Fletcher

Yes, totally disgusting on the Spirit a week or so ago. Like a gloopy boil-in-the-bag job. Nothing like the classic dish, and served with vile polenta cakes that were rock hard. No idea. We left almost all of it. The wait staff just shrugged.

12: SADLY, AN UNNECESSARY CRUISE I always say I would never chose a cruise if the ship didn’t go anywhere I wanted to go. Cruising for the sake of cruising isn’t me at all. This cruise on the Silver Spirit was majorly effected by the war in Israel and apparently several passengers pulled out, so we have had 500 passengers on board. Apparently the next cruise will have rather less than 500 because stops in Egypt and Jordan have now been cancelled and as I write there is a sense that even the Gulf States might be victims of executive caution. We admired Silversea’s rapid response to the tragic situation and decided to stick with it. We’ll probably look back on this as a mistake because five Greek islands in a row was a bit monotonous. We happily missed out on two identical villages of white buildings, smokey cafes and tourist tat. We have heard rumblings of discontent and one fellow passenger put it like this: ‘With Israel cancelled, Silversea is saving money on fuel and on cheaper excursions so we should at least get some on board credit.’ That might seem callous but it was a feeling generated by disappointment. We only booked this cruise because it was going to Israel. When the cruise itself falters, emphasis shifts to the ship itself and its drawbacks and weaknesses become accentuated. OK, I have probably peeved about the food enough already but we never had a single properly satisfying meal and this might be enough to deter us from getting on another Silversea ship ever again. And that includes our already booked month on the Wind. We realise that food on ships is never more than mass catering. What I find heartening is that it isn’t just me whingeing. People on other ships are feeling the same. And dishes that I have complained about on the Spirit are the same dishes on other ships. We have all surely detected poorly sourced ingredients - cheap lamb, cheap poultry, limited fruit etc. We all know that much of the food arrives prepped and pre-cooked in bags and is merely warmed up and then served up on cold plates. Cold plates! In chilly outdoor venues yet! Things like this are schoolbook errors. Not what you expect from a luxury line. We liked our cabin and were grateful for the upgrade from the GTY Vista. However, Deck 8 amidships cabins do suffer a little from noise from the pool deck above and on one night they had a band and dancing up there which kept us from sleeping. The weakness of the accommodations are the bathrooms which are looking a bit tired these days, especially the enormous basin and very fiddly tap thing. For us, tubs are a waste of space. The ship itself seemed well designed and I always like a ship with a front-facing outer deck: the Spirit has two - Deck 11 and the open Deck 12. There was constant on-going maintenance with much painting of those gleaming white rails and cleaning of windows. This is a very smart-looking vessel. The pool area, when busy, was awful but the open back decks were airy and impressively spacious. We thought the design of the Arts Cafe a bit twee and rather small as well - the servers up here were stars. Never went to Silver Note, never went to Seishin, never went to the spa, or the casino, or the show lounge. La Dame? Of course not. We had a look and thought it was an oppressively dark little space. Atlantide was also a bit heavy on the decor but perfectly OK. Indochine and La Terrazza were lovely rooms to eat badly in. I thought the menu in Indochine was lifted from a 1960s chop suey house in Eastbourne. I have a few pet petty annoyances - the totally irritating, stupid Bulgari bottles in the bathrooms which always fall over. They need to be broad-based, like so many of the passengers. The stainless steel milk jugs are nasty and so is the cutlery right across the ship. They feel rock bottom cheap. The mugs for English Breakfast Tea, like the Bulgari toiletries, seemed designed to topple over. We find the dress code laughable but easy to ignore. It’s obviously doomed. We dislike the whole butler thing and only met ours once. We had little or no interaction with senior staff. Whereas the Captain and Cruise Directors are pretty ubiquitous on Seabourn ships, we never laid eyes on them on the Spirit. All I knew of the Cruise Director were her daily announcements, so relentlessly upbeat and pre-scripted that I began to think she might not be a real person at all but an AI. Obviously the regular cabin , bar and restaurant staff remain unfailingly friendly and eager to please. To conclude, I think Silversea is perhaps struggling to maintain or justify its reputation as a true luxury line. I get the impression they are throwing everything they’ve got at the new ships and letting the old ones carry on the best they can. Old ones like the Wind and the Amazon and way beyond next April. See you on board. Probably. Thanks for some nice comments, by the way. Graham Greene would be flattered.

