Valencia

What a fascinating city. It is an interesting mix of classical beautiful old and futuristic modern buildings. The river would regularly flood the city and in 1958 there was a particularly bad one with heavy casualties and extreme damage to the city. After that, the river was diverted to the south of the city resulting in one continuous line of parks and gardens running along the old river bed through the city to the sea. The City of Arts and Sciences was built on the flat lands where the city met the sea.

We had booked our hop on hop off bus tickets online beforehand.  We had time to explore the city centre before they started to run. There are plenty of people trying to get money from you in Europe, but we thought these guys were pretty good.

We took the red line loop which covers the historical tour of Valencia. We were at the front of the top deck with another Australian couple from the ship. Good conversation and good scenery with photos to follow. Valencia had many beautiful old building in a different style to the ones we saw in Barcelona.

After the first loop we again explored the city centre and managed to find the bar that Scott  had recommended. I had one of the most unusual beers I had ever tasted. A smoky ale. It was OK but I don’t think that I’ll ever order one again.

The second loop was called the Maritime loop which included the City of Arts and Sciences. These buildings are so amazing that if you dressed up some people as aliens, it would be easy to believe that you were on a futuristic alien planet. You be the judge.

We didn't have time to go into any of the buildings, but just wandering around them was a great experience.

We loved Valencia, it’s well worth a visit. We are also enjoying Spain. The prices in comparison to Rome of food, beer and wine are very acceptable.

Koningsdam

About the ship, the Koningsdam.

It is the biggest cruise ship we have ever sailed on with about 2,500 passengers. It’s a very modern ship built in 2016. These newer ships have improved stabilisers so there is very little rocking action, sometimes it is hard to tell whether we are moving at all.

The rooms better features are;

·         Excellent bed

·         Great bathroom and shower. The shower even has an inbuilt washing line.

·         Glass balcony rail so that you can lie in bed and watch the scenery go by.

·         Good wardrobe and drawers with plenty of coat hangers (on some cruise that has been a problem in the past)

Our only complaint is the internet. Its over priced like crazy and works only slowly in our room. After going up to check with the internet support person we found that it worked better up at level 12 next to the server.

Apparently as of the 13th of May the entire fleet is getting an internet up grade, so that it will work faster and will cost about half the current rate. Great that’s the day we are getting off the ship.

So far it’s hard to fault the food and service we have encountered for the first five days. I find it hard to have any breakfast other than the freshly cooked omelette station. You get to choose the ingredients and it’s cooked right in front of you.  I have already asked the cook if he can come home to cook my daily breakfast. Claire starts with a healthy cereal breakfast and always seems to finish with waffles topped with berries and cream.

On board the yanks are the biggest population group followed  by the Dutch but surprisingly lots and lots of Aussies. We sat at a table of six just the other day with two other couples. There were three Peters at the table.  Pete, repete and repete.

The world is a tiny, tiny place. On day two, past Holland America guests were invited to a special Mariners Club lunch with free Champagne.  We were standing in the line to have our seats allocated when someone tapped me on the shoulder from behind. It was Bruce from my golf club, we play in the 9 hole veterans comp every Tuesday. There are only 40 people who play in this comp and we meet half way across the world doing the same cruise.  Weird.

It doesn’t feel right to post without a few photos, so here are a couple of our towel creatures.

 A photo of the ship, taken from the top of the Rock of Gibraltar.

There are some wonderful pieces of art throughout the ship. This one caught Claire’s eye.

Barcelona

After 2 days of rain we woke this morning to lovely sunshine as we sailed into Barcelona. We had booked a shore excursion because we wanted to avoid the queues for the Sagrada Familia. It was 4 hours exploring Gaudi’s Barcelona. We started with a leisurely drive beside La Rambla, a lovely tree lined pedestrian walkway, the busiest street in Barcelona. Our first stop was to look at probably the most famous of the houses designed by Gaudi, Casa Batllo. Our guide told us that the city tried to stop him from building it when they realized what it was going to look like, but it was too advanced. It is certainly a striking building.

Next we stopped to look at another of his buildings, Casa Mila. This one has been described as looking like a train crash. It was inspired by nature, with the balconies looking like waves and the wrought iron railings looking like seaweed. It is hard to get a good photo of it when you are standing right in front.

Then it was off to the Sagrada Familia. We had been told about it and seen pictures, but until you are standing in front of it you can not imagine what it is like. It is such an awe inspiring building, both inside and out.

