This is a series of articles covering our cruise in 2009. At the time this series was originally written my blog featured only a few photographs per article. Typically four only. Each article has been revised and added to in September 2017 and all photographs replaced with larger and increased quality images.
Click each photograph below for the associated article.
Friday 21 August 2009. We get picked up by taxi at 2:30am this time to be driven to the airport at Manchester.
We fly to the Greek island of Corfu, to find the Thomson Celebration waiting for us to join her for the Pearls of the Aegean cruise.
Although I blogged about the cruise when we returned home, my blog entries in 2009 were a bit sparse of photos and I'm taking the opportunity to revisit this cruise which was our very first Thomson cruise. Having more recently returned from our sixth cruise on the Celebration, you will gather we enjoyed this earlier cruise and the ship!
This is our cabin for the week. Don't be put off ships by people calling cabins small. We use ours for changing and sleeping in and nothing else. Unless you feel you should be able to do a tango around the floor then small is fine. And there are ships with far smaller cabins than the Celebration anyway. Our suitcases fit into the bottom of a wardrobe or under the bunks. Shower gel and shampoo are provided and there is a hair dryer. Though to be honest, it's rare I use a hair dryer...
The first night will be a late sailing to allow people on later flights to arrive and then a day at sea follows. On the evening of the 22nd the Captain's formal night is held. Some people love this, some look down their noses at it. It's not compulsory, but the main restaurant that evening will be for smart dress, shirt and tie for gents and a dress or gown for the ladies. The buffet dinning room remains open for people who don't want to dress up. We had our photo taken against a backdrop of the Titanic's staircase - always a rather weird choice for a cruise ship I think!
Our first port of call on the cruise comes on 23 August 2009 which is a Sunday. The ship sails into Aghios Nikolaos in Crete. The name means St Nicholas who is the patron saint of Greece and sailors.
We'll have a comprehensive look at Aghios Nikolaos in a later article, but for now it's a quick breakfast and then off the ship to join an excursion.
After breakfast we join our excursion Panoramic Crete. This will take us to see a ruined city of the Minoan civilisation, the southernmost town of Europe, and a small Cretan village called Kalamafka. First stop is at Gournia, the ruins of an ancient Minoan town.
Several thousand years old, it was rediscovered in 1901 and again by us in 2009... Not that we saw a great deal of it, but it was just about possible to see the walls and work out where houses and streets were. The seat of government was on top of the hill upon which the town was built. What seems the apparent back end of the town is the centre of the town - it dips down at the back of the hill.
There is a good view from the city through the hills towards that wonderfully blue sea.
We are called back to the coaches. This is a photo stop only. Now we head south and towards the next article!
Friday, 28 August 2009. The ship returns to Corfu and we must prepare to return to the UK. However, our flight is a late one. We are not due to leave the ship until 7:30pm and so we go out to walk into Corfu.
It is first thing in the morning and yet the temperature is soaring way into the 90s. By the time we reach the old - sorry make that the New - Fortress, we are hot, a little footsore and wanting a drink. We walked past and then up the side of the fortress. It was built between 1572 and 1645 by the Venetians, with further work done to the defences by both the British and the French. Above the gate that is behind the palm trees there was a carving of a winged lion that I found later to be the emblem of St Mark. In fact it's official name is the Fortress of St Mark, but everyone calls it the New Fortress because there is an older one that we saw on a previous cruise.
We reach the Old Town, a place of narrow streets, marble paving underfoot and full of character. Arcaded walkways shelter you from the sun and provide some cool against the glare and heat of the sun. We walk past a large pile of boxes on the pavement. A van has made a delivery to a shop and unloaded quickly and moved off. On roads of this width even one parked car means the road is blocked until it moves.
It's too early for there to be many tourists about. Almost everyone we see is a local, hurrying to get their shopping done before the heat of the day becomes too unbearable.
