Tall ship, islands, and other adventures

Well I have been a bit remiss about posting to the blog so this will be a catch up on where we were and what we saw. Many of have received photo stories from Google from me though they haven't been narrated very well. I haven't yet figured out how to edit the stories when the photos are taken with two different cameras with different time stamps.

We left Istanbul and boarded our tall ship - SPV Star Clipper. This is our second cruise on the same ship in the Star Clipper line and we will again board it in Malaga, Spain in November. The first 7 days of the cruise from Istanbul allowed us to visit Troy, 5 Greek islands, and Athens while the second 11 days we visited 4 more Greek islands; Kotor, Montenegro; 3 Croatian islands and Dubrovnik; and ending in Venice. No we did not get invited to George Clooney's wedding in Venice but we did arrive a day earlier and walked through Piazzale Roma. There were a few friends we met on the cruise who did stay in Venice reported seeing the madness associated with the wedding prep.

Dick and I were very disappointed with Athens and found the Greek ruins (yes, I know what the word means) not very well preserved compared to the Greek ruins in Paestum, Italy. And yes, Athens is not doing well financially nor politically. There were lots of failed businesses, dirty streets, graffiti, riot police on many streets, and people picking through trash bins. It didn't help that we were left on our own to find our way back from the center of Athens back to our ship by our tour guide. We were able to make our way back but 6 others in our group had a more difficult time. And when I say it is all Greek to me I do mean it. We did find out where to buy the bus ticket for the local bus back to the port before tour guide left but we were the only ones. There is very little signage in English as far as I could see and 4 of the group were from Bolivia but spoke English (they really got lost as there is more than one terminal at the port but made it back before the ship left that night) and the other two American ladies had an interesting ride back without a ticket which was a good thing as there are fines involved if you ride without one as plain-clothed inspectors make spot checks. The penalty for travelling without a validated ticket is 60 times the ticket price. Now the tickets are only 1.20 euros (about $1.50) but money is tight for many riders so a fine is pretty hefty for many.

We witnessed such an event on our ride back. Though in fairness to the lady who got fined I think she was scammed by another rider. Like in Italy you need to validate your ticket upon boarding and it is good for a limited time. What I think happened was that another lady offered to validate her ticket at the machine on-board but handed her an expired ticket back using a slight of hand trick. As the inspector was checking the tickets she protested that she was handed a "expired ticket" from another passenger and the other lady who did the validation just replied something to the effect that she had a good ticket and didn't know what she was talking about. As the argument proceeded with the inspector the one holding the "good" ticket got off the bus as did most of the rest of the bus riders at the next stop. We got a little worried but had already had our ticket confirmed by the inspector so knew we wouldn't get in trouble. We did finally find the correct stop by asking the driver to tell us when to get off. Granted there were two possible stops we did find the correct one.

Once we got back on board the ship and headed for the rest of our cruise things we fairly well. The Star Clipper is a square rigged sailing ship with automatic sails. This means that the crew doesn't need to climb the masts to set the sails but it does mean that a motor is required to get the sails down. Something happened to one of the top gallant motors so we did not have all of the sails set. there were enough sails to do sailing without the engine assisting most of the time. That was until we sailed between Hvar and Mali Losinji Croatia. As storm came up that but the ship on a 20 degree list in winds equal to a Category 1 hurricane. We didn't really notice it until there was a loud bang and everything in our cabin pitched to one side. I woke up the next morning with a sore spot in my back and realized that it was from Dick's knee hitting my back when the ship listed suddenly. One of our cruise friends reply was "Who said sleeping is an contact sport!" Funny but true. The next morning you couldn't tell there had been a storm other than one of the Staysails was now sitting on the deck with a torn grommet. Not a good thing as the said had just been replaced 3 weeks earlier.

Now for some photos before I describe our return to Italy.