No one was hurt in the making of this episode of “As the tender turns”.  

I previously gave you some details about the the tender fiascos as we bounced around trying to get into and out of the ship in some of the ports.   Actually, in all of the ports where we tendered.   After leaving the last one, Sorrento, pretty much everyone on the ship was relieved that at least we we now going to be tender-free for the last three stops: Rome, Florence and our disembarkation point, Villefranche. Do you see a cruise ship dock here?, May 2017

Let me briefly talk about Villefranche. When we booked this cruise, it was advertised as Monte Carlo to Nice.   Then a couple of weeks before the cruise, we got a note from Silversea that the cruise had been changed and would now end in Villefranche.  This lead to some consternation, as we had booked flights home from Nice airport.   So I looked at a map and was relieved to find that Villefranche is basically a suburb of Nice, a few miles away, along the coast.   So this was an inconvenience, as we would have to somehow get from Villefranche to Nice to explore, but not that big a deal.  

It turns out the opening bid is that it is an €80 deal, as the standard taxi fare between the two towns is €10/person each way.

Then is got more annoying when we all found out that we would have to tender at Villefranche, as there is no cruise ship-capable dock there.   And so we would need to use the tenders to get in and out of town.  And worse, we would need to use the tenders to disembark with all of our carry-on luggage.  That reduces the number of people who can fit in each tender, and elongates the loading and unloading process.  So we were even more annoyed that they changed to final port from Nice to Villefranche for unknown reasons.

But wait, there’s more!

We were never going to dock at Nice!  Turns out that large cruise ships like ours never dock in Nice, but always Villefranche. The port area in Nice can’t accommodate large ships, and there’s no suitable anchorage offshore.  Since it’s difficult to believe that Silversea just found this out, they not only lied about it to the world in the first place, but then lied and said it was a change in their notice to us shortly before the cruise.  Simply unbelievable.  

But wait, there’s more!

Late Tuesday morning we tendered into Villefranche on another bumpy ride.   We spent a while sitting offshore on the tender as we waited for the tender from the Silversea Silver Whisper, which was also in port and sharing our dock, unload and load.  All the while, bounce-bounce-bounce.   We finally got in, and took a cab to Nice.

So French, May 2017

Nice market street, May 2017

After visiting Nice, Sally decided to go back to the ship while Zelda, Matteo and I went to wander around Villefranche.   It’s a very small town, similar in size to Amalfi, and built up the side of the hill.  

Picturesque Villefranche, May 2017

About 45 minutes later I went down to the dock to tender back and found Sally and Zelda waiting for the tender.  Seems like the Silver Muse tenders were not capable of navigating the somewhat rough waters in the bay.  Meanwhile, the Silver Whisper and the Royal Caribbean ship in the harbor were not having any problems, with their tenders coming and going while our folks waited.  

The Captain and Gilligan must be running this operation, May 2017

Finally a Silver Muse tender motored in and we all watched while the driver lost control of the boat, with the tail drifting out from the dock and hitting a party boat docked along side, and then making a 10-point turn to turn the boat around with the bow facing out.   We all watched with sick feeling in our stomach, because this was the dopey crew that was going to take us back in these rough seas to our ship.  But we all borded – this boat was pretty full because it had been over an hour since the last one – and set out.   

Sure enough, our ride out was very bouncy and our approach to the Silver Muse once again filled with drama.  We bounced off the side of the Silver Muse several times, then pulled away and waited while they respositioned the larger ship to shield us from the wind and waves a bit.  But we all finally got on board.

Unfortunately for some people who got on board, they were actually passengers on the Silver Whisper!  The incompetent shore crew didn’t properly check their ID cards before they boarded the tender.  So they all had to get back on the tender and be taken somewhere else – to the shore or directly to the other ship, I don’t know.   We’re lucky it wasn’t some person with nefarious purpose who slipped past the non-security, but I feel bad for those passengers.

I later heard that the reason we had to wait so long was that the previous tender had lost one of its two engines and the driver lost control of it even more, smashing into the Silver Muse so hard that a windshield cracked and it had to be taken out of service.

