Saturday 24 August 2024. The ship is moored against the dockside in Gruz as we leap (slither slowly) out of bed. This is the port for Dubrovnik and almost every time we have been there so far, we have wandered down along the port to the far end of the basin rather than go into Dubrovnik itself.
There's a lot to be said for it. You get a nice peaceful walk down a long street lined with cafes, bars and grocery outlets on one side and ships, boats, yachts both large and small and a sailing ship on the other. In Dubrovnik itself you get a chaotic square-cum-bus station where buses, coaches and pedestrians all compete for the same bit of road and crowds of Game of Thrones fans all craning their necks to spot a recogniseable bit of King's Landing from the show.
Now I'm as enthusiastic about the show as the next person - actually considerably more so, as Miss Franny was the next person and she hated it... What I'm not enthusiastic about are massive crowds and people who seem to treat anyone walking with a stick as an opportunity to see how close they can get, dodging from one side to the other across your path after approaching silently from behind. So we walked down the length of the port again and very nice too. Buying drinks on the way back I learned my first word in Croatian - "vala" means "thank you" The conversation went like this:
"How do you say thank you in Croatian?" "Vala!" said with a smile of appreciation that I should take the trouble to learn. "Vala?" I said, trying it out. She nodded. "Oh thank you! Er... I mean vala!" I stuttered. Old habits die hard and all that...
We had a few other cruise ships travelling along pretty much the same route during the week. Sometimes there were four of us, sometimes three, occasionally five. A regular was Cunard's Queen Victoria. Actually owned by Carnival Corporation, she is operated by Cunard and was built 2006-2007 with delivery to Cunard in December 2007, when on the same day it was named by Camilla, then Duchess of Cornwall. The champagne bottle did not break on hitting the side of the ship, a bad omen traditionally, but a second bottle duly smashed immediately. None-the-less much was made of the incident later that month when over 130 people contracted the winter vomiting disease norovirus aboard her. Moral of the tale is to never try to lick old champagne off the side of a ship...
Then the Franjo Tuđman bridge takes the road to and from Split over the River Dubrovnik. The brave - or foolhardy - can bungee jump from it... I was going to have a go - but the Norwegian Pearl was already sailing away. I settled for a jump down into the shower tray instead... It was perhaps just a little safer, there being a handle on the wall to hold onto. But - and readers might like to draw an admiring inward breath at this point - I did it without the aid of any harness or elastic band!
The Rose Garden Restaurant was a buffet style dining area and our usual go-to place to eat. The food was mostly ok, but Norwegian Cruise Lines, depite the name, are an American-based company and the food reflected North and South American tastes primarily. We did expect this and the majority of passengers were indeed from the countries of those continents. Some items were very sweet to our taste. Surprisingly, steaks which Americans are famous for were sometimes so fatty that we just left most of them on the plate. I've never experienced that in America.
Our main reason for choosing this cruise was the chance to see these two wonderful people again. Tomas and Maris, singing as "2 Intense". It was a joy for us to see them again and we had a meal together one night with a chance to sit and talk and catch up on all the things happening at home and with families etc. "He's itching to get up here!" grinned Tomas one night. Yes I was but I'm still not in any fit enough state to try it yet! Hopefully someday.
No comments:
Post a Comment
All comments must be passed by moderator before appearing on this post.