Category Archives: personal blog

With a picture from Rome. Not comparing towns, commenting on the pronunciation of Civitaveccia which is done with a hard capital C as in Church whereas I had been saying it with a soft C as in Citizen. I’ll have to break my habit as the former is correct. I managed to get out forContinue reading “1110 – Civitaveccia & Gosport”

Yes, it’s still a picture from the cruise, but no, this isn’t about the cruise. Instead it’s about the book I am reading. Have you ever bought a book, not knowing what to expect, but as you get into it, it become so exciting that you become almost breathless with what is happening and theContinue reading “1109 – A slight Diversion”

Our third port of call was Livorno. Normally Livorno is the gate way to Florence & Pizza, we’ve been there before, so we decided on a different adventure. We wanted to experience Tuscany, which saw us on a coach heading for Sienna. Sienna on a map looks pretty much as being in the middle ofContinue reading “1108 – Tuscany”

Our visit to Monaco meant Azura anchoring at Ville Franche and the passengers being tendered in to the port. The tender could be a locally hired craft or one of cruise ships craft. In either case each craft can carry 100 – 150 people. To smoothly get anything upto 3000 pax’s off and back onContinue reading “1107 – Tendering Ville Franche”

The Capital of Corsica is Ajaccio. Of what we saw it’s was neat and well kept. We hopped on the road train which gave us a tour with a couple of photo stops on the way round. The first stop was at a big monument to Napoleon. I know who Napoleon was of course, butContinue reading “1106 – What surprised me about Corsica”

The train journey from Havant was smooth, except the train was loaded with cyclists and their bikes heading towards the Isle of Wight we think. I didn’t find out if there was an event on. There was no room for the luggage so we were partially blocking the aisle. We managed. We only had aContinue reading “1105 – We return home – Part two”

Our pick up was due at the hotel at 0825, and lo and behold there he was. It was rush hour so we took a back route to the airport that was interesting, we saw a part of Malta that we hadn’t seen. It appears that the Maltese authorities have changed regulations private taxis areContinue reading “1104 – We return home – Part one”

The ship docked at Valletta early, and we had to be out of the cabin by 0800. That wasn’t a problem we’re prepared and headed up to breakfast. Whilst we had access to the ships facilities for as long as we needed our transfer to the hotel wasn’t due until 1130 and as were weightedContinue reading “1103 – Our last full day”

Katakolo on the western main coast of Greece was Azura’s last port of call before our return to Malta and then home. We had a visit booked to see the site of the first Olympic village. Ok, that does it a massive injustice. Olympia the mountain is the home of the Greek gods, and isContinue reading “1102 – Katakolo & Olympia”

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)”