But wait, there’s more!

Hand luggage in the tender, May 2017

This morning we had arranged for our airport transfer from Villefranche at 9:30.  Since we had to tender in to shore, we went downstairs at a few minutes before 9 to account for the tender loading and transfer time.   There we and about 50 others waited in line for 25 minutes before loading.  From there, it was pretty smooth – the ride over was fine, we unloaded fine and found our car.  

Waiting on line, May 2017

The car, btw, was arranged through Silversea at 4x the going rate for an airport taxi.  That’s because the ship locks up all the taxis in town and makes you deal through them.  So $365 for a 30 minute ride.  

I really have the feeling that when they were staffing the new Silver Muse (remember, we are on the maiden voyage), all of the other ships got to protect their best players and only exposed the weaker performers to the expansion draft.   It certainly seems that way for the tender operation.  We do think that the front line staff in the restaurants are mostly pretty great.  Not so much the top management in the restaurants.   Our butler, who is an exceedingly nice person and eager to please, needed a bit of training from us to perform properly. 

We’ve been to Rome twice before.   The first was a short two days after we extended our stay in Positano.  Another was two years ago with Rob & Laura, when we rented an apartment on Piazza Navona for 3 days.   This time we had about 5 hours, but it was action packed.

Colosseum, April 2017

I had already arranged for a private guide to take us through the Forum and the Colosseum for 3 hours.  We planned to find a taxi in the port of Cittivecchia, which is where the cruise ships dock and is a bit more than an hour away.   After making the long walk out of the secure port area, I flagged down Max who agreed to take us to Rome on the meter, so no price haggling was needed.   When we were almost there, he offered to wait and take us back when we were ready to return for a discount.  He also offered to include driving us around Rome to some other sites before returning.  We agreed.

Forum ruins, April 2017

I had been through the Forum a couple of times, but never with a guide.  And I had never been inside the Colosseum.  Our guide turned out to be an energetic Englishman with bad allergies to periodically fell into sneezing fits, talked at an extremely fast pace, had encyclopediac knowledge and was overall very helpful.  As expected, the Forum and Colosseum both involved a great deal of walking.  I really enjoyed it; the guide’s archeology background gave me an understanding of both sites that I didn’t have before.   Perhaps some of it will stick.  More likely, I’ll remember disconnected factoids to astonish my friends with.

Spanish Steps crowds, April 2017

After leaving our guide and eating lunch, we met up with Max and he took us around Rome to a few more sites.  The first was the Spanish Steps, which I don’t find particularly interesting.  But everyone is there because it’s the place to be.   And when I say everyone, I mean that not only were the steps themselves crowded (as is normal) but the surrounding streets were packed as if people were gathered for a political rally.   

Three million coins in a fountain, April 2017

We made two more stops which were also pretty crowded.  The first was the Trevi Fountain, which is an ornate structure that collects much money as people throw coins into the fountain. The crowds were deep all around the fountain, especially on the lower level.   We looked on from the upper tier and to the side.

Resting in Piazza Navona

The last stop was Piazza Navona, which brought back fond memories of our stay and an opportunity for gelato.  

Max is Number 01, April 2017

Then we got back into the car with Max and headed out to the ship.  It turns out that Max has a licensed taxi for metropolitan Rome, which is a large area that extends to the port and hour away.   It also turns out that he has license 01, which was first issued to his grandfather in 1921.   Pretty cool!

All in, I have to say this brief visit to Rome exceeded my expectations despite the crowds.   Hooking up with Max really made a difference in the day, and our guide at the sights was more interesting than I expected.

Friday night the Silver Muse stayed overnight in Sorrento, and we used the full day on Saturday to hire a driver for a ride down the Amalfi Coast.   Although we stopped in Amalfi village on Friday, there were miles of coastline to see from ashore, and several stops to make along the way.  Our driver Angelo was waiting at the pier when we disembarked after another not-great ride over in the tender, and we set off.

