue winding their way along the belly of the fish between Venice and some smaller islands. The cruise port is at the mouth of the fish. This path takes the ship right past St. Mark’s Square. I wanted to see St. Mark’s as we passed. From the upper deck I could see a lot of Venice as we sailed by. It was a beautiful clear morning. The fog that delayed our cruise on the first day did not appear. Cruise ships for their size are very maneuverable. Typically they can get into any port on their own without any help. I have seen them do some amazing things. Sailing into Venice, our ship was tethered to several powerful tugboats. Several months prior to our trip, a cruise ship sailing into Venice lost power and collided with a docked river cruise ship. This elevated the existing campaign to have the cruise port moved away from Venice. Also, this is why we needed the tug boats.
The weather for our trip was amazing! We sailed in the fall. The cruise started at the end of October and ended the second week of November 2019. We had summer-like weather for the entire cruise. It only rained a small amount the morning we were in Dubrovnik. The northern Adriatic sea was not so lucky. We were sailing in the Aegean and Mediterranean seas. I heard there were some nasty storms that caused other cruise ships to miss some ports. That happened to us on our first cruise, it was not good, but that’s another story. On the upper deck there was a definite chill in the air. Fall temperatures had returned. I was taking in the beautiful city as we sailed by. As we approached St. Marks, I noticed the square was flooded. They were experiencing an acqua alta. This is when Venice is flooded by an exceptionally high tide. The water retreats at low tide but tends to return again with the next high tide. A few days after we left at the beginning of the cruise, there was a record breaking acqua alta. The highest in over 50 years!
After watching the beautiful city of Venice glide by, I met up with Robbie. We went to the dinning room for our final cruise breakfast. One thing about cruising, there is no shortage of good food. I gain 5-10 pounds on every cruise. After breakfast, we went back to our cabin for the last time to collect our things. They wanted us out so they could start getting the cabin ready for the next passengers – in just a few hours. We were assigned a group number and time for disembarking the ship. We made our way to one of the nice lounges to wait for our time. They called our number and we exited the ship for the last time. We met up with Sandy, Jerry, Marcia and Jack on the dock. The rest of the group had made other arrangements to get back home. We shared a cab to our hotel in Mestre. Venice, as I said, is an island. Mestre is a small town just on the other side of the causeway that connects Venice to the mainland.
We had a flight the next morning to Lisbon Portugal, so we had the evening to spend in Mestre. We had not planned on going back to Venice due to the limited time. After we all got settled into our hotel rooms, the group wanted to go to lunch. Robbie and I were a bit tired so we decided to rest for a while and go out later. Also there is that Italian thing I mentioned before, where some restaurants are closed for what we call “lunch time.” After we rested and relaxed for a while, Robbie and I ventured out. The woman at the desk told us where we could get a good pizza, so we set out to find the restaurant. After one or two wrong turns, we found it. You can’t really say that you’ve properly seen a new place unless you make a few wrong turns. We ordered a pizza, beer and wine, it was amazing! No worries, we did eat the whole pie. We need to remember to get a photo before we dig in. There was an awesome dessert as well. We stopped at a grocery store for some supplies on the way back to the hotel. It was nice getting to see a little of Mestre before moving on.
Authors note: We took this trip in Oct./Nov. of 2019. I took a gazillion photos. It takes me a long time to sort and edit my photos. My plan was to write most of the posts about this trip before I started to post them. I am not the fastest writer by any means. It’s surprising how long it takes to write 500 or so words when you choose your words carefully. So I knew from the beginning that it was going to take me a while to start posting about this trip. Anyway, I’m ready to start posting and BAMM!! We find our self in the middle of a global pandemic! Cruise ships are stranded at sea and people are dying onboard! That sort of took the wind out of my sails. I didn’t think this was an appropriate time to start posting about a wonderful cruise. So I shelved my cruise posts. Time flies when you’re not having fun. It’s now been a year since we departed on our trip. What a year it’s been! I’m not sure what the future holds for the travel industry. I was hoping to be traveling again in the spring of 2021. Now it may be longer and even longer yet for the cruise industry. For now I hope that you will enjoy reading about our Italian, Aegean Sea cruise.
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Our Venice Cruise Chapter 21 part 2: Dubrovnik Croatia
Continuing to work our way through the Dubrovnik, we ended up in the old east port. The old east port was a waterfront area that had restaurants with a beautiful view. If you wanted to, you could catch a ferry to the island of Lokrum. Here, you could see the actual iron throne. We didn’t make that trip.
