Join us for a ten-day cruise on the Oceania Sirena cruise ship, sailing from Valletta in Malta and ending at Barcelona, after splashing our way around the Western Mediterranean Sea. And it's another chance for us 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.
Wednesday, 23 September 2026. We are in Civitavecchia, Italy today with a bit of disappointment. We were due to go for a coach ride around the sights of Rome, but only four people had opted for that option so the excursion had been cancelled. Unable to walk very far - as I found out in Taormina - walking through a large city like Rome would not have been possible for me so sadly we are onboard for the day.
Civitavecchia is not a tourist port. It serves as the gateway for Rome which can be reached by coach or train, the journey either way taking several hours, but the only bit of interest along the seafront is this statue based on the famous end of World War II photo of a returning American sailor kissing a girl in Times Square. This photograph was taken in 2013 on another cruise.
We had, then, already been kicked out of the local fortress as it was now the offices of the port customs and we were asked to leave...
Sitting in Baristas coffee bar in the morning MSC Grandiosa sails out past us. There is something grotesque to my mind of a ship so large. They cannot sail into smaller ports which are often far more interesting than the larger ones and they carry so many passengers that not only is there little chance of running again into someone you have struck up a conversation with at dinner, but the strain they put on local services like coach firms and popular destinations make it a nightmare trying to see some famous sights for the number of people standing in front of them.
There was something about this ship that took us a while to get to grips with which lifts to use. Here we have emerged at twilight onto the deck above the Pool Deck on our way to Horizons Bar to spend the night listening to Tomas and Maris singing.
You get the most beautiful sunsets at sea. As the sun sinks beneath the horizon the whole sky can turn a vivid gradient from blue to orange and red. Sadly we have just missed that moment but instead have the aftermath of darker shades.
Looking back at the Pool Deck below us. A touch cool now for anyone to be swimming. Onboard pools are usually closed by long before this time anyway. Staff have a natural aversion to finding floating corpses of last night's drunks as they open up and clean the pools each morning...
Thursday, 24 September 2026. This was taken the following night. We had just left the port of Porto Cervo, Olbia, Sardinia. It's very strange really but I have no recollection of this day at all. We must have gone there because otherwise something noteworthy would have happened. So we must have stayed on the ship doing something or other until it was time to head to Horizons in the evening to catch Tom and Maris - as my only photo of the day shows! Weird...
This time we take a look at the Thomson Spirit cruise ship as seen from an onboard point of view. She was built and launched in 1982, then in the final stages of fitting out in 1983, suffered a fire which destroyed her main switchboard. However she was delivered to her new owners, the Holland American Line in 1983, sailing under the name of Nieuw Amsterdam. She was one of two identical ships. The other, originally named Noordam also joined Holland American Line and would later transfer to Thomson as the Thomson Celebration.
Taken from the Promenade Deck this overlooks the bows and shows why cruise ships do not allow passengers to access these areas. Any one of these heavy machines and winches, designed for raising and lowering anchors or letting out and bringing back heavy cables are quite capable of chewing you up and otherwise doing you a serious mischief. Better to forget the recreation of the Titannic scene and come home with all your bits still attached!
The Promenade Deck prior to sailing from a port where the Spirit has had to anchor offshore and use tender boats to ferry people between the ship and shore. Watching the boats being winched back up is always popular and brings the added touch of excitement knowing that departure will shortly follow.
Whilst you cannot stand at the ship's rail at the bows, the Promenade Deck does go right round the front of the ship behind the bow area though once the ship is moving this can be a very windy place. Even with no wind at all, the ship will be pushing into the air at upto 30 miles per hour which will feel like a gale as your hair whips you in the face... so I'm told...
The Promenade Deck during a touch of wet weather in the Norwegian fjords in 2003. After a short spell sailing for United States Lines as MS Patriot in 2000-2002, she was chartered to Louis Cruise Line who sub-chartered her to Thomson and she became Thomson Spirit.
Inclement weather doesn't normally put people off from coming out to watch the mountains and waterfalls of Norway glide by, but this was very early in the morning, probably only around 7:00am and we were heading in towards Flam.
Coming out again later that day a few fellow passengers had joined us but the rain, alas, had stayed all day.
Even the Lido Deck, usually crowded with sunbathers, folks taking food out to eat al fresco from the Lido buffet restaurant, and sightseers hanging over the rail at the stern, was deserted as the rain stained the decking a dark brown.
