Category: Uncategorized
-
Portoferraio – Elba, Italy
Today’s port was Portoferraio on the island of Elba. We anchored off the island and travelled by tender into the port. We started our exploring on the waterfront. It was a wonderful mixture of fishermen selling their produce directly from their boats and luxury yachts and vessels. Then it was through Napoleon’s gate to explore…
-
Civitavecchia, Italy
Civitavecchia is the port for Rome. Once again, as we had already had the opportunity to do all the touristy things in Rome, we spent the day exploring the local area. Today we let geocaching be our guide. After taking the shuttle bus from the ship to the town drop off point we found geocaching…
-
Salerno, Italy
Today’s port was Salerno, Italy. Salerno is used as the port to access places such as Pompeii, Naples, Sorrento, Capri and the Amalfi Coast. We have had the good fortune to have already visited these places but have not actually been to Salerno itself. Our first goal was to reach the medieval castle that overlooked…
-
Messina, Sicily
Today we visited the 1st of the 8 ports we will visit in Europe – Messina, Sicily. Messina would be the point of contact if indeed long legged Italy could kick poor Sicily! We arrived in port at 3pm. Disembarking the ship it was a walk across the road and straight into the centre of…
-
Suez Canal
Our journey into the Suez Canal began in the dark at 4:30am. We didn’t set an alarm thinking the engines starting and anchor being lifted would wake us. Wrong! Our body clocks had us awake at our usual 6am. We were ship number 3 in a convoy of 38. We travelled through the Canal at…
-
Jordan – Petra
We arrived at the Petra entry gate at about 11am. The first part of the journey consists of avoiding the souvenir hawkers and the persistent locals who want you to ride one of their not very happy looking Arabian horses to the start of the Siq. The horse ride is included in the entrance fee…
-
Jordan – Aquaba
We skipped the gym this morning as we had a 7am start for our arrival in Aquaba. We had also been forewarned to expect temperatures in the 40’s and a UV of 13! Best to save our energy for our excursion to Petra. Aquaba is the only port in Jordan. It consists of all of…
-
Red Sea update
After leaving Dubai we had a pleasant day sailing back through the Gulf of Oman before we again entered the Indian Ocean. Just as it had given us 2 bumpy days on the way in, it gave us another 2 even bumpier days on the way to the Gulf of Aden. Even though the ship’s…
-
Dubai day 2 – hotter, hotter, hotter!
Today’s plan was to explore the rest of Dubai by Hop On, Hop Off (HOHO) bus. There are 2 circuits – the red and the blue. Both start at the Dubai Mall. The red circuit does the older part of town while the blue does the newer parts of town. We were picked up at…
-
Dubai Day 1 – hot, hot, hot
There had been a distinct down turn in the vibe on the ship since the announcement that we were not going to Oman. This was probably compounded by the fact that we had had 2 quite bumpy days crossing the Indian Ocean. The mood lifted as we entered the calmer Gulf of Oman, the pools…
Westysclan World Cruise 2023 