Once you go over the mountain range that forms the spine of the peninsula, the striking views of the Amalfi Coast come into view.  We stopped for pictures, of course.  

Coast & isolated beach, April 2017

Our first destination was Positano.  Sally and I had been there twice. On our first visit to Italy, we extended our stay in Positano after finding it too depressing to think about leaving (1).  The other time we spent some magical time there with our daughter and her man.  So we were excited to return, if only for an hour or so.  

Picture Perfect Positano, April 2017

Positano is built into the side of the hills that line the sea along the Amalfi Coast.  The coastal road winds down into the mid-level of town and then out, and there’s a pedestrian street that goes from there down to the beach.  Angelo dropped us at the lowest point of the road and we walked down the rest of the way.

Positano scenes, April 2017

The traffic along the coast is terrible. The road (there’s only one) is narrow and winding, and the large busses that travel there need both lanes to make some of the sharp corners.  We probably spent 30 minutes on line waiting to enter each of Positano and Amalfi.  

Ravelo, quickly, April 2017

Ravelo is not a beach town.   It sits at the top of he mountain ridge overlooking the Mediterranean Sea from afar.   We sadly had limited time there, so our visit was was a bit rushed.  But it’s very pretty.

Dreaming of San Pietro, April 2017

On the drive back we made one more stop to look down at Positano, where the first picture was taken.   We also got a look at the San Pietro hotel, where we stayed  during those two visits.   Like the town, it is built down the side of the cliff and you enter at the top.
———

(1) This is only one of two times I can recall us changing plans in mid-trip.  The other was when we escaped from Death Valley after the first night, as the heat was unbearable in our so-called air conditioned room.

It took about 8 days and several complaints to get the door latch to our bathroom fixed so that it closed and latched without being slammed.  

Annoying.  

It took 10 days, several complaints and three “repairs” until the heat was fixed in our cabin. We had the thermostat set to 77F, but the cabin was always cool.  

Uncomfortable. 

Is this safe to eat?, May 2017

It’s now 12 days and the restaurant crew can’t get their act together when it comes to ensuring Sally has a garlic-free meal. And they’re even further from making the process stress- and hassle-free.  Dinner started with the waiter bringing two bowls of risotto, one for Sally, and not knowing which (if either) was garlic-free (turns out both were).  Then one waiter put a bowl of marinara sauce in front of her as extra sauce for her pasta. It “definitely had no garlic”, except it was marinara, which usually does have garlic. Or maybe it wasn’t for her, but for Zelda. By the end of the spirited conversation, we were sure of only two things: we had no appetite, and we had no idea if it would make her sick.  

Scary.  

Then to top off the evening, we found in our room the daily notice and also disembarkation information. We will be using the tenders to visit Villefranche tomorrow, and also to disembark on Wednesday. With all of our (and everyone else’s) carry-on luggage. And tonight is the first time we’ve felt any rolling motion on the ship, as it is windy outside. The cabin is actually creaking as we rock’n’roll. The weather forecast for tomorrow is periods of rain and avalanche warnings (1). So Villefranc should be …

Interesting.   

———————

(1) I’m not making this up, AccuWeather is – that’s what their Tuesday forecast for Nice and the surrounding area has said all day.  

I wrote the other day about the unpleasant tender rides that we experienced.  I thought I’d give a little more detail.  Or rather, vent a bit.

Not too rough, April 2017

A cruise ship uses its tenders to ferry passengers between the ship and the shore when there’s no suitable dock to tie up at.  The ship drops anchor in the port, and deploys two of the craft that are hopefully never used as lifeboats.  They are sparse, with hard plastic seats, and room for over 100 passengers in tender operation.   They are designed to not sink in rough seas, but are not designed to be especially stable.  
Sally and I have tendered many times, and Zelda and Matteo even more as they cruise frequently.  While it’s not always like a rowboat in the lake in Central Park, it’s usually a pretty innocuous operation: you hop from the ship to the tender, or the tender to the dock, and vice-versa.   There’s usually a crewman there to assist passengers who need it or are nervous.   