At night the Promenade Deck is illuminated. People onboard ships are the same mix of sensible and idiotic, happy and depressed, early risers and night owls, sober and drunk, as you would find anywhere in life and a ship out at sea can be a dangerous place for some of those. As much of the public areas as possible will be monitored. If someone goes overboard their chances are slim enough even if they are seen to fall and it is reported straight away. Cruise ships can travel quite fast - 27 knots is over 30 miles per hour - and their turning capability at those speeds is not good.
At the stern of the ship balconies extend out over the Lido Deck and on warm dry nights it is a very nice spot to relax at a cosy table with a glass of wine and a lovely lady - Oh! Sorry! I thought you were my wife! Ah!, there you are, love, yes... funny that wasn't it [gulp]..."
The Lido Deck by daylight. We are now in Stavanger. No, it doesn't always rain in Norway. Just when we are there....
Sometimes the weather will surprise you when you expect it to be a bit wet and rough. The Lido Deck in the middle of the North Sea. The stage area is under a semisphere of canvas - one of the ways you can tell it's the Spirit as the Celebration had a more rectangular stage covering.
Entertaining the assembled people who didn't fall overboard last night are the singing group from the Horizons cabaret bar, Edgar, Ronaldo and Cesar - New Dimensions.
On a sunny day the Lido Deck is where you will find all manner of jolly japes. Competitions, quizzes, and here a demonstration of ice carving. What will it be I wonder?
Apparently it's a turkey... It drips for a while then is carted off to the freezers and will be brought out again that evening as a centrepiece at the entrance to the restaurant.
For the more nimble-fingered staff, or perhaps for those who just have smaller tools, fruit and vegetables come under the influence of sharp objects on another day.
If you want to leave off reading the rest of this article in order to grab some cauliflower out of the freezer and have a go yourself, I will understand!
In the Lido buffet even bread gets shaped into all sorts of surprising shapes!
And I haven't even got around to showing towel folding yet!
The main Reception desk was down on Deck 4 opposite the entrance to the Compass Rose Restaurant.
This was the more formal restaurant and we tended to use it most nights, whilst using the Lido buffet for lunchtimes and sometimes for breakfasts.
Once a week there would be the Parade of the Baked Alaska. This one even had Elvis involved!
By the way - have I mentioned towel folding yet?
Onboard shopping. The ship's shops were shut to shopping until shipping time.
You could buy towels but had to fold them yourself...
Raffles Bar was the piano bar and corresponded to the Explorer's Lounge on the Celebration.
Our favourite daytime snoozing area and evening relaxing area was Horizons Bar. Exactly as on the Celebration but without the added joy of our friends Tom and Maris singing for us every night.
Instead we had New Dimensions, who were very good. Their style was more relaxed with plenty of ballads. As I got to know them I would walk into Horizons and nod to them and say "Rock and Roll night, tonight, lads?" which always brought a smile and then one night they launched into Blue Suede Shoes as I walked in and I got down on my knees to salaam them! I used to be able to do that, secure in the knowledge I could get up again then...
And finally here's a shot of our cabin 080 on one of the two trips we took on the Spirit.
Gosh, I almost forgot to mention the towel folding!
This article look at views of the Thomson (later Marella) Spirit cruise ship. She was the sister ship to Thomson Celebration and was almost but not quite identical.
Here she is in Corfu. We boarded her for the first time in 2011 for a cruise named Adriatic Explorer.
This cruise started from Corfu, which is both an island in the Ionian Sea, part of Greece but stretching off the coasts of both Greece and Albania and a town facing the Greek mainland. From the shore the Spirit and Celebration look just about identical. Onboard some of the public areas are slightly different, sometimes by name and sometimes by colour scheme and in a couple of rare instances by dimensions or purpose.
The cruise took us up the Adriatic Sea and called at several countries we hadn't visited before, namely Montenegro, Croatia and Slovenia. This shows the Spirit docked in Kotor in Montenegro which was reached via a long fjord - the most southerly fjord in Europe. That's Europe the continent - Montenegro isn't in the EU.
The Spirit at Gruž - the port for visiting Dubrovnik in Croatia.
In 2013 we found ourselves onboard again and this time we were going up a few more fjords, this time in Norway. Moored in Stavanger on a rather wet day a local launch passes the stern of the Spirit.
We had a wander around the Old Town, then the shopping streets, then came by a roundabout way back to the Spirit.
There were a few wet days on that Norway cruise but the dryer days made up for them. We had been on a full-day excurion from one fjord to another and from the top of a mountain had a wonderful viewpoint of Thomson Spirit at anchor in Geirangerfjord.
To get back onboard we had to use the ship's tender boats.
Yay! Sunshine! Getting off the ship in Bergen in Norway for an unaccompanied wander about this fabulous and very historic town.
