Hidden Gems Cruise - Santa Margherita, Italy

Saturday 21 September 2019. Today requires a tender operation to get us to shore. By which I don't mean that the crew of the ship are any more caring than they usually are, but that we are unable to dock at Santa Margherita. The ship anchors just off the coast - we know this because our cabin is near the front of the ship and the anchor chain makes an unavoidable noise as the anchor goes down!

Then we take to the ship's tender boats for a transfer from the side of the ship to the small harbour. I always enjoy these little boat trips though it can challenge some people. However there are always crew members to help you onboard.

One lady was obviously very nervous and every time the tender bobbed up or down she backed away. But she eventually managed to step from the side platform of the ship onto the boat - true bravery; being very scared of something but doing it anyway.

And today's port of call is well worth it anyway. We came to Santa Margherita in 2008 on a cruise with my Mum. This time Fran and I are on an excursion to Portofino. First though there is a walking tour of Santa Margherita.

We cross this road by the crossing to a tiny park, not much more than a traffic island. The guide we were with watched as someone had to dodge something falling from a tree and then proceeded to talk for ten minutes about the tree... Followed by five minutes on the unification of Italy and then said "Now we are going to walk to the town centre." In other words, leaving the beautiful scenery of the sea front behind. We and several others just asked when and where to meet for the ferry to Portofino and left her to it. Why do guides always feel the need to bore the pants off people? We are there on holiday, we are not on a history course... If we look at a castle I like to know the (brief) history of it and maybe a small history of the actual place but not the entire history of Italy.

There is a castle. Or a small fortress at least. It was built in the 16th century as the Mediterranean coastal towns were being regularly attacked by pirates from North Africa. The doorway under the ramp to the right of the fort leads to public conveniences - of much more relevant interest than the breeds of nearby trees...

We strolled back along the seafront past the harbour and looked round a series of market stalls. We bought a couple of small pottery dishes and the inevitable fridge magnet.

Then we found somewhere just to sit and admire the view over the marina for ten minutes until it was time for the ferry.

The ferries to Portofino depart fairly regularly, the trip taking roughly 20-30 minutes. As members of an organised tour we were allowed to board before other passengers, although the arrival of another ferry boat meant that they were not all that disappointed. In fact they boarded and left while we were still being herded on...

The Marella Dream's tender boat waits for the other ferry to leave the harbour wall before depositing another boat load of passengers onto dry land.

And we're off! Portofino, for us, was the most anticipated destination of the cruise this week. See you there on the next page!

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Sketches of Foreign Parts 2

I am, I must confess, a little tardy with this follow-up entry. The first in this series was published in December 2013... But hey! Better late than never! Oh and the "foreign" bit only applies if you do not live in any of the countries depicted... There are several places depicted where I'd quite like to live come to think of it!

El Caldera de Taburiente on the island of La Palma, on of the Canary Islands. The caldera is a massive crater, 17 miles (28km) in diameter. (Disconcertingly another guide on a later visit said it was 17 miles around... One of them was out by a factor of 3.142...) It is said to have been eroded out rather than being a volcanic crater. It reaches depths of 3500 feet (724m). I drew this in 2005 on our second cruise and had borrowed the pencil off the Receptionist onboard! One of the very few sketches I've drawn with a normal pencil rather than my propelling pencil.

This is a bit of a weird one. In 2007 we called at Valencia on the old Island Star cruise ship and we took a trip that included a visit to the Sagunto caves. You are taken through the caves on a boat and it is too dark to take photos and flash would blind the boatman leading to bumped heads on overhanging rock or greater disaster. I bought some postcards of the caves (some of which hilariously show boatmen covering their eyes...) and drew this from one of them after we had got home.

I remember we heard a really disturbing echoing boom whilst we were underground on the boat. "What was that?" gasped a young girl.
"Orcs!" I whispered kindly.

This was also done from a photo of Taormina in Sicily when I was trying to get over my reluctance to draw people. Well, not so much reluctance because I don't want to - it's more reluctance because I am hideously bad at drawing lifelike figures... This did help a little and a friend who is also an artist praised it saying that as a quick impression of a place and atmosphere it had some merit. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to produce photographically correct portraits though!

