Cruising along

Well no surprise I've fallen behind again on my posts, I just can't get the hang of blogging whilst travelling. I'll just have to knuckle down and figure out this Blogsy app, and no doubt have a few accidental postings along the way. Apologies for what I will assume will be rubbish formatting, brought to you courtesy of Blogger, Blogsy and Apple iPad - or the axis of blogging evil as I think of them.

I did have a pretty good excuse for September though, I was at sea for most of it, 24 fabulous nights aboard an Eastern Med cruise, including the Black Sea. It was brilliant, we loved every minute of it, and were both surprised to find after 24 nights we still didn't want to get off. Just to postpone that moment, we followed the trend of our previous cruise holidays, and stayed up till 3am on the last night, enjoying lots of laughs, and plenty of Gins, with new friends. Of course in the morning, when we had to be out of our cabin by 8am, this didn't feel like it had been a brilliant idea!
So as way of warming up to blog posting again, I thought I'd share a few photos;

Firstly some craft: I just, and I mean just, finished my Mohair Bias Loop in time to pack it (pattern from Churchmouse yarns on Ravelry). I'm not really a fan, it served it's purpose with this dress for the first (of six) Black tie nights. By pinning it with the brooch it meant I didn't have to keep fiddling with it, and didn't find I had to use T-Rex arms too much! Overall though, it's never going to be an 'easy wear' to have it off the shoulders like this, it's prone to either slip down to the elbows, or off one shoulder etc. Love the Rowan Kidsilk Glamour though, and I imagine I will wear this again as a cowl.
Onto the gratuitous holiday shots: Our first port of call, Lisbon, early morning sail in

Next stop Valetta, Malta. An even earlier morning sail in, but it was a beautiful sight in the early light. We splurged on a cabin with a balcony, and took our Nespresso machine aboard with us - and both were worth it to enjoy these early sail ins.

Then onto Kusadasi, Turkey. We went on an organised tour of Effasus and the Terrace Houses, which was an amazing archeology site to visit. There is rubble, slippery marble, and feral cats underfoot all around, yet I managed to fall down a half flight of modern metal checkplate stairs inside the Terrace Houses. There is a network of stairs and glass viewing platforms all above the houses, for viewing. I'm afraid I was too busy viewing and didn't quite get the top step right. Ouch, as always though, the embarrassment hurt way more than the bruises!

When we pulled into the dock in the morning, we were just enjoying a coffee on the balcony, admiring the view, when another ship pulled up alongside. The Azura dwarfed The Queen Elizabeth! In fact we realised our fellow passenger number of around 3000 equated the population of the town we formerly lived in back in South Australia!

Next destination: Yalta, Ukraine. We had been so looking forward to visiting the Ukraine, as the highlight of our trip, as we have close friends in Australia who are of Ukrainian heritage - and what great times we've had with them at family functions and New years. The pickles, the vodka, the singing, the dancing, and the food that just keeps coming at you! All excited at the prospect of a 'traditional lunch' as part of a scenic tour day we set off. Things went down hill quickly. I had accidentally booked us on a tour focused on the Crimeon War, and wow did our guide Olga know a lot about it, enough to talk on the subject ALL DAY, barely stopping for a breath. The traditional lunch turned out to be a disappointing unidentified fish and Greek style salad.
We did enjoy the start of the day though, a visit to a former Soviet Nuclear Submarine base, hidden under a mountain in Balklava during the Cold War years. The last stop was interesting too, a visit to a circular museum housing one of the largest mural paintings, 'The siege of Sebastopol'

To add a bit of excitement to the day, whilst we had been in Sevastopol there had been some extremely heavy rains closer to Yalta, causing flash flooding and land slides across the road separating our tour bus from our Ship. These are the moments where you feel happy to have paid for the ship organised excursion, as it's their problem to get you back! So we pulled over and waited for word that we could get through, across the road was this little church perched on a cliff.

I suspect in true Ukrainian culture some cash exchanged hands as about 30 mins later our bus drove past all the waiting traffic and through a gap cleared at the slide!
Our next port was Odessa, Ukraine. This time we were determined it was going to be the Ukrainian day we wanted, and it was. We wandered around the city on our own for the morning, admiring many of the lovely old buildings, sadly in need of attention.

We then found a restaurant for Varenyky for lunch - a sort of tortellini made from potato flour, sometimes stuffed with potatoes, we chose chicken though. While waiting a complimentary vodka appeared, complete with tiny piece of bread and pickle - this was more like the Ukranian way we know! After lunch we returned to the ship, refusing all offers to hold eagles and monkeys on the Potemkin stairs, to join our afternoon tour.
We had booked to do a home visit, where a small group of passengers (7 in ours) are invited into a locals home for the afternoon for tea and a chance to find out about local life. Our host Lucy was great, very open about the way of life in Odessa with crooked politicians, double entry book keeping, working cash in hand off the books. She spoke of life under Russian rule and the good and bad since. We were fed well (of course), with various pies and tarts, and tea and coffee. As expected the vodka appeared, and how could we offend, of course we shall drink! Tradition required three (large) straight shots before we could eat anything!
Lucy explained that very few older people in Odessa speak Ukranian, so my chance to try a bit had to wait until her granddaughter arrived, who learns Ukrainian (and Spanish) in school, and English from Lucy. Stacia was very sweet, quietly tapping me on the arm to correct my pronunciation of Varenyky (it was agreed it was my Australian accent!). The funniest moment was when we asked if Stacia knew 'Mnohya lita' - a sort of Ukranian all purpose song of joy. She was a little hesitant, so Lucy suggested why don't we just sing it and see. So two Australians sang a Ukranian song, to a round of applause and a very Russian response of 'no, we do not know this song'. Hilarious! It was then pointed out the vodka must be finished, another couple then, oh and then the congac. We returned to the ship with happy memories of the day, and our eyes rolling around in our heads!
Lucky we had a sea day before Istanbul, we needed all the energy we could muster to cope with a day in Istanbul. It was an amazing city to see and experience, but constantly shuffling in crowds and being on pickpocket alert is not something either of us enjoy.
There were some amazing sights to see though;

Mosaics inside the Hagia Sophia

The amazing Basilica Cistern

Oh and what a glorious day Athens put on for us;

We feasted on fried Greek cheese with fig sauce, hot dolmades, and pasticio oh the pasticio, yum!
Our last stop was Vigo in Northern Spain which was a good port to find a bar with friends and enjoy a beer and tapas in the sun before we returned to the grey UK - so that's exactly what we did.
Oh and one last tease, the sunsets at sea, are amazing.

The moons a bit trickier to capture from a moving ship with a basic camera, but it's lovely to watch with a late night cocktail in hand, sigh.

We spent the first week home searching future cruises, checking out the cruise line recruitement pages, and generally sitting around waiting for someone to appear with a cocktail or 5 course meal. Sigh, normality has resumed.

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