The old town of Corfu has some interesting corners - or perhaps I should say curves... Those shorts are miraculously defying gravity! The Old Town is full of little squares like this - if not all so splendidly adorned by near-naked maidens... In the centre is an old covered well.
A larger square gave us a chance to rest our legs and admire the scenery. From here we retraced our steps until we hit the edge of the more modern town where we sat on a corner and ordered drinks at a street cafe. Two other passengers, Robert and his grandson Ryan came past and joined us for a while. Having had our rest we walked slowly back to the ship, my shirt almost entirely darkened by sweat as the temperature was now over 100 degrees. Our cases had been taken from the cabin late the night before, ready for going to the airport so there was nothing we could do about getting changed. But once back into the air conditioning onboard we started to cool down and feel better.
We had lunch and then wandered the ship for a last look round before heading for our usual refuge in the Horizon bar. I read for most of the afternoon - finishing the book that I had meant to read on the flight home... Then the usual wait at the airport, enlivened for a moment as I walked through a cloud of what I thought was smoke, as I was walking behind a lady and her son. She dropped her "ciggy" in a bin and there was a shout of laughter from her family. She had been spraying deodorant to cool herself and then realised she shouldn't have still had it, having already passed through security! Christopher Biggins was waiting to fly back home and was incredibly patient with the queue of people who lined up for an autograph. No one asked for mine... Homeward bound!
Thursday, 27 August 2009. We returned from Ancient Olympia to the port of Katakolon and as usual we had some lunch and then disembarked once again to walk around the port.
There was an excellent view of the ship and what there was of Katakolon was only a few steps away. In fact the village only exists to serve visiting ships.
There is a street of shops and at the rear of the shops that back onto the harbour, a row of cafe bars. But once the last ship leaves they turn out the lights, close up and all go home, leaving the village deserted.
The shopping street is filled with pretty much identical shops. They are all aimed at the tourist and therefore all seem to sell the same stuff. They all had photo calendars, guide books, postcards, belts, jewellery...
Oh and a calendar showing scenes of pornography taken from ancient pottery jugs and bowls... Nothing left to the imagination there (I'm only aware of this from the covers of course - I didn't browse...) I did wonder whether to take one back for Grandma... "Hey! Gran! Look what I got for you!" But then I thought better of it. I don't have any grandparents left anyway...
There was another ship in port besides the Thomson Celebration. This was the Splendour of the Seas and with two cruise liners in port the cafe bars had a few customers to keep them going. In the eight years between first writing this and my 2017 revision of this series of articles, the Splendour of the Seas has been taken over by Thomson as Thomson Discovery and will shortly change the Thomson bit to Tui! It took us all of half an hour to fully explore the place...
We walked back to the ship and watched the Splendour of the Seas raising anchor, ready to depart. Then it was back to the Horizon bar as usual. "Sir John, are you going to draw me today?" asked Karen. Now... when asked this by a very attractive Filipino lady, you don't readily turn them down... My mind conjured with a certain scene with Kate Winslet in the film Titanic... But then she was working and didn't have an hour or so to disport herself in front of me and there were too many other people there anyway, including Miss Franny. So I drew the view from the window instead... The safer option you know...
I have to say that lounging in a comfortable leather armchair whilst sketching is definitely preferable to standing in 100 degrees of heat under a baking sun! People kept coming to look over my shoulder as I was doing this - I wasn't even aware of most of them, though quite a few struck up conversations and John and Sue from Poulton came in and he said "Oh wow Sue, look! Bispham!" (the part of Blackpool where I live) in a way that made it very funny. Anyway the afternoon passed very agreeably with some good conversation and a relaxing drink by my side!
Later that night we took a few final shots of the ship. The band were called The Nightbirds and did Shadows numbers and similar treatments of more modern tunes.
Not to be outdone... I've often though that a brilliant addition to a cruise ship would be a studio where passengers who are musicians can go to jam with each other!
As the sun goes down in spectacular fashion, we take the final stroll of the day around the Promenade Deck.