11: IN THE CALDERA About forty years ago I was given as a birthday present a massively expensive book called Odyssey. It was published by Thames & Hudson, a decidedly arty company, and consisted of photographs by a guy called Roloff Beny, a Canadian, unusually exotic for someone from Alberta, who took some of the most ravishingly beautiful photos I have ever seen. He didn’t seem very interested in people; he took landscapes, architecture and romantic ruins all over the world. His photos usually had large areas of shade, always creating a sense of discovery and mystery. Odyssey was his tribute to the Mediterranean and of course it had a shot of Santorini, where were today. In fact, Beny’s shot may have sealed Santorini’s fate as the most photographed, the most iconic island vista in the wine dark sea of the Ancients. You know, those blue domes, the white buildings clinging to the clifftop, the deeply scarred rocks. But no swimming pools or fleets of cruise ships when Roloff was there. Today Santorini is one of the world’s most over-touristed places. Just 6000 cruise ship passengers today, though the third ship was late to the party. Tenders were late in leaving our ship because of high winds. I did a lot of research about this place and knew I wouldn’t be leaving the ship. I also knew I would never go there by air because the hotels on the east side of the island are mass market machines on rubbish beaches and the numerous boutique hotels on the caldera side are ludicrously over-priced and require their guests to have the agility of mountain goats. But I also knew that the views from the sea were perhaps the most spectacular of all, as long as the weather played along. And today it did, with an unending carousel of scudding clouds, glancing sunlight and glittering water. Staying on the ship was a good decision. You could enjoy the island without going there. And you could sit out on the back deck having lunch and a few glasses of wine (not Greek of course) and just gawp at it all. It was a pleasant day and I was glad I lugged an old-school heavy camera along for the occasion, just like Roloff. We took our last pre-dinner drinks outside of the Panorama Lounge. Our usual spot on this ship. It was a spectacular sight. My wife downing her . . . no, that’s not I meant at all. There was a full moon, like a light bulb, sitting on an arm of the caldera, with the rest of Santorini lit like a Christmas tree. And there was this American guy, I’ll call him Hank, holding forth as they do, with a great statistic. There were two ships with us today, the Celebrity Apex and Norwegian Gem. Hank said he had taken out his pocket calculator and had calculated that the Apex had 42sqm per passenger, the Gem had 44sqm per passenger and the Spirit had a whopping 102sqm per passenger. That is what we have paid for. I guess that says it all. Spare awareness Hank.

10A: ONE REASON WHY I HATE SILVERSEA We got back from dinner at the Grill tonight to find our suitcases stacked on those luggage rack things in the middle of the cabin. Still more than a whole day to go and they say WE CAN’T WAIT TO GET RID OF YOU. What a dreadful message this sends to their passengers. What a message of total contempt. We have put our cases back in the closet and have thrown the racks into the corridor. We are cancelling our next trip. I'll still describe Santorini as best I can and also a wrap-up about this ship.

10: AG NIK Aghios Nikolaos on the NE coast of Crete became quite famous in the UK because of an early 1970s TV show called The Lotus Eaters about a couple of expats who ran a bar on the harbour. He was played by a fine actor called Ian Hendry (who died tragically young) and she was played by Wanda Ventham, a dolly bird who mothered Benedict Cumberbatch. Because of this show many people wanted to go to Crete and visit this pretty fishing village with its cute little bridge. We went in 1976 and I remember there were fishermen down by the harbour, each one hewn from the pages of Homer, who took their octopuses, bit through their heads, inverted them somehow and gave them a huge slap on the rocks. I suppose if you had eight arms, a beak, three hearts and an ink sac you’d expect harsh treatment. And then they were hung on telegraph wires before being grilled and served with piping hot, crisp chips. Times change. Despite its mountain backdrop, Ag Nik is not nearly as pretty as we remembered it back then and maybe we were just that bit more romantic and impressionable and less well-seasoned. A lot of places are like that. Birmingham for instance. After devouring a couple of perfectly fried eggs we wandered around the town for a bit. There was the usual tourist tat and a lot of cafes with their menus posted outside as long faded photos. All human life was there, in various stages of undress, vaping and smoking away. Eager to capture the classic view on my trusty Leica, we climbed up to the viewpoint overlooking the little lake, the bridge and the harbour. But guess what. In the background was this enormous block of flats which completed destroyed the view. How could the Cretan authorities have been so insensitive? Wait a minute! No, that’s not a block of flats after all. It’s a cruise ship. Our cruise ship. I said to my wife, “I’ll stay here, you go and get the Captain to move the ship out of my shot.” I’m still waiting and I’m losing the light. And the will to live. Tomorrow you will be relieved to hear is our last port of call. It’s called Santorini. We are there with about 6000 other passengers from three ships, including ours. I have read nightmare stories about this place and have little desire to verify them so our plan is to do absolutely nothing. That always works.