Not this time.   This time, we encountered tenders outside the ship that were rising and falling 3-6′, which is obviously too big a movement for most people to bridge.   Two crew on the ship, and two on the tender, grabbed your arms and passed you across the gap.   Often we had to wait several minutes between each passenger, which means moving even 30 people becomes a project.  

Free showers for all customers, April 2017 (1)

 

If you look in the first picture, you’ll see that the seas are not that rough.  Yet on one crossing, the crew had to scramble to close the hatches as spray was coming in and wetting people.   Another time while observing from our cabin, I saw the ship use its thrusters to swing away from the tender, creating a smoother wake for it to sit in while unloading.   Another time the crew aborted loading the tender, unloaded 6 or 8 people, then moved the tender to the other side of the ship to be shielded by the wind.  And in yet another, we waited while the ship was rotated to change the wind impact on the tender.

All of this in the only three stops we used tenders: Taormina, Amalfi and Sorrento.   More problems then any of the four of us had in all the tender ops we experienced before.

So I went to see who I could talk to about this, and spoke to the Staff Captain, who is responsible for all of the maritime operations on the ship (2).  He was a pleasant enough fellow.  I immediately sensed that I was was dealing with an engineer, not a customer relations specialist.   He was familiar with each of the issues I raised.  It never once occurred to him that letting the passengers involved know what was going on might be a good idea.  All he focused on was safe and effective operations.   Comfort was nice, but not critical.  He assured me that the loud bangs we heard as the tender bounced against the side of the larger ship wouldn’t damage either one.  Never mind that it terrified us each time it happened.

I would rate the impact of the conversation and his receptiveness at 6-7 out of 10.   He wasn’t defensive, but he really didn’t understand that passengers might be upset, as the boat never sank.  He did agree that he and his team would think about letting us in on the joke in the future.

———

(1) I take pride making sure my pictures are level.  This picture is level. It’s the tender that’s not.  

(2) Sally and I had each previously had separate conversations with the Hotel Manager about the bug report and specifically the difficulty the restaurant management seemed to be having with garlic.  They got better, but not great, after that.

Friday and Saturday we spent along the Amalfi Coast.   Friday we stopped in the village of Amalfi, then moved to Sorrento (1) a few miles away in the afternoon and stayed the night.  This gave us two full  days to explore.

We dropped anchor by Amalfi in the morning.  After Sally’s hours and hours of riding boats and buses yesterday and not feeling very good, she took a look at the tender bouncing up and down along side the Silver Muse and decided to sit the morning out while the rest of us went into Amalfi to look around.  After the expected rough ride in on the tender, Zelda and Matteo went one way while most likely I went mine.  The day started out grey, and the ground was still wet from rain. 

Amalfi on the Amalfi Coast, April 2017

Amalfi is a picturesque town built into the side of the mountains. There’s one main street running perpendicular to the waterfront with the usual collection of lady’s clothing and tourist gift shops. 

Tourists and locals, April 2017

While most of the people on the streets were tourists, most were not from our ship (we were the only ship in port). Amalfi is also major local transportation hub, with coastal ferries and buses making stops here at the terminal area. I saw lots of people with luggage getting on or off, or waiting, for buses and ferries. Amalfi is also major stop for tours of the Amalfi Coast, and there were a dozen or more large groups following someone holding a flag or umbrella in the air, the universal sign of a tour guide. I myself was very happy to be exploring on my own.  There was a large group of hikers assembled in town.  I later learned that they were likely making the hike from Amalfi to Positano.

Climbing a street for a view, April 2017

Like many of the towns along the Amalfi Coast, Amalfi itself is vertical – it’s built into the side of the mountains and cliffs that make up the Coast.   In fact, Amalfi is unique in my experience in having stairs that are actually streets.  I climbed about 180 steps up one without reaching the top, passing about a dozen or more homes along the way – doors just coming off of the stairs (2).

