Home sweet home

Sadly our cruise has come to an end and we’re – grump, grump – back home.

If you’ve never been on a cruise before I would strongly recommend you add it to your ‘to do list’. There is though one small problem. They’re very addictive!!!!

Here’s just a small snippet of what we got up to. You can read more over on our other blog, the BOGOF blog.

We started our cruise in Rome then sailed to Sorrento for an overnight halt. As we’d been there several times we decided to stay on-board and simply chill by the pool.

 

 

Whilst leaving Sorrento it was time to scrub up and put on our posh frocks (or black tie in the case of Mr Gertie) for the Captains welcome reception.

We did try to take a photo of the both of us but the camera kept toppling over....

After a trip up Mount Eta (extremely pleased to report that whilst it is still very much an active volcano, it was quite when we visited....) and a day at sea we arrived in Santorini, Greece. Apparently it’s a very pretty town but unfortunately it’s not very Wizzy friendly.

There were three ways of getting up to the town – a funicular railway which had no Wizzy access, a donkey ride – again not very Wizzy friendly or claiming up several hundred steps up the cliff. On speaking to fellow passengers who did go ashore said we did the right thing by staying on-board as it was total chaos. An enormous ship was anchored next to us and it seemed that every single passenger decided to go ashore!!!

The next two days we were in Mamaris and Kusadasi, both ports in Turkey. In the cruise terminal at Kusadasi there were four ships side-by-side. Ours was the smallest, ending with the largest which had about four thousand passengers!!!!

Our next stop was Mytilene, Greece then finally Istanbul, Turkey.

Sadly we were running a little late getting ready for the Captains farewell reception on the penultimate evening so didn’t get a chance to take any photos of my second dress. I had thought about taking one when we got back to our suite but by the end of the night it was quite creased so wouldn’t have looked it’s best.

We’ve been going on cruises for 11 years and during that time have visited lots of delightful destinations, many are on our ‘to visit again’ list. However this is the first time that we’ve had a ‘never again’ and that was for Istanbul. It’s a bit like marmite. You either really love it or really hate it, and sadly we are the latter.

I couldn’t end the round-up of our cruise on a sour note so....

Last year I blogged about ‘a new beginning’, and mentioned that Mr Gertie and I were thinking about renewing our wedding vows when we were on the cruise.

We tentatively ran the idea past our cruise consultant but stressed that nothing was definite as it depended on my hip recovery going to plan and we’d let her know if we wanted to go ahead. As I’m not back on my two feet yet we decided to put the vows renewal on hold for the time being.

When we arrived back into our suite on the very first day of the cruise there was an answer machine message from Mike, the ships cruise director asking if we could meet him to discuss finalising things for our renewal service.

To be continued... (I think you’ll probably have guessed where this is going!!!!).

Have a great week.

Gertie xx

PS why not pop over to Handmade Monday to see what other fellow craft bloggers have been up to.