Cam's in Europe: Day 59 - Aye Aye Captain

Another week, another WOW (running a little behind due to lack of wifi).

Today (Saturday) we stepped off the cruise and have arrived in Monterosso Al Mare, Cinque Terra. For those that know, a beautiful sea side town on the west coast of Italy. But that's for next week.

This week past was cruise week.

View from our room

As a virgin cruiser my fellow seamen and I are now seasoned deck hands and will certainly be looking to sail / cruise again. When often travelling you try to avoid local Aussies and use your holidays as a chance to get away from all things home, however on this trip we met a great family from Sydney (Thorsten, Michelle and daughter Charlotte), who we spent a wonderful week with.

Team Risstrom

Team Katz
Thorsten, Michelle and Charlotte.

The girls had a play mate, and the adults had drinking buddies - a perfect match.

It was nice to just be able to sit and talk, enjoy each others company and share lots of laughs. We hope to catch up again when back in Australia.

The cruise left Venice, travelled down the east coast of Italy, round the bottom of Greece and across to Istanbul, Turkey, before returning on a similar route but taking the Greece and Croatian coasts (stopping in Dubrovnik) on the return back to Venice.

In the first instance the cruise was as much about relaxing and enjoying being a sea on a huge and magnificent ship, and so for this reason we didn't feel the need to disembark at each port, thus giving us the perfect chance to relax and enjoy the facilities and services of the MSC Preziosa.

Each night there was a live show in the theatre that held no less than 2000 people over two levels. It wasn't quite a Andrew Lloyd Webber production, but given the variety in shows and the level of effort it was great.

The ship had 7 pools, a water slide coming down over 4 levels, along with a Day Spa to rival most resorts, a huge gym, shops, restaurants, casino, bowling alley, formula 1 simulator, 4D cinema, numerous bars and I'm told a variety of night clubs.

Couples massage time :-)

We left the ship briefly in Katakolon, Greece, but as tourist city went, and being a really warm day we were back on board relatively quickly, and focused on enjoying the stops of Istanbul and Dubrovnik, Croatia. Both amazing and also on the 'return to' list.

The 7 nights really only just gave us a chance to balance relaxing while also exploring all the areas on the boat.

We've been watching the world cup which was beamed live to the ship, and followed Nick Kyrgios at Wimbledon, special interest after sitting next to him and his Mum at Roland Garros while watching James Duckworth slug it out.

The whole cruise experience was better than expected, and also a very relaxing and comfortable way to travel - having NO wifi also meant I quickly settled into cruise mode - that along with the free bar on offer with a range of cocktails made the days pass relatively quickly.

So now we are in Monterosso, we've hit the home straight and continue heading south through Italy to Florence and then onto Rome.

The view from my wifi cafe - it's tough here.

We hope everyone is well at home, we all miss our friends, family, work mates and the important part that you add to our lives (which is never consciously appreciated until spending so long away like this).

So until next week - eat peas, I've heard a rumour they might be running out.

The Happy Traveller.

Random Cruise shots;