Waiting while the women shop, April 2017

After taking an espresso break by the main church, I headed back to the tender and the ship as we were pulling anchor at 1:00 for our trip to Sorrento, where we arrived at 4:00.  In the interim I had lunch on the pool deck and relaxed a bit.   While the day had started a bit dreary in Amalfi, it was mostly sunny during the cruise over.   And in Sorrento, it was mostly overcast.  

Waving the the Silver Spirit, April 2017

During the trip along the coast, we encountered the Silver Spirit – the ship we cruised on with Rob and Laura two years ago.  The two captains made a little celebration of it, with the Silver Spirit circling the Silver Muse as we sat motionless (3), passengers waving and yelling, and horns blowing.  

Cloister; the long walk home, April 2017

Sorrento was not my idea of a pretty resort city.   It’s crowded, busy and noisy.  And the air smelled of auto exhaust fumes, although this may be just weather-induced.  There was a pretty park by the sea, and also a nice cloister which was setup for a show of some sort.  Nonetheless, I explored for about 2 hours, then walked down a long set of switchbacks to the port are to return to the ship.

————-

(1) Sorrento is not actually on the Amalfi Coast, but is a popular hopping off point and is only a few miles across the peninsula.

(2) As I write this two days later, my quads are still sore from Amalfi and Sorrento.  

(3) We were told that the other ship circled us so they could get a good look at our new ship.  If you ask me, they look pretty much the same.  

This post is mostly about me being angry at myself for a bad decision which made for a less than satisfactory day. 

 After leaving Malta, we sailed overnight back to Sicily, this time to the northeast coast where we dropped anchor off Taormina. Their claim to fame is that they are in the shadow of Mt. Etna, the “second largest active volcano in the world (1)”. It definitely is big, at 10,900′. It definitely is active, as an explosion a couple of months ago sent a BBC crew running and injured one of them from debris. As we came into port we could see smoke and ash spewing from the summit. 

When planning our activity schedule for this week, we all pretty much agreed that we would go see Mt. Etna. After considering the options, We decided to take the cruise’s group excursion. All we wanted was a ride up the mountain and back, so there didn’t seem to be any value in hiring a private guide. So we booked a tour leaving at 9:15am. This violated Sally and my Prime Directive (1): never take a group bus tour. 

Extinct cinder cone, April 2017

We didn’t realize that the ship was anchoring out in the bay rather than at a dock. This meant that passengers needed to use the ship’s tender to transfer. This in turn meant we needed to be ready to leave at 8:30 to get ashore and meet the bus in time. 

My. Etna active at 11,000′, April 2017

The day started with difficulty.   There were big swells in the sea.  Because of the swells, the tender was rising and dropping against the side of the ship and the door we exited through; the crew had to wait until they thought the two would line up and then get each passanger across. This took quite a while for the 75 or more people on our tender. Then the ride into he dock was rough, and as a result Sally didn’t feel very good by the time we were on dry land. 

He climbed to see Mt. Etna, April 2017

We boarded the bus with about 20 people and our guide. We had been variously told the ride up was 30 or 45 minutes. It took an hour, and it was also pretty bouncy. The roads were not very smooth, there were lots of turns. By the time we got to our tour spot, Sally felt even worse. And here’s where group bus tours really annoy us. About 45 minutes into the ride, we stopped for a picture of the summit and the erupting smoke. All good, and there were ladies there selling souvenirs. The guide (2) and driver each got freebies. We spent way too much time there, and a couple of women were still shopping when even the guide was ready to leave.  

After driving to the end of the road, we proceeded a few hundred yards past our destination to another restaurant/gift shop. Where we spent 30 minutes hanging around. Finally we went back down the road to the spot we were supposed to see. When I read the tour description later, I realized it was accurate and we had just imagined what we were going to see: lava flows and actual eruptions. 

