Join us for a nine-day cruise on the Norwegian Cruise Lines' ship NCL Pearl, starting at Trieste and ending at Athens, sailing down the Adriatic Sea. After five years of not cruising because of Covid and cancer we at last manage to catch up with entertainer friends Tomas and Maris!
Each day is shown on its own separate entry, reached by clicking/tapping the seven photos below. A link on each page will bring you back here.
This article look at views of the Thomson (later Marella) Celebration cruise ship.
We first cruised on this ship in 2009, boarding her at Corfu in Greece for a cruise called Pearls of the Aegean.
This one included a visit to Aghios Nikolaos, Crete, from where we went on an excursion to Ierapetra: the most southerly town in Europe.
Another shot of the Celebration in Aghios Nikolaos.
The Celebration and palm trees. The ship was berthed in Katakolon, Greece, the port for visiting the ancient site of Olympia.
Another view of the ship in Katakolon.
We loved the Celebration and returned for another trip in 2010, the Ottoman Treasures cruise. Here is the ship moored up in Istanbul.
Our third trip on her was for the Ancient Wonders cruise. This is Piraeus, the port for Athens.
Thomson Celebration in the port of Alanya, southern Turkey.
In 2014 we took a cruise around the Canary Isles on her. We see her here in Madeira. This cruise included a very special event for us as we had a balcony on the ship and one day a short while after leaving port a blue whale appeared from under the ship directly under our balcony. Typically my camera was in the cabin...
In 2017 we were back onboard for a 2-week trip called Fire & Ice Cruise for which we boarded in the UK in Newcastle and headed north to Norway, Iceland, the Faroe Isles and Shetland. This is a rather dullish day in Stavanger, Norway.
Another overcast and numbingly icy day in Akureyri in Iceland. We were coming back on a smaller boat after a whale watching tour. I had on a t-shirt, shirt, thick arran cardigan and my winter coat and I was shivering with cold!
Isafjord, also in Iceland. It was a sunnier day but hardly a warm one - unless you were a local!
A beautiful setting with the sun casting reflections of the waves onto the white paint of the Celebration. Kollafjørður in the Faroe Islands.
By 2018 Thomson had been rebranded as Marella so it was the Marella Celebration that we boarded in Dubrovnik for the Venetian Vistas Cruise. This photo shows the ship moored at anchor off the Croatian island of Korčula as we leave for the day by tender boat.
Also at Korčula from the shore.
Still in Croatia, this shows the ship's stern as we head back to board her after a day's wandering around the port of Zadar.
We head up the Adriatic for a stop at Trieste, Italy. It would be our last trip on her. Already scheduled for retirement, it was brought forward during the Covid pandemic and she was scrapped.
Highlights of a week cruising the Mediterranean Sea on the Thomson Destiny cruise ship, 12-19 May 2011. The itinerary is Palma, Majorca > Day at Sea > Trapani, Sicily > Naples, Italy > Ajaccio, Corsica > Toulon, France > Barcelona, Spain > Palma, Majorca. Excursions on this trip cover Segesta, Sicily, Herculaneum, the Roman city destroyed by Vesuvius in 79 CE, Bandol and Sanary-sur-Mer on the French Riviera and the aquarium in Barcelona.
Each place of interest is shown on its own separate article, reached by clicking/tapping the photos below. A link on each page will bring you back here.
Bank Holiday Monday, 30 May 2016. We had gone south of Blackpool to St Annes on the Sunday so today we head north and come to Fleetwood.
We head for a sunny Fleetwood to walk down from the boating lake to the ferry and back. For a change I decided to fit my telephoto lens to the camera and see what I could find to photograph with it. This is Fleetwood Mount, seen over the putting greens.
There's a model boating pond and a second boating lake where dingy sailing used to be taught. When I worked at the Nautical College in 1985-6 they used to use this lake and had an enclosed lifeboat on davits and a couple of large lifeboats on the water, which are still there. I've not seen them in use for a long time, so am not sure if they are still owned by the college or not.
As we got down onto the seafront near the "Lower" lighthouse, one of the Isle of Man Steam Packet Company's craft was speeding past Wyre Light out in the bay. The telephoto was at 300mm for this and there's quite a bit of heat haze messing up the image I'm afraid. Heat haze off the north west coast - who'd have thought...?
I've pulled back the zoom a bit on this one but even so, if you make out the tiny figures of fishermen on the first spit of land then you'll get an idea of just how far out Wyre Light is.
Dandelions are taking over the beach! They are intent on taking over my lawn too, come to think of it...
Another full zoom, looking across the broad expanse of the estuary and Pilling Sands to Heysham Power Station. The tide recedes two and a half miles here and comes in faster than you can run. The sandbanks are riddled with gullies that fill up even faster as the tide approaches and these can cut you off from land very quickly. Given that there can be over ten metres (32.5 feet) difference between low tide and high tide you can see why Morecambe Bay is one of the UK's most dangerous places to decide to amble out for a stroll...
Knott End ferry landing across the River Wyre. That sandbank is the reason that even when it is covered and looks to be just river, the ferries do a dog-leg manoeuvre to get to the landing!
Flowers. Don't ask, I don't know. They just looked nice! If I was pressed all I could offer would be: pink flowers...
Between the gardens and buildings of the Marine Park and the site where Fleetwood's pier used to be, a path leads down to follow the seafront which heads off at right angles as the River Wyre channel also bends to head out to sea. From the path we get another glimpse of Fleetwood Mount.
Fleetwood Beach Lighthouse. Designed by Decimus Burton and Captain H. M. Denham in 1839. It is partner to the much taller Pharos Lighthouse, a little farther inland. Known locally as the "upper and lower lights", ships coming into Fleetwood up the River Wyre estuary had to keep the lights directly one above the other to know they were safely in the deep water channel.
The squat building to the left, built on stilts over the beach is - or was, I'm not sure if it is still used - a radar training facility, part of what is now the Nautical Campus of Blackpool & The Fylde College.
Having taken the beach path we are now away from road traffic and in an area much favoured by walkers, holiday makers and cyclists. A row of beach huts adds a bit of colour to the scene.
I never got into the beach hut thing. My parents when I was a child would rather sit on the deck chairs on the beach, sometimes with a wind break if it was really rough and would happily force us to eat sandwiches (such an apt name) that were gritty with sand. Well, it did me no harm. Coffee or tea came from a stall on the Promenade and the only concession to the blowing sand was a saucer placed on top of any open jugs of water or milk. The cups just filled up and we tipped them upside down before pouring into them.
A general view of the beach between the Marine Hall and Rossall Point - the weirdly-shaped building in the far distance is Rossall Point Observation Tower. Open to the public it provides a viewpoint over Morecambe Bay. It is a facility of the National Coastwatch Institution.
Pleasure flights and pilot training flights from Blackpool Airport often pass over the town. The telephoto lens picks this one out nicely. I did this myself on my 40th birthday. Of course the plane then was more like Biggles would have been used to in World War One...
Finally we complete our round trip and arrive back at the boating lake and our car.