9: THOUGHTS ON FORAGING A friend of mine, a classicist and Hellenophile, and also an avid reader of this blog, has recently returned from a land-based tour to Northern Greece, in the sweaty armpit of Albania and Macedonia. The place of Alexander’s birth and the Battle of Philippi where Octavian thrashed the forces loyal to Mark Antony, sending him across the sea into the arms of his Egyptian whore. This friend had a rather immersive experience and he asked if this might be possible on a cruise ship, especially as far as food is concerned. He had some terrific meals in local tavernas. He asked if the chefs on board go shopping in local markets and serve up regional Greek dishes. I am telling him, no they don’t. Not on big luxo barges like the Silver Spirit where all the food arrives in containers from Hamburg or somewhere like that. Chefs on expedition ships sometimes forage locally and I’ll always remember our chef on the Orion buying mud crabs in big sacks in Papua New Guinea and setting up a BBQ on deck. This isn’t the Silversea way. No it isn’t. Most certainly not. The only concession to being in Greece that I can detect is warmed-up Moussaka and Mamma Mia on the TV. I suppose the past few nights it would have been possible to go ashore for dinner as we left port late at night. But I’m afraid we didn’t do that and were all the poorer for it, stomach-wise, and all the richer for it, wallet-wise. I would have loved to have had a plateful of simply grilled or battered octopus or squid, or grilled red mullet with their livers on toast, with a bottle of Greek wine instead of the ghastly lobster mess they served up last night or the dry, stringy short ribs for lunch today or the heavy and stodgy dinner tonight at the laughingly called Indochine. I have sent back so much food on this trip I could have fed half of sub-Saharan Africa. Today we were in Syros, the last of our three Israeli replacements. I knew nothing of this island before but it turned out to be a rather delightful place, and refreshingly un-touristy. There was a shipyard which seemed to be breaking up old ferries - there was a lot of welding, banging, scratching and screaming metal which blended nicely with the ringing of church bells. We did an impromptu stroll and found a nice street selling fresh fish, veg, local wines and cheeses, then a rather smart area full of fashion boutiques. There was a funeral procession to the main church and a great view could be had of that building down a ramp to the shoreline where a man with a huge beard and grey hair down to his waist was swimming while his wife fished for their supper. Tomorrow we are in Crete for the second time this year, having visited Chania on the Cloud last May. This time it’s Aghios Nikolaos. Older Brits like us will remember it as the main location for a BBC series called The Lotus Eaters.

8: DELOS My parents-in-law went to Mykonos in the early 1980s and had a great time. They stayed at a little pension sort of place, the island was awash with wild flowers and they took a boat across to the island of Delos which is famous for its Greek ruins. In those days the Greek islands were mostly the preserve of cultured and arty types and cruise ships were a relative rarity, unless you were with Swan-Hellenic. This has all changed now. Mykonos, along with Santorini, gets swamped with tourists in high season and even more swamped by visitors who arrive on cruise ships. There are days when you can get as many as five or six cruise ships in town which creates a sort of hellish experience. Everyone agrees that the numbers are unsustainable. Fortunately, we were the only ship in port today so when you add the people coming from the hotels there were maybe a hundred people tramping around Delos. To get there we took a shuttle boat from the New Port to the Old Harbour and then we got on an old and rather dirty public boat to Delos. We got there at 10.30am and had three hours on the island which lacks shade, places to sit or any kind of tourist facilities. It is basically a dusty oven grill. There were loos in the museum which was otherwise closed. It was exhausting but worth doing. It’s not a showpiece like Delphi or some Roman sites because very little has been restored above waist-level. It’s a warren of walls, foundations, houses, shops, giving way to vast open spaces and sea vistas. I have never seen so much masonry just lying around. There is a small theatre, still a ruin and totally charming. And there is the terrace of the lions - I’m not sure if any are the originals and I don’t think historians have figured out how many there were. Getting back to the ship meant the dirty public boat again and then we paid 2 Euros each for a public ferry back to the New Harbour and the ship because Silversea’s shuttle bus was a 20-minute walk away. I’m sure there are better ways to visit Delos but I’m also sure the local ferry owners have it the way they want it. The warm weather has abandoned us which meant it was too cold for The Grill, which has the most reliable food on the ship, so we went to L’Atlantide and had a desultory experience. Call me old fashioned but I like my pastry to be cooked and I like a lobster to be bigger than a prawn. We skipped deserts and headed up to the Arts Cafe for coffee, macaroons and Glenmorangies which put us into a deep, snorng, snzze mode. Godnigt fro the Sprit.

