Bonnetts Abroad Past Trips

Spain

Picked up from home by Deb's mum at 09:00, we hadn't realised that red funnel had delayed the change over to the summer time table by a few days, so we got to the terminal just as the 09:30 boat was leaving. So waited for the 10:30 ferry.

When we got to Southampton we found a taxi waiting outside of the terminal so £10 got us to the Mayflower terminal in no time at all.

The Mayflower terminal wasn't that busy and we managed to check in quite quickly.

But it was a fairly long wait until we could board. It was almost 14:00 by the time we were allowed on.

Straight to our muster station to register and then to our cabin to deposit our bags.

A quick lunch in the Horizon buffet, and then back to the cabin for a nap, not that that was possible due to the high number of tannoy announcements.

After 17:00 we went to the glasshouse for out complimentary glass of champagne before heading the Alexandra restaurant to find out what our dining arrangements were.

We'd been allocated to a table for four, table number 260, by a window on the port side. The couple we were sharing with were Sandra and David. Sandra lived in Highcliffe and used to run a car hire business. David was a farmer from kent.

They told us some stories from their life.

– They met on a cruise as both were widowed.

– David had cruised on his own before. On one occasion he had attended a "singles coffee morning", dozens of single women and only three men, he'd thought of an excuse to escape and told them he had to attend the church service. This didn't work, three women followed him to the service.

David's 52 year old son used to work in Libya for Colonel Ghadafi. When the regime collapsed he had to return to Britain, he is now an apprentice for “BT Openreach”, this was a source of great amusemnt for David.

Between them they had 5 children, 11 grnd children and “loads” of great grandchildren. They live in several houses, Highcliffe, Kent, and a few others.

Both of them seemed very wealthy, though not at all pretentious, they called into Lidl to stock up with wine for the cruise!

They buy whiskey in Gibraltar to take home.

For dinner that night I had a starter of Dutch croquette and onion ring with a spiced tomato chutney. Followed by Lamb in a red wine jus, mashed potato and green veg. Desert was simnel cake, with extra marzipan shaped into easter chicks.

Debbie had soup (puy lentil and ham) Stone bass fillet and the simnel cake.

Later that evening the ship had to turn round, as a crew member had been taken ill, the Bembridge lifeboat came out to meet us to transfer the crew member to the shore. Took the life boat a number of attempts to get along side.

with that done, he turned around once more and header on our way.

Our first sea day, we had breakfast in the Horizon buffet.

We went down to Champions for the quiz at 10:00. Sat with a couple from South Shields, Herb and Heather. As it turned out we did all of our quizzes with them.

The theme for the quiz was “animals and nature”, didn't do particularly well, we only got 13 out of twenty.

Went back up to Horizon for a cup of tea and a cake.

Lunch at 12:00 in the Medina restaurant, a table for two.

Tea in the horizon in the afternoon

Dinner at Alexandrias with Sandra and David.

Breakfast in horizon,

Quiz in Champions. 4 Sections, sport, nature, worldwise, and history. 14/20

Read outside for a while

Lunch in media

D went to see film, ticket to paradise.

Champagne with captains speech, free flowing!

Black Tie Night

Dined with Sandra and David

Beef Wellington

Breakfast in horizon

Quiz in Champions with our Geordie partners. Theme was celebrity chefs, 17/20

Lunch in buffer

Passed through the Strait or Gibraltar

With Morocco on one side

And Gibraltar on the other

There was much shipping, including the George W. Bush aircraft carrier, on its way home.

Dinner in Alexandia – table to ourselves tonight.

we were docked early in Cartegena, so after breakfast in the Horizon buffer we went ashore.

We walked through the town a bit to kill time until the Roman Museum opened at 10:00.

During which time we bumped into Heather and Herbert out quiz partners. Even in the town there were Roman ruins in evidence.

At 10, we went to the museum and bought a ticket which would let us visit a number of Roman sites.

The first site was the Roman amphitheatre, the entrance to which was through the museum and then through a tunnel under a church.

The amphitheatre itself is excellent, but does have some very steep steps, with no guard rail.

We walked around following a map to find the Roman forum, but overshot so had to use google maps to get us back on course. Very pleasant town though.

The route we eventually followed, took us past “Windmill Hill”, so we diverted to have a look at that for a while.

We then walked down to the forum

The last of the Roman ruins that we had tickets for was the Punic wall, a relic of when Rome invaded the Carhagian settlement here whilst Hannibal was away with his elephants.

Went back to the ship Dinner in Alexandria restaurant, table to ourselves.

Medivac helicopter announcement over cabin tannoy during the night.

Breakfast in Medina

Quiz in Champions with our usual partners, the theme for today was ‘destinations', we scored 18/20 and WON after a tie break!!

Read upstairs for a while then had lunch in Medina.

Yet another Medivac helicopter had to be called in the afternoon to airlift someone off.

Dinner in Alexandria's, very nice duck.

We were docked in Cagliari in Sardinia.

We were booked on a trip and had to be at the coach on the quayside by 9.

Our guide was Michaela and our driver was Luigi.

Out ex–dinner partners were on the coach, they had been successful in the bid to get a table for 2.

The coach gave us a swift tour of Cagliari, including the fishermen's church, the Shrine of our Lady of Bonaria

We were then taken up to a viewpoint overlooking the city. The Devil's Saddle was quite visible.