From here you can almost see the top, April 2017

Unfortunately, the road stops at about 6,500′, while all the action happens above 10,000′. What we saw were a series of extinct cinder cones from 20th and 21st century eruptions. Interesting, but not what we expected. One can hike the 3,500′ to the summit, which we clearly were not going to do. And there was a cable car going up another 1,000′ or so which had no time for.  Sally and Zelda were finished after 30 minutes.  Matteo and I walked around there for another 30 minutes, then we all got on the bus and headed back down. 

The Bassman climbeth (credit: Matteo), April 2017

By the time we got back to Taormina, we decided to tender back to the ship and have lunch there. We had originally thought that walking around Taormina after the tour would be fun, but (a) we were all tired and hungry; (b) the town was a 15 minute shuttle ride from the dock; and (c) there were no shuttles in sight. So we took another bumpy tender ride back, and the crew struggled but succeeded in getting us all back on the Silver Muse.          

The moral of this story is twofold.  First, always read the description of a tour for what it is, not what you wish it to say.  And second, never ever violate the Prime Directive.  My failure to follow these rules resulted in a most disappointing day.
——–

(1) For those of you who are not Trekkies, the Prime Directive was to never interfere with an alien culture.  

(2) Actually I was glad to get off the bus.  Not to stretch, not because I needed the fresh air, but because the guide didn’t stop yammering for the entire hour it took us to drive up to the top.  Talk, talk, talk, talk.  And there really wasn’t that much worth saying.  

Actually, a completely new country to Sally and me (and Zelda and Matteo) – Malta.   Malta is a tiny little country just south of Sicily.  The country is only 122 square miles, and the total population is around 450,000.   Sitting in the strait only 60 miles from Sicily and 150 miles from Tunisia and Libya, it has been an important trading and military post since forever.   All the old timers were there: the Phoenicians, the Carthaginians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Moors, the Normans.   And finally, the British in the early 19th century until its independence in 1964.  

As has been our practice, we booked a private guide. Vince met us at the dock as promised at 9:30 and we started our tour of this mini country.  

Colorful harbor, April 2017

As you might guess from the stats above, the entire country is developed with very little open space.  The roads are pretty crummy and we bounced in the van all day despite going slowly.  As the two official languages are English and Malta, we had no problem understanding Vince’s British English.  

Market by the sea, April 2017

Our first stop was a harbor town, which had an unbelievably colorful marina of fishing boats along with an open air market.  I could have photographed the boats for hours, but that wouldn’t have been fair to the rest of our party, or consistent with our plan to get a view of the entire island.  As for the market, if you’ve seen one open-air market, you’ve seen them all.

Interestingly, while there is a lot of shipping and fishing in evidence, it is not the driver of the economy anymore – now it’s tourism.  

Almost the Blue Grotto, April 2017

From there we drove to see the Blue Grotto, some caves eaten into the rocky shore by wave action.  Sadly (1), the seas were a bit rough and the boats weren’t running.  But we admired a nice arch in the water. 

We made another stop to look at some cliffs, but then proceeded to Mdina (2), the former capital of Malta.   It’s an inland city, up on a hill (of course).  Today it seems to be mostly tourists, with large parking lots outside of the old walls.   Nonetheless, it was a very nice place to visit and walk around.   

Mdina (3), April 2017

We had Vince drop us off back in Valletta, which is the current capital.  We saw the Prime Minister rush out of his office and hop into a car to go to lunch somewhere, so we thanked Vince and went off to find some lunch.

Electric violin, April 2017

 

After lunch we went back to the ship and relaxed until our fancy dinner in the French restaurant, La Dame.  The evening’s entertainment was from the same violinist that we saw earlier, playing the same electric violin with the same three piece backup band.  The songs were different, but it was essentially the same show.  

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(1) I’m not so sure we would have enjoyed a ride in the ocean in a tiny boat.

(2) “Mdina” is pronounced “Imdina” in Maltese, and we even saw it spelled that way.

(3) Despite periodic references to the Maltese Falcon around the island, the film had nothing to do with Malta.   Humphrey Bogart played a San Francisco detective looking for a statue.