The stained glass windows on the east side are predominantly blue/green so the rising sun paints the interior in those colours. The western windows are green/orange so the setting sun produces those colours. It is an amazing effect.

Each façade is done in a different style. We preferred this one.

The stained glass windows have inspired Claire to start thinking about her next quilt and Peter his next painting.

Our trip back to the ship was a good introduction to the rest of the city and has given us plenty of ideas for our visit in June.

PS from Peter. I have been told many times about the wonders of the Sagrada Familia, but until you have been there, no amount of words can sum up the experience. He was truly one of the most amazing architects to have ever lived on the planet.

Rome Day 2

After investigating reviews on the web we organized a Colosseum, Forum and Palatine Hill guided walk with Dario. There was a maximum of ten and a minimum of  two people. As it turned out there was only the two of us.

Dario lived up to the glowing reviews, his experience proved invaluable in navigating us through the enormous queues forming early in the morning at the Colosseum, even the skip the queue lines needed to be approached with his knowledge.

He was very informative about what we were seeing through the three venues, and as there was only two of us we could have a real conversation with him on a whole range of topics, rather than just being talked at. He was very friendly and obviously loves what he does.

He took a photo of us when we on top of the Palatine Hill overlooking the Forum.

After we finished the tour we decide to find somewhere to eat, but we didn’t want to eat too close to the main tourist area. Peter wanted to see the River Tiber again so after a couple of false starts we found our way to the river. Luckily our 24 hour transit pass let us hop on and off as many buses and metro trains as we wanted.

When we crossed the bridge we found ourselves in the same place that we had something to eat in in 2010. The café was still there, but we wanted pizza and not fruit salad this time. We found pizza a couple of doors down.

Feeling refreshed we set off on the second half of our busy day in Rome.

Claire wanted to visit the Villa Borghese, a large park in the north of the city. She was especially interested in seeing Pincio’s Water Clock.

The park was a lovely spot to get out of the heat for a while.

We then found our way to the Spanish Steps, via the Piazza del Popolo. Next are 2 photos where you get to play “Where’s Peter” and “Where’s Claire”.

Despite all of Peter’s protestations about not letting Claire throw another coin in the Trevi Fountain, we somehow found ourselves there and managed to take a selfie!

Rome Day 1

It was a good flight from Doha to Rome.  We organised an airport shuttle that would take us to our hotel. The trip took us right through the heart of Rome, as there were two other couples to be dropped off before us. We were driving through narrow little alleyways full of pedestrians, it was a sightseeing tour in its own right.

We checked into our hotel ( which turned out to be very ordinary for a Holiday Inn, more on that later). While Claire was settling in, I decided to venture out for two reasons, firstly to organise a 48 hour public transport card and secondly to buy some wine for the cruise. We are able to take one bottle of wine each onto the cruise and on a cost saving basis it makes sense.

I told Claire that I would be back in 15 minutes as it was only a short walk. I arrived back 45 minutes later, with steam coming out of my ears. It was Sunday so trying to buy the tickets for 48 hour public transport card was impossible in the area. It took me several conversations, including one with an arsehole and a number of language problem experiences to determine this.

The station had a number of nefarious characters hanging around with seemingly no other purpose other than just hanging around. The machine for purchasing a rail ticket had an English translation button. When activated this gave an English warning to watch out for pick pockets and then gave me a screen with a number of Italian options to purchase a variety of tickets using a credit card. I had no idea what each of the options meant. After a number of minutes someone with enough English explained that this machine could only produce a rail ticket, not the general public transport ticket.

In the super market after buying the wine someone eventually explained where I could go, with only vague directions to a bar where I could maybe buy the tickets. Three bars late I found that I could only buy a one way ticket on the metro to Termini station not a return ticket, just one way.  Impressed I was not.

It was  midafternoon by the time we ventured into Rome and it was absolutely packed with people.  It might have had something to do with the fact that there was a public holiday on the Tuesday for the May Day celebrations.

Anyway we managed to find a little bar and after a wine for Claire and a beer for me I managed to calm down. So we wandered around the Forum and Colosseum  and began to explore elsewhere and came across a South American multicultural parade with music and traditionally dressed dancers.  I may have taken a few photos of some of the prettier ones.

We wandered the streets of Rome and around every corner there seemed to be another surprising piazza with all sorts of interesting buildings, parks and fountains. We even came across a building that housed the Italian Bureau of Statistics. Alas it was Sunday so I could not go in to offer them some advice. We ventured back to St Peter’s Square, but it was quite late so we didn’t go into the Basilica.

