Author Archives: Bill

Oh Dear. We’ve just been going through what we have done over the course of our holiday and I was looking at my blog and I suddenly realised there was no post that had covered our visit to Ville Franche. I knew that I had written something but it was not where it needed toContinue reading “1101 (out of sequence) Monte Carlo & Monaco (Monte Carlo or bust)”

Yesterday afternoon, we could have gone ashore in Heraklion but decided against it and instead watched a Mission Impossible film (Fallout if you must know) before going to dinner. I think it’s number six in the series. We had only got to Number 3 at home, so we are a bit out of sequence. OhContinue reading “1100 – Heraklion, Knossos & Greek Society”

The transit across the various seas between Malta and Greece, the Aegean & Ionian mainly have had a deep low pressure area hanging over them these last few days. The captain of Azura, Neil Turnbull, has made no bones about it likely to be a bit rough. As it turns out, nowhere near as badContinue reading “1099 – Athens & Stormy weather”

Here we are at the end of one stage of the holiday, and the beginning of another. Today being marked by a stop over in Valletta. We are going to be here slightly longer than expected which means we can take a look at our plans. It turns out that there is a problem withContinue reading “1098 – Mdina & Valletta”

You’ll gather from the intermittent posting that my connection to the internet is also exactly that. To be honest, I refuse to pay the ridiculous rates that they want to charge on board, so I’m afraid I’m dependent upon when I get a good phone signal. You’ll also notice that I have completely given upContinue reading “1097 – Intermission”

On then to Civitaveccia the port that gives access to Rome. Another early rising, and the coach for a two hour drive to Rome. We were booked to go into the Colosseum. You can probably imagine that we were a bit concerned after we read a newspaper report a couple of weeks ago about theContinue reading “1096 – Rome, Gladiators, Senators, tourists and traffic – oh yes, the traffic.”

From the port of Livorno, we could have headed for Florence & Pisa, but we have done both of these before, a few years ago, I had the typical picture of me trying to hold up the leaning tower. I must admit I fancied the idea of try to get one pushing it over. Instead,Continue reading “1095 – Sienna and st Gimmignano”

On yesterdays post, I should have said that the first sea day ended with a formal night. Elayne had made sure that my dinner suite was packed. I of made sure that I wasn’t paying attention to the packing and therefore forgot my bow-tie and braces. Luckily the ship-board shop had them, so that wasContinue reading “1094 Day 4 – Ajaccio, Corsica”

We were due to be taken from the hotel to Azura at 1300. We were packed and had eaten breakfast by around 0930, so thought we would take a stroll down to see the illuminated church as it is in daylight. We took what might be a less obvious route by going up hill aContinue reading “1093 – Day 2 & 3 Boarding & Seaday”

The Hotel Solana in Mellieha is quite pleasant, it’s a surprisingly big place given its location in the centre (pretty much) of town. Where we had booked with a holiday company and were only staging through, we had been allocated a basic room. We were offered an upgrade that would give us a balcony andContinue reading “1092 – Day 1 – Malta/Gozo”