Santa Margherita in Italy, drawn on site. One of the ones I am most proud of - it stands up to the photo quite well. An old chap who was looking over my shoulder called his grandson over and the lad, who was probably around twelve or thirteen, took one look and went "Whoaaaagh!!!" in admiration. A quite satisfying moment, I must thrash myself with a rusty chain...

We took my Mum on a cruise in 2008 and called at Villefranche - one of my favourite spots on the south coast of France. I drew this whilst Fran took Mum around the small market. There comes an age where old people should have reins like you can get for toddlers... We lost her twice that holiday, having to go hairing after her once having spotted her wandering off in the opposite direction and once when she had taken it into her head to hide behind the back of a market stall to try something on...

Mahon on Menorca is a lovely place and the approach from a cruise ship is just gorgeously picturesque with lots of whitewashed houses facing the long inlet that you sail up. This was a very steep hill with a set of steps cutting the corner. An interesting exercise as far as perspective goes. Electricity was distributed by passing a cable across the street. It would have cleared a small lorry - not sure about a large one...

And lastly for this entry this is from the same visit to Mahon and done from the ship's rail once we were back onboard. Mahon is one of those wonderful places where you step off the ship and are immediately in the town. A long curving road leads up the hill to the town centre, but a wide series of steps gives the walker a more direct if no less taxing route. The table umbrellas of a refreshments stall are seen at the bottom.

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Santa Margherita

Wednesday 27 August 2008. Santa Margherita turned out to be a wonderfully picturesque town in the bright sunshine of the Italian Riviera.

A small fortress nestled between the hotels and businesses on the coastal road, a defence against the pirates that plagued the Mediterranean during the 13th to 16th centuries.

We walked east from the jetty where the tender boat had dropped us off and came to a fountain with a statue of Christopher Columbus (Santa Margherita was his home town) which had a cannon standing guard in front of it. We didn't go looking for his house - we've done that before in Genoa and know from experience that he's never in when you call... Every statue of him seems to have him pointing towards the New World. He'd have been better advised if asked to pose studying a map of course!

They have a recipe for pumpkin here apparently, although we didn't get to try it. Pumpkins were introduced into Europe by Columbus. These days I suspect most pumpkins are cut up into faces and have a candle shoved inside whilst being ignored as a foodstuff, but I have tried pumpkin soup before and it is delicious.

We carried on walking, coming to a small but popular pebble beach, before turning round to head back towards the main part of town.

I sat and sketched the castle whilst Fran and Mum went for a wander around the shops. I attracted a bit of an audience doing this - something I've got used to now but it really used to put me off when I was starting sketching and wasn't sure whether it would turn out hideously or hilariously.

Quite a few people watched me start and then came back later to see how it was getting on and as I was sitting on the jetty where the tender boat dropped off, I had quite a few conversations with people who were either arriving or about to leave on the tender boats. It felt extremely hot and I was quite relieved when Fran and Mum turned up with a bottle of water.

I finished the sketch and showed it round the remainder of the audience and we headed back to the tender boat ourselves for an afternoon on the Island Star's pool deck.

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Love Me Tender

Wednesday 27 August 2008. We sail into Santa Margherita in Italy where the Island Star moors in the bay. The ship will be using its tender boats to ferry passengers to and from the shore.

A typical south-facing Mediterranean resort looks across at us as we stand at the ship's rail before breakfast.

A ship at anchor swings very slowly along the points of the compass until the anchor chain tightens and the stress sends the ship swinging back the other way. This carries on all day, but is so slow that you would have to be watching out of the window or at the ship's rail with a fixed vertical on the ship as a sighting point to be able to notice.

We went for breakfast and then went to get off the ship and onto the tender. This is probably the bit that Mum was most apprehensive about but we knew from experience that the crew are used to dealing with nervous and elderly passengers and we had assured her that it would be no problem.

As indeed it wasn't. She was on the smaller boat in no time at all and was quite happy about it.

The other thing about being on a tender is that you realise, perhaps for the first time, just how big your ship is!

We weren't dashing off on any excursions so we weren't bothered about rushing off to catch a coach and let everybody else get off the tender boat first before we climbed the few steps and onto the quay in Santa Margherita. (The boat pictured was the one after ours.) We let the ship's photographers take our photo but didn't buy it when we went to look, as I turned out to have a huge flare spot in the middle of my face! Well, had I noticed it at the time, I'd have brushed it off...!

So here we are on foot and left to our own devices. Santa Margherita here we come!

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