Tuesday we stopped in Trapani, Sicily.  This was the first time any of the four of our party had been to Sicily (1) and I was looking forward to getting a bit of a sense of what it was all about.   In American culture, Sicily is all about the Mafia and the Corleone family from “The Godfather”. I think I already knew that this was not really the full story, but didn’t know much else.   

We booked a private tour guide through a website called Tours By Locals that I found.  TBL acts as a broker, allowing individual guides to post their tour options, and taking a commission from them for each booking (I suspect 20-25%).   Mimmo responded to my inquiry, and after an exchange of messages, I booked him for a full day tour of some sights in and around Trapani.   Of particular interest to us was the town itself, a nearby medieval hilltop town of Erice, and something called the salt flats.  

Making salt, and visiting a ruin, April 2017

The day starts perfectly, with Mimmo meeting us as planned at the dock and loading us and our gear into his car.   We headed out of town and soon found ourself at the salt flats.   Salt is an old industry in this area, where Mediterrainian seawater is pumped into shallow pans and allowed to evaporate, leaving behind the sea salt.  The Mediterranean is a very salty sea, and the dry climate and prevailing breezes make this a good business.  The water was originally pumped by windmills, but almost all of these have fallen into disrepair.

From there we headed up into the hills, eventually coming to an archeological site called Segesta.  This was one of the major cities of the Elymian people, one of the indigenous peoples of Sicily (2).  The Greeks, who were not indigenous to the area, took over the culture, although not the DNA.  What we are left with today are ruins.   There is a partially reconstructed amphitheater and a reconstructed temple.   There are also all kinds of ruins of the original city, of buildings and roads of various sorts. 

All uninteresting.

Actually, we had no idea we were going to see these ruins.   And we were a bit disappointed in that viewing the site involved waiting for and then taking a bus up to the hilltop, walking a significant amount on ancient stone paths, and seeing what the four of us have seen many times before: the remains of an old stadium, the ruins of an old temple, the ruins of unidentified buildings. In fact, after making the trek to see the ampitheater, we rebelled and refused to make the 1/2 mile walk to and around the temple.   I actually find this stuff somewhat interesting in general, but only if the site has some particular significance or is in some other way special.   Segesta doesn’t pass this test.  And we’ve all seen ancient Greek ruins many times.

We had a frank talk with Mimmo about the situation, which was sad because we had all started out great, and he brought some delicious cannoli which everyone enjoyed.   The next ride, up to the hill town of Erice, was a bit quieter, as I believe he was embarrassed by the missed communication (3) about what we wanted to do, and what we didn’t want to do.  And we didn’t want to do a lot of walking on uneven surfaces.

Erice “mother church” and fort, April 2017

Erice, once we finally got there, was a delight.  It’s an old city, originally settled by the Phoenicians, at 2,500′ above the sea.   It was subsequently conquered by the Greeks, the Cathaginians, and Arabs.   The Normans took it in 1167 and created the town we see today.    Post WWII the town went into decline as its remote location and limited modern facilities caused a population loss to lower and more easily accessible communities nearby.   However, the structures survived and it has now been reborn as a tourist destination for local people as well visitors.   

Dining alfresco and Trapani from Erice, April 2017

We had an excellent lunch in a very small restaurant and wandered (4) through the old cobblestone streets.   From Erice, we headed back down the hill to Trapani and the Silver Muse. 

Fixing dinner and cocktails on deck, April 2017

Dinner Tuesday was in Atlantide, the same restaurant where we had the run-in over my lack of a tie last week.  But because I’m a go-along, get-along kind of guy, I bought a tie in Aix-en-Provence, and so we had no problem gaining admission to the restaurant.  While we were waiting, the ladies took the opportunity to work with Theresa – one of our favorite crew members – on dining plans for the upcoming days.  The show this evening was a violinist who plays well known songs on electric violin with the ship’s trio backing him up.  Enjoyable.  

Ready to party, April 2017

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(1) But not the last time – we’ll be in Taormina, Sicily on Thursday.