Then we went down to the lagoons so see the flamingoes

The main thrust of today's excursion was to see the Nuragic site at Barumini, 35 miles to the north. The countryside on the way was quite interesting with hedges of Prickly Pear catcus used as field boundaries, an invasive species that is now illegal to plant.

At Barumini. We walked around the bronze age site and climbed the central tower, uneven ground, steps and low spaces to duck through.

Breakfast in medina

Quiz in champions, theme was British history, 24/20

Lunch in Medina

It was a black tie night, so we were dressed up in our finery as we stood outside on deck as we sailed by Stromboli, before heading to the Straits of Messina

Breakfast in Medina

Quiz in Champions with a Geography theme, 15/20.

Lunch in medina

Dinner in Alexandria's

We had docked in Dubrovnik, Croatia.

Breakfast in Medina, then the shuttle bus to the old town of Dubrovnik, £5 each, each way.

The old town has been completely restored after the civil war. We had intended to walk around the walls, but they wanted 35 Euros each for the privilege, so we passed on that.

The old town is very pretty, but very busy. Lots of narrow alleys, with long flights of steep steps, quite exhausting, but we managed to walk around a good proportion of it before heading back to the ship on the shuttle bus.

As we sailed away from Dubrovnik we had good views of the Franjo Tudman road bridge.

We were docked in Zadar early.

Breakfast in the buffet, but sat on the aft deck. The Red Arrows were practising their routine not far from us. Word soon got around and the deck filled up with spectators.

The ship docks a few kilometres from the main town, so we got the shuttle bus into Zadar old town.

The town is flat and it was easy walking, the bus dropped us by the sea organ, intriguing melodies generated by the motion of the waves.

We walked along the promenade and then around the small harbour.

Through 5 well square and into the botanical gardens

Nice view of the harbour from here too.

We walked through the town.

And then paid a few Euros too have a look around an old church.

We walked a bit further on to complete our loop around the old town before heading back to the bus pickup point.

Got of the ship in Trieste, we wandered around, not really knowing how to get anywhere as we didn't have a map.

Tried to get directions from a local, but they had no English and we had no Italian, but she managed to give us a rough idea of which direction to head.

We tried google maps to try and get directions to a tourist information, we followed the directions it gave us, up a hill, until we found some brown signs to follow, whereupon we bumped into a bunch of guided tours.

We walked past the hotel that James Joyce stayed at.

We came to a couple of old churches, the Basilica of San Silvesto and the Church of Saint Maria Maggiore

And then past the Arco Di Riccardo

We paused for a in the “Giardino di Via San Michele” , magnificent with cascades of hanging wisteria.

We walked further up the hill and into the J.J.Winkelman Museum

By this time it had started to rain quite heavily, so we took shelter in the Cathedral di San Giusto Martire

When the rain slackened a bit we crossed over to the Castello di San Giusto, some of which was indoors, which was lucky because it started to rain very heavily again.

When the rain did clear we managed to get outside and walk around the walls.

We'd been out for a while at this stage and thought we'd start heading back towards the ship, passing the Roman amphitheatre on the way.

The ship was in sight, but the rain returned so we sheltered under the portico of the Trieste Prefecture in the main square, before eventually braving it and making it back to the ship.

There was a queue to return to the ship, because the local police were checking that everybody's passports matched their boarding cards, but we got there in the end.

The ship was no heading back south down the Adriatic.

Our normal sea day routine, quiz in Champions, the theme was food. We were one of three teams with the top score but failed at the tie break. If only we'd put Yo Sushi instead of just Yo!

Wine tasting in the glass house at 14:30, 5 glasses of wine, very good value and some nice wines too.

The ship docked at about 09:30, we were on a tour to see Etna.

The coach set off at about 10:00 and wound its way up the slopes of the volcano.

Our destination was the Silvestri crater at 6500 ft above sea level. It was very busy there with lots of coaches with tourists.

We were in cloud so couldn't see any of the surrounding countryside

The guide, Marco, took us on a walk around the crater, we all had little radio receivers so we could hear him from afar.

The ground was quite steep at first with large stones protruding from it.

The crate, a flank crater, was quite impressive.

After we'd been around the crater, we were left to our own devices. It looked too steep for us to climb a nearby cinder cones, and we didn't have time to ascend on the cable car, so we went around the crater again.

We got back to the coach in good time, and we started the descent.

We were on the right side of the coach to see some of the effects of recent lava flows, including a house that had been buried up to its roof by the eruption in 2001.

Back In Catania the guide pointed out the Roman Amphitheatre made of grey lava stone, and the theatre, a rather splendid building, and the rococo palace before we made it back to the ship.

Passports were checked again as we entered the port area.

Quiz in the morning, the theme was crime and punishment, we didn't do very well with only 13/20

It was a black tie night with free drink sin the crows nest, g&t's red wine, white wine and prosecco.

Quiz in he morning, there was capital cities.

Went so see the film “Empire of Light” at the playhouse.

Docked for the morning in Gibraltar

There were a few ships docked, so it was incredibly busy, unpleasantly so. So we just got some duty frees and headed back to the ship.

Because we'd won a quiz, we were entitled to a prize, so we queued in the morning to select our winnings, we chose a P&O pen and keyring set each.

We self disembarked and got a taxi to the Red Funnel, there was a bit of a mix up with the ferry times because they had delayed switching to the summer timetable, in spite of this we managed to get the 07:30 ferry and were back in East Cowes by 08:30.