7: CAPTURES THE SPIRIT Yesterday was a sea day. The Spirit crept along at nine knots on a perfectly flat and empty sea. The sky was cloudless and temperatures hovered around 85F so most people headed to Butlin’s. Silversea call it the pool deck. Looking down from the pizza joint was a vista of sheer hell. Tightly packed bodies, exploding waistlines, shaven heads, lots of tattoos, slathered creams, Technicolor martinis, ten women shouting at each other in the pool. Yes, that’s right, Butlin’s, not the ultra luxury sophisticated cruise line they try and sell you. I’m sure the tacky, bosomy art on Deck 8 defines Silversea’s aesthetic taste. Oh yes, the internet packed up all day, just what you want on a sea day. Last night was a hilarious circus. The outside deck of the Panorama Lounge was invaded by a group of perhaps 20 Japanese. At least, I think they were Japanese. I have a weakness for racial stereotyping. They were all conforming to Formal Night attire and every lady except one was wearing a red evening dress. Until their arrival we had the deck to ourselves which had been rather pleasant. Then this group performed a modern-day ritual of taking photos of each other on their smart phones. They were loud and excitable but also organised - I think every phone captured every combination of portraits, which was probably about 6000 separate images. This bizarre entertainment took about 30 minutes to complete and then they just vanished like a murmuration of starlings. We guessed they all worked for the same firm and were runners-up as best employees of the year. We were having pizza for dinner in order to avoid dressing up. Butlin’s had been cleared and looked spectacular, a vast empty wooden deck and lovely lighting. Then the Peruvians showed up - the ones who wear the blue anoraks. There are maybe 20 of them. Last night they were all dressed in white and took about 30 minutes to capture each other posing by the pool on their smart phones. They were even noisier than the Japanese. This is our first ‘classic’ cruise on Silversea and if this is typical behaviour it may be our last. Today we visited the Greek island of Patmos, the first of three islands that are replacing Israel. I was feeling a little peaky so my wife did the morning excursion to the hilltop monastery which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. People showing their knees were not allowed to enter, though Mrs Fletcher advises me they made a few exceptions. It is a very sacred place and apparently John came here in 90-odd AD. It’s not certain which John. It was all a bit ho-hum and Mrs F tells me that the main topic of conversation among the cruisers was the generally abysmal quality of the food on board, especially at La Terrazza in the evenings. There is no prettier place to dine on this ship but after two dinners we have nixed it once and for all. We did that on the Cloud earlier this year. So there is consistency in the awfulness. Tomorrow it’s Mykonos and I think there is only one other ship in port. We are off to Delos. We will not be taking any selfies.

Yes, Termessos is fabulous. We had wild goats in the theatre.