(2) What does “indigenous” really mean?  It’s meant to imply that a group was in a place originally, before some interlopers arrived from elsewhere.  But all peoples in the world, except for some in Africa where humans arose first, came to where they are from somewhere else.   

(3) Apparently Mimmo didn’t get, or didn’t focus on, the email I sent him via TBL describing what we wanted on the tour.  We never did see anything in the town of Trapani, but it turns out that most of the monuments and public buildings there were closed for a holiday.

(4) I don’t know if you can actually be “wandering” when you have hired guide telling you when to turn left or right.

Cruises, as we know them, are decendents of the ships that used to be the principle form of transportation whenever navigable water was available.   Whether crossing an ocean or the Mediterranean Sea, or plying along a coast or up and down a river, ships offered either the only practical means of transportation (ocean crossing) or a very cost effective one (rivers and lakes).  With the growth of railroads and cars, and then aircraft, using ships for passenger travel has declined in importance.   Pretty much no one who needs to get from Europe to North America will travel by sea.

Hot tub, hot chess, cool officer, April 2017

However, clever entrepreneurs have found that people like to go to resorts, and that many people like resorts that don’t limit them to being stuck in one actual location with one (usually minimal) set of sights to see.  So the notion of a cruise ship was born – boarding a ship not to get somewhere, but to stay in one place at the same time that you get to visit many places.  Most cruises spend all or almost all days in one port or another, where the passengers can get off and see the sights.  If it’s a Caribbean cruise, my experience is the ports are little more than time fillers.  You would never fly to those towns or even islands to go sightseeing.  On our cruise in the Mediterranean it’s a bit more mixed – some of the stops could be quite interesting, if only you had more than a few hours to explore.   We docked in Barcelona for nine hours; two years ago we spent three days there.   The Rome stop is even worse: as Rome is not really near the sea, we have to drive an hour and a half each way to get there, only to see a few hours worth of stuff.

Pool deck and hallway, April 2017

On some routes the ship spends a full day transmitting between stops.   That is the case on this cruise, where Monday is a “Day at Sea”.   A Day at Sea gives you the opportunity to sleep in (no pesky tours to meet at 9:30), relax on the deck without seeing the typical commercial areas where cruise ships dock, play trivial pursuit with the cruise director, and engage in many other resort-like activities, depending on the ship.  We don’t have rock climbing, a rifle range, driving range, go-kart track, water park or some of the other features from the mammoth ships.

Trivial pursuit and adorable singers, April 2017

I’m not generally a big resort guy, which means that – mostly – the Day at Sea is not as exciting for me as it is for some other people.  I don’t use the pool, I don’t like games like trivial pursuit or putting in the hallways.  I do like finding a quiet lounge and watching the sea, watching the other passengers and watching the crew go about their jobs.   

On this particular cruise, the pleasant springtime weather – sunny and high in the low 60s – doesn’t work as well as I would like while at sea.  First you get a nice ocean breeze, and then the wind chill created by the ship cruising at about 15mph.   I find it a bit uncomfortable to sit outside. I did eat at the outdoor pizzeria, wearing my jacket and sitting under a heat lamp.  It was okay, although the pizza did cool off pretty quickly.

The evening show was similar to the Caribbean  ports – a 45 minute diversion, but not really anything you would pay to see.  Last night we had a violinist who played popular songs extremely well, with the ship’s trio backing him up.  But I don’t even remember his name.  And I didn’t even bother to take a picture of him.  But we also didn’t walk out.   

The one thing I really don’t like about being at sea is the lack of connectivity.  Both Matteo and I have the AT&T international roaming plan for $10/day.   With this, we not only get full cell service but can tether our other three devices.   And it works not only in port, but as long as we are reasonably close to any population center along the coast. While at sea we are limited to the ship wifi plan.  This gives us each one hour per day, with no rollover (1).   I find this barely adequate to check my email, do a quick scan of the news headlines, and upload a post.
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(1) This is a big change from our last Silversea cruise, where we got two hours per day with rollover.  While the new rule was correctly described in the literature, the change was not highlighted.