Author Archives: dipidydoo
A Rest in Trieste
We left the ship in the usual unceremonious fashion at 8.30am. Checkin time at our apartment, less than 10 minutes walk away, was 3pm. How to kill 6.5 hours in Trieste? Our luggage could be dropped at 11am so that was something. Ian found some shady bench seats in a small, quiet piazza, so we […]
Colourful, Cat-Free Koper
Koper is a small but growing city on the Slovenian coast. From here, many people take excursions to places like Piran, Ljubljana, or the Slovenian caves. Koper’s old town is tiny – you can walk from one side to the other in 15 minutes. I looked at many options for our final port, but in […]
Into The Forest
Our second Croatian port was Split. It was a mixed morning. Clean clothes arrived from the laundry service – yay! Then Ian’s back spasmed, and it was looking doubtful that he’d be going anywhere. Thanks to the wonders of ibuprofen and fisiocreme, he managed to get up and moving. From the deck, we could see […]
A Little Bit Venetian
After passing Montenegro, we sailed into Croatian waters, making our way north up the Adriatic. We had an early start in Dubrovnik, with a tour to three panoramic lookouts. This began with a stop at the nearby, and quite new, bridge, then two stops overlooking the old city. The third stop was just below Fort […]
The Magic Power of Gelato
Last time we came to Corfu, we went to the Kanoni Causeway and watched jet planes roar in to land right over our heads. On the bus ride back, I’d spotted the Old Fortress and thought it looked interesting. So today’s plan was to pay it a visit. Today’s plan also included a walk along […]
Grit In My Teeth
Any travel guide or blog about Catania will describe this southern Sicilian city as “gritty”. Today I found out why. Not because of its long association with the mafia, or its rough around the edges persona. It’s literally gritty. There is fine, powdery, black ash everywhere. And I mean everywhere. It forms little piles in […]
The Bastions of Valletta
In Malta’s capital, cruise ships berth right under its remarkable defensive walls and bastions. Being so centrally positioned in the Mediterranean, and therefore highly strategic through centuries of wars and conflicts, Valletta has seen many civilisations come and go. It gained independence from Britain in 1964. From the waterfront, we had to find a way […]
Letting Off Steam
We woke to find ourselves already docked in Messina, Sicily. Today’s excursion took us by bus to Taormina, about an hour south. Taormina is most famous for its Roman ampitheatre, and as the location for series 2 of The White Lotus TV series (which we don’t watch). The bus ride took us across some very […]
Napoli
We snuck past Ischia and sailed into the Bay of Naples, Vesuvius towering over its southern end. Naples is a very large and very busy port, with multiple ferries, an icebreaker in dry dock, and the Costa Smeralda at the berth opposite ours. We passed the little lighthouses at the end of each breakwater at […]
Oui or Si
The past few days have been spent on the move. On Sunday we were up at 5am, to catch an airport shuttle at 7am. We flew from Toulouse to Madrid to Rome, and I spent the day trying to remember which language I should be using. Toulouse airport, being the home of Airbus, has an […]
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