Thursday, 27 August 2009. Our port today is Katakolon and we jump onto a coach for a tour to the ancient site of Olympia. Not Mount Olympus, but the site of the ancient Olympic Games.
The Palaestra was built in the third century BC as part of the gymnasium complex, it was used to practice boxing, wrestling and jumping. And apparently still used for ducking practice (see below)... What makes this site somewhat different to some of the other sites we visited during the week is the fact that there's actually a bit of greenery knocking about. It is quite pleasant to walk around Olympia and there is some shade to be found. That's the plus side.
On the negative side there are so many lumps of what used to be parts of impressive buildings that it's difficult to make much out apart from the one or two bits that are obvious. Unless you like listening to guides rambling on I'd suggest learning a bit about the place and its history beforehand and what I wish someone had told me - find a map of the site and print it to take with you.
The Philippeion was an Ionic circular building of ivory and gold, built by Philip II, King of Macedonia. It contained statues of Philip's family, Alexander the Great, Olympias, Amyntas III and Eurydice I. Somewhere behind it is the place where they light the Olympic torch by sunlight reflected and concentrated by a curved mirror. Runners then carry it in relay to wherever the games are being held.
Miss Franny is giving me that look... She knows that any second now I will be so fed up with the drone of the guide's voice that I'll wander off to take more photos and worry about what I'm seeing later at home.
We were at Olympia for a limited time of course and so far hadn't moved for 20 minutes. I wandered off...
More about this particular tall standing column later, but it is one of the most exciting remains at the site.
The remains of an early building. There is evidence of religious worship here from the 10th century BC, but evidence of building only from around 600 BC. For 400 years apparently they sat around saying "It's freezing - shut that door!" only to get the response, "Door???"
The Crypt was an arched way leading to the Olympic Stadium. In the very early days the Olympics were for men only. They competed nude and women were not allowed to enter the site on pain of death and being chucked over the cliff into the river as well!
This is the actual stadium on the edge of the site. The site includes temples, bath houses, practice gymnasiums, the workshop of Pheidias, who sculpted the statue of Zeus for his temple - we'll hear of that in a moment - and a villa of Nero's. A chariot race was held between Pelops and King Oinomaos, whose daughter fancied Pelops. She had the pins taken from her father's chariot wheels. He was killed and Pelops took the throne. He was buried here in the 6th century BC. His tomb, the Pelopian, though, is in ruins.
There's a good map on Wikipedia that would be worth having with you. I've had to go looking to make sense of what we saw - I soon tired of the guide I'm afraid and anyway she had such a quiet voice that only those who were treading on her toes could hear her...
There were temples to both Zeus and his missus, Hera in the sacred area or Temenos. Shown here are the remains of the Temple of Zeus with that single column re-erected that we saw earlier. The temple held a fabulous statue of Zeus, made of marble covered with ivory and gold, seated with a small statue of crowned Nike, goddess of victory in his right hand and a sceptre in his left. The statue was considered one of the original Seven Wonders of the Ancient World and stood for 600 years here before being either pinched and whisked off to Constantinople and perishing in a fire in 475 AD, or perishing in the fire that destroyed the temple in 425 AD.
The workshop was discovered in 1954 - a momentous year as that's when I was born - and it contained not only a cup with an inscription "I belong to Pheidias" (honestly!) but some of his tools, moulds used for parts of the statue and even an elephant's tusk from which some of the ivory was used. Rumours that the cup had an inscription on the other side "so keep your bloody hands off!" are sadly untrue... Pheidias did come in for a bit of criticism as apparently if Zeus had stood up, he'd have banged his head on the roof of the temple. I wonder if Pheidias was ever struck by lightning...? Despite the ancient destruction of the statue, so many images exist of it on coins, medals etc, that we can be fairly certain exactly how it looked.
And that's all for this article. Now I'm going to strip naked and dash three times round the Stadium...