After a great morning exploring Dubrovnik, it was time to take a refreshment break. We picked one of the many nice sidewalk cafes along the Stradun. Ordering some cold beverages and relaxing for a while. It was also time to take advantage of the cafes WiFi. Robbie and I were using Google fi, so we always had good service. Everyone else depended on WiFi where ever it could be found. It was nice to see that the Zvonik clock tower was still standing. It was seen dramatically crumbling to the ground in the GOT finally, as was most of the city.
Feeling all relaxed and refreshed we continued on with our tour of Dubrovnik. I wanted to see the Minceta Tower. I really like the scene in GOT where Daenarys is looking for her dragons in the tower. She is walking around the base of the tower looking for a way in. She is followed by Jorah, as they circle the tower, Daenarys vanishes into the tower. Jorah is unable to get into the tower to help her. Anyway the visual is pretty cool looking. The reality is that you cant actually walk all the way around the tower, more Hollywood magic. The tower is at the highest point in the old town. I totally chose the wrong way to get there. We had to climb a very steep and long stone stairway to get to the tower. We kept going up and up and up. It was quite the climb. We should have gone the way Jerry wanted to go, it was a longer but more gradual climb. The view at the top was amazing! Unfortunately we couldn’t see as much of the tower as I had hoped. You need to do the city walls tour to see it better.
Taking the longer more gradual decent on the return trip, we past a very interesting restaurant called, Lady PiPi. It gets it’s name from a statue/water fountain of a lady going PiPi in front of the restaurant. You wont find a more interesting fountain anywhere. I was looking at their website, it looks like a really nice restaurant. They were closed for the season when we were there.
It was time to do some shopping, so we all split up to find something amazing. After dong some shopping some people went back to the ship. Robbie and I did a little more exploring before returning to the ship. We had a great day in Dubrovnik. It was really nice seeing all of the GOT filming locations. It’s no wonder that they chose Dubrovnik as a filming location. It really is a beautiful medieval city. When you are cruising sometimes you really only get a small taste of a place. This is when you need to plan another trip to see more. I think Croatia would be a great place to plan another trip.
When sailing in or out of a port, a fun thing to do, is to go to the upper deck, to watch the sail away. It’s a great way to say hello or goodbye to a port. We went up on deck to say goodbye to Dubrovnik and take one last look.
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Our Venice Cruise Chapter 19 part 2: The Medieval City of Rhodes
After touring the Palace of the Grand Master, we wanted to check out one of the elaborate gates through the city walls. The Gate d’ Amboise, one of the nicer ones, is very near the Palace of the Grand Master. Walking through the gate you cross a bridge overlooking a grassy area. It’s dry now, but this was the moat. It added another layer of protection to the city.
All of this sightseeing made us hungry. We made our way to Hippocrates Square. The square is surrounded by shops and restaurants. The centerpiece of the square is a large fountain. We picked Archipelagos restaurant for lunch. We had a table on the balcony with a great view overlooking the square. The food was great and the drinks were refreshing!
After a rejuvenating lunch, Barb and some of the others wanted to do some shopping. Barb loves to shop, she got in as much shopping at each port as she could. I wanted to walk around and take some photos. Robbie and Jerry kept on relaxing downstairs in the sidewalk cafe. I find some of my best photos by just following my nose. I started following the shoppers down the main shopping street. This was not the type of area I was looking for. I found a narrow cobblestone street and followed its winding path. I found myself in a residential area. This was what I was looking for! I loved the colorful stone walls and the narrow streets. The creepy puppet hanging on the wall was awesome! When I came across the door with the tattered and torn picture of Venice, I knew I was in the right place! There was a Cuban restaurant that reminded me of our cruise to Havana. I saw an African Grey parrot on a perch outside of a home. It reminded me of Bogie, our African Grey at home, Sandy, Spencer and Loki too! I really enjoy getting off the beaten path. Amazingly, I found my way back to Archipelagos to meetup with everyone.
