On Sunday we returned to Crystal Serenity for the first time
in about 3 years. Hard to believe, but true! It was a beautiful morning after
Saturday evening's rain, and our same driver, Carlo, picked us up slightly
ahead of schedule. The drive to Civitavecchia was quite comfortable, and fast.
Once Carlo got out of the city and off the secondary highway (the one with the
90 km speed limit), and onto the A12, he could put his foot down a bit. Oddly
enough, there were regular sign postings saying that speed was monitored
electronically, but we couldn't see any kind of transponder in the car, and
Carlo's english probably wasn't up to explaining. Nonetheless, we arrived in
Civitavecchia in less than an hour, and then we hit the local traffic through
town. There were four cruise ships in, and even though it may not have been a
turnaround day for all of them, most of the passengers would have been heading
toward Rome for shore excursions.
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| Looking over Civitavecchia from the ship |
In the end it didn't matter much because we were still early
for embarkation and had to wait a bit. It was looking like a slightly younger
than normal crowd of fellow guests, but only by a very few years. We had heard
that the shorter Mediterranean cruises were attracting younger people, even
lots of families, and we weren't sure if the 12 day itinerary would be any
different.
We had speculated that we might run into someone on the crew
that we knew within the first 15 minutes of boarding. It turned out to be much
quicker than that. Crew members are assigned to greet guests, take over their
carry-on luggage and lead them to the check-in table in the Crystal Plaza. Our
guide turned out to be Sheila, one of the waitresses from Silk Road whom we've
known since Serenity first went into service in 2003. She was genuinely
thrilled to see us again, as we were to see her.
We stopped by the Crystal Cove bar and found Marya, one of
the bartenders and Ross, the Bar Manager. They were the first to start the
chorus of 'Are you staying on for the crossing?'. Once we leave the ship in
Southampton, she will be heading across the Atlantic to do the Canada-New
England fall season and there are many long-time guests who are doing these two
cruises back-to-back. Hopefully she'll have a better time of it than we did on
Symphony in 2012 when we ran into the tail end of a hurricane and had to endure
about 5 days of very rough seas.
At dinner we discovered one of our tablemates is a couple
that we have cruised with and sat with before. The other couple is new to
Crystal, as many on the ship seem to be; the fourth pair still hasn't turned
up, and we're writing this after Day 4.
This is a very port-intensive cruise and with some of the
long tours it is hard to find a lot of time to post the blog, but we'll do our
best to keep it fairly up-to-date. Our first port stop was in Cinque Terre, in
the northern part of Italy known as Liguria. It is an area made up of five
towns, or Five Lands, as it translates. Our guide wondered why they called it
that, since instead of being farmers as you would expect (and you'll see why
from the photos), the people who established these small towns were all
fishermen.
Our tour was to take us into two of the five towns, but we
ended up visiting three of them. The sea conditions had been rather rough for
the ferries to dock in all but one so we had to get there in order to take the
planned scenic route back. The five towns are strung along the coastline over
only about 15 km, but getting between them can be rather difficult by road, so
we took the local train, which is more of a subway since much of the line is in
tunnels rather than on top of the cliffs. The reason for this will also be very
obvious when you see the photos from the ferry trip back.
We drove from Porto Venere, where the ship anchored, to Manarola.
Porto Venere is a UNESCO World Heritage site because the people have managed to
maintain the old part of the town very much as it has been since it was built
around the 10th century by the Genoese to help protect the Roman Empire. The
area around Porto Venere and La Spezia, the nearest city, has been used as a
naval base since then. The area has been so important over history that
Napoleon apparently even wanted to raze La Spezia and build a new city called
Napoleonia in its place. Not much of an ego there, and fortunately no
opportunity to carry out the plan.
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| Porto Venere from our anchorage |
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The harbourside. These buildings are all built the same way
as a wall around the town. There are back exits so the
townspeople could take shelter in the fortress above
in case of attack. |
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| Riomaggiore from above |
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Grape growing terraces. These terraces actually also
keep the hills from falling apart |
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| Manarola |
All of the towns look very much the same, even though the
oldest, largest and farthest north, Monterosso al Mare, was established first. The
colourful buildings, narrow alleyways and pervasive clotheslines add to the
quaint (and not in a bad way) feeling we got as we walked around Manarola and
Vernazza. Wrought iron balconies, a small table and a couple of chairs, a pot
of flowers and colourful shutters on the windows are the norm, that is
everywhere that there are no sheets or towels hanging outside. Fortunately people
aren't hanging ALL of the laundry out to dry, if you get what we mean...
After Manarola we took the train to Vernazza and spent some
time wandering around this second town. There is a small crescent-shaped beach
right inside the tiny harbour that is the focal point of the town.
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The coastline from inside the Church of
St. Margaret |
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| Down by the harbourside |
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A shrine to one of the patron saints,
just at the side of the main street |
All in all a beautiful day and a great introduction for us
to the northern part of Italy.
The next day we arrived in Monte Carlo, Monaco, bright and
early. Instead of taking a tour we were having lunch with Susan and seeing a
few of the local sites on our own. We had been expecting to have to tender into
the port, but the evening before, Rick the Cruise Director announced that we
would be docking instead. This meant a quick e-mail exchange with Susan as we
had arranged to meet her at the tender dock before lunch.
And that's not even talking about the yachts. There are some
real beauties here, paying docking fees of around 1,000 Euros per metre. Some
of these yachts were quite large even compared to Serenity.
Susan headed back to Antibes after lunch, and we got back to
the ship in time to shower and change for the Monte Carlo sailaway party on the
pool deck. The clouds that had been threatening all afternoon looked even more
ominous from the water, which made it impossible to take a really nice photo of
the city. It would be a nice place to visit again and explore a little more,
but everything is a little too over-the-top for us to want to stay there.
Ah, well, tomorrow we're back to normal with a visit to
Barcelona, Spain.
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