We ended up going back to the same bar where we had the drinks. The service, food and wine were excellent with one exception. I’ll let Claire tell that story.

This will be our last post for a while as the internet on the cruise is very expensive.

Doha to Roma

This post is just a story written by Pete with no photos.

It was an early morning flight out of Doha and our body clocks hadn't adjusted the night before so for both of us the sleep was a disturbed one. We were both still tired when we woke at 5 am to catch an 8 am flight. At the airport departure queue something really strange happened. The story follows.

On our arrival into Doha the previous evening we had to queue with many hundreds of people for two hours to get past immigration into Qatar. As most of you already know I like to talk to people, so I started chatting to the young woman in the line next to us.

Her name was Marcela and I asked her where she was going, knowing that 90% of passengers from Australia were only using Doha as a transition. She was travelling  back from Australia to see her family in the Czech republic. We started talking about languages as many of the countries in Eastern Europe speak similar languages and I understand some of the words but not all of them.

We started to compare various words for body parts, greetings, products, clothing and other items. Just like Croatian many word were similar yet with clothing and other products different.

We had started to form a bond and started to discuss what our occupational experiences were. Marcela was currently lecturing at Wollongong university on statistics and then I explained that I had worked at the Australian Bureau of Statistics for  32 years, This caused many other discussions to occur. Followed by my interest in the stock market and her previous experience working for an investment house during the GFC, The few hours passed quickly.

On the flight out of Doha we got out of our shuttle and as we entered the departure lounge there was Marcela. We went through the departure queues together.  AGAIN,  a very weird coincidence.

On our flight from Canberra to Doha we booked seats with a gap in between with Claire having the window seat and me having the aisle seat.  In the past this usually resulted in a vacant seat between us and again it worked perfectly on this flight, which on a 15 hour flight was a godsend.

 On the Doha to Rome  flight we had booked  our seats too late to do the same for our window to aisle seats so we settled on both aisles of the middle row of three seats hoping again for a gap in between.

On boarding, getting to our seats we found that someone was sitting in Claire's seat while I had already found my seat, Claire pointed out that he was sitting in the wrong seat. So he moved to the center seat. At this point we realised that the plane was full and that our little ploy had failed this time.

What made it worse was that the guy in the middle was a rather large man and it was going to be an uncomfortable journey. Meanwhile just behind us there was another seat dispute with the rightful passenger insisting on his correct seat, then the guy between us started talking to the woman who had been moved out of the wrong seat. Just before our flight was going to take off the guy between us moved into the middle seat behind us next to the woman he had been talking to. Their attempt to get better seats had failed.

Leaving us again, glory of all glories with a spare space between us. I looked though our section of maybe 12 rows and the other section behind us of 12 rows and there was no one else with a  free seat between them. May the Qatar gods be blessed.

The  moral of the story is if you try our ploy and it fails, always ask to see the intrusive party's ticket.

Doha part 2

After the Islamic museum we walked around the harbour to visit the various attractions in the district. There was an entire fleet of Dhow ships, the Pearl Monument , the old well, the clock tower, the camel souq and the souq waqif markets. It was very hot in the sun so we were seeking shade at all parts of the walk. The camel souq looked interesting from a distance, but when we got up close we realised that they were on very short tethers.

The Souq Waqif markets  were only beginning to open up when we visited. We were told that they only began to come really alive in the late afternoon and into the evening,

We had only had a few hours of sleep as we arrived very early in the morning. By about 3pm we were running out of puff. Originally  I (Peter) had wanted to have an evening meal at the "Parisa Souq Waqif" restaurant, which had rave reviews after my internet search.  So instead we decided to have a  smallish late lunch.

The Parisa is an oppulent Persian restaurant decorated to the extreme. Although we only place an order for one meal for us both to share the complimentary flat bread and salad along with the other tasty things placed on our lamb dish made it a great meal. The staff fussed over us and the whole meal lived up to the reviews I had read. After the meal, we were invited to view the VIP room.

We headed back to the hotel for a few more hours of sleep to catch up with our sleep deprivation.

Later that evening we headed down to the bar restaurant in the hotel for some drinks and some light snacks. Before Claire arrived I had met up with Greg who was a Welsh construction engineer who was inspecting the work performed on the Doha metro system being put in place for the Qatar World Cup.

Greg was great company and we spent a couple of hours together exchanging stories over the meals and some drinks,