We made our way through the city walls to the waterfront area. The old wooden fishing boats in the crystal clear Mediterranean Sea were amazing! Walking along the old port we saw the old stone windmills of Rhodes. Along with shopping, Barb likes cats. I have several photos of Barb with cats. Continuing along the port brings us to our old friend Saint Nicholas. The fort of Saint Nicholas anyway. It was built to protect the harbor from enemies. A lighthouse was built in the fort that now protects ships in the area. The deer statues on pedestals on either side of the port could be one of the places where the Colossus of Rhodes once stood. There are several places it could have stood, nobody knows for sure. It was a huge statue of Helios, the sun god. Built in 280 BC, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. It only stood for 54 years when it was toppled by an earthquake. It laid on the ground for 800 years! At that time the bronze was melted down and sold. It was so impressive even laying on the ground that it became an ancient tourist attraction. Because Colossus was the sun god, I think it would have been in a high place, closer to the sun. A more likely place for it to have stood would have been the Acropolis of Rhodes. Also it had been laying on the ground for a long time. If it had been in the harbor, it would have fallen in the water. After a wonderful day of exploring the beautiful medieval city of Rhodes, we made our way back to the ship.
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Our Venice Cruise Chapter 18: Cyprus, Temple of Apollo Hylates, and wine tasting. Oh my!
No rest for the weary! We had two wonderful days of sightseeing in Israel. But we didn’t stay up too late partying. We needed to get an early start the next morning. We had a short 170 mile cruise to our next port of call, Limassol, Cyprus. We opted to do a shore excursion in Cyprus. Limassol is a great town with a beautiful waterfront area, but when in ancient Greece/Rome, we should see ancient Greece/Rome.
We took a trip to the Kourion Archeological site with a wine tasting stop afterwords. The Limassol area of Cyprus is a big wine producer. The ancient city of Kourion was a thriving Greek city. It was taken over by the Romans in approximately 58 BC. They gave it all of the Roman amenities. First we entered the house of Eustolios. The house had very elaborate mosaic floors. There were several Roman baths. They had a very sophisticated water supply system throughout the town. We could see the remains of the clay water pipes in the ground. They almost seemed like they were from 1900 rather than 200. There was a beautiful Roman style amphitheater with an amazing view of the Mediterranean Sea. I think at first they held theatrical performances there. After the amphitheater was expanded, they held gladiator contests and man against beast type contests. They still perform ancient Greek plays in the amphitheater today. I think the amphitheater would be a great place to see a show.
We took a short trip down the road to the other side of Kourion to see the Sanctuary of Apollo Hylates. This is where the citizens of Kourion came to worship the god Apollo Hylates. Who was Apollo Hylates? Hylates was the Greek Cyprus god of the forest or nature. Apparently he sort of morphed into the Greek god Apollo who was the god of many things, mostly the god of light. Greek mythology seems to be a bit willy-nilly. The Apollo Hylates combo, as far as I can tell, was only worshiped on Cyprus. He was considered the god of the forest or nature of Cyprus. I was wondering how the Greek gods changed after the Romans took over Kourion. It turns out that Apollo is one of the few gods who is the same in Greek and Roman mythology. But maybe that’s how Hylates and Apollo came together, hmm. The alter in the sanctuary was considered very sacred. In fact, anyone who touched the alter who was not a priest, was taken to a cliff and thrown off! Kourion was inhabited from the eighth century BC until the fourth century AD. It saw several earthquakes and wars. Most of the city had been damaged and rebuilt. There was a rather large earthquake in the fourth century AD that was probably its demise. As far as ancient ruins go, Kourion was very interesting. It wasn’t hard to imagine all of these buildings in their full complete splendor. Romans in togas and sandals wondering around town taking advantage of all of the high class Roman amenities.
We had about a 30 min. bus ride to our wine tasting stop in the village of Omodos. There were hills and valleys all over the island. As we were driving through the countryside, it was interesting to see the terraced hillsides all around us. Some of them seemed bare, but they were created to grow the grapes for the wine we were on our way to taste. We arrived at Taverna Ambelothea; a beautiful old stone building. They had a table set up with three different wines to taste. The wines were very good. We were thinking about taking a bottle with us. But back at the ship you need to turn in any alcoholic beverages to be kept until the end of the cruise. They would like you to buy their alcohol please. We ended up not taking any back with us. We relaxed on the porch taking in the wonderful view. Barb found another cat. We headed out for a tour of the village.
We had a nice walk through the village. They make this odd looking confection called Sousoukos. It’s made from surplus grapes from the wine making and almonds. They string the almonds up and dip them in the waxy grape juice mixture. They look like candles, they are made like candles, and they sort of taste like candles, with nuts. Omodos was a wonderful traditional small village. We had a wonderful afternoon exploring the village.
Limassol cruise terminal’s architecture is very interesting. I thought the oval windows were pretty. I liked the way the light came through them.
roy thoman photography 