6: ANTALYAOVSKA PROSPEKT I went to Antalya back in 1974, again in 1975, and yet again in 1982. It was a pretty little place with a dramatic coastline and some fabulous ancient ruins close by. On that 1982 trip I attended the local film festival and one night the hotel where the jury was staying was sprayed with machine gun fire. No one was hurt. Turkey in those days was a fairly unstable place. The expansion of Antalya has been dramatic. The town I knew of about 150,000 people has grown into a city of more than three million in a very few years. Apartment blocks are everywhere and every inch of land is being farmed, often with gigantic poly tunnels. They are even farming bananas in them nowadays. We learned that after Covid the government was on its knees financially so President Erdogan had the idea of selling Turkish citizenship to Russians for 450,000 Euros. If they bought a house for that amount or more they could become residents. This meant a boom in housing developments and a massive hike in prices. This stretch of coast, all the way to Alanya, is now full of exiles from Putin’s terrorist state. So no longer a good choice for a cheap package holiday. We learned all this from our guide as we headed out to see two Roman sites, Perge and Aspendos. I’d been to both of them on previous visits. Perge is hugely impressive. In fact, I’d rate it above Ephesus and second only to Aphrodisias in Turkey. There is a very rare free-standing stadium, vast groves of columns, massive baths, city gates and one of the greatest theatres of the ancient world. We did our usual thing and wandered around on our own and only when we got back on the bus did we realise that our guide did not take our group to the theatre. The rationale being that there was a theatre at Aspendos so why bother with the one at Perge? Big mistake that. The Roman theatre at Aspendos is famous and in 1973 it was the first we ever saw. It made a huge impression on us and we always rated it as one of the three best preserved in the world, alongside Orange in France and Bosra in Syria. How wrong we were. Today it looks rather phoney with a lot of renovations dating from the medieval period. It was also set up for a pop concert with a stage, projection and sound equipment. Frankly, I would have preferred to have given it a miss and I felt sorry for the people in our group who missed the pure spectacle of the theatre at Perge. We have taken to the back deck of the Panorama Lounge for our evening drinkies. Although we are in Antalya’s container port, the view is quite special.

5: MEETING CAPTAIN MALLORY Today we were in Rhodes, one of the most spectacular places in the entire Mediterranean, a harbour protected by massive walls and gates, and with numerous buildings preserved from the 14th century when blokes called the Knights Hospitalier clanked around barking orders at everyone. Long before that, a bloke called Mr Colossus stood at the entrance to the harbour and was big as the Statue of Liberty. Myths arose that he allegedly stood astride the harbour and boasted he was a wonder of the world. Rhodes is best seen from the ship. The walls are most impressive, especially the imposing Marine Gate. There are other gates of note, including one named for the Virgin Mary who opened an Airbnb here along with her place at Ephesus. Inside the walls most of the Old Town is full of tourist tat, befitting a UNESCO World Heritage Site, except for one street called Ippoton which is perfectly preserved and serves several fine buildings, including the Palace of the Grand Master. This is today’s photo. The eagle-eyed might glimpse the funnel of the Spirit. All this is by the way. To me, Rhodes is first and foremost the main location for the 1961 film The Guns of Navarone. I loved this Boys’Own war adventure as a child and I love it still. The film unit used every corner of the old town and also Lindos for the Roman acropolis. The cliffs and the cave where the Germans had installed the mighty guns were faked in Shepperton Studios. A few years ago we spent a week in Rhodes soaking up the scenery and the history. I spent several hours trying to find the spot where the German pillbox was and had to give up. I subsequently learned from the film’s director, J Lee Thompson, that they built that entire section of the town outside the ramparts. Apart from Thompson I was able, through my job, to spend some time with several other people who made the film - the writer and producer, Carl Foreman, the cameraman Ossie Morris, and three of the actors - Bryan Forbes, who had a small role, and Anthony Quinn and Gregory Peck who were the main stars. Today I am wearing glasses named Gregory Peck, made by Oliver Peoples and modelled after his specs in To Kill A Mockingbird. They make you look quite bookish. My favourite memory of Mr Peck is meeting him in the mid-1980s. I was staying in Los Angeles with my friend Donald Spoto who had written two books on Alfred Hitchcock and many others besides. A trained theologian and a full-time professor in New York, he was an unusual and talented man who had gained the trust of many of Hitchcock’s collaborators, including Mr Peck who made two films with the master of suspense. In LA Donald and I rather childishly traded celebrities. I offered to introduce him to Billy Wilder and he offered to introduce me to Gregory Peck. We had a deal. Donald was quite specific. “Mr Peck is very formal,” he said, “we should dress accordingly.” The next morning we drove to see Mr Peck at his house at 375 North Carolwood Drive in the Holmby Hills, an enclave tucked between Beverly Hills and Bel-Air. The house, arguably the swankiest I have ever seen, lay behind a black steel gate and looked like a French chateau. A golden lab with three legs hobbled up to greet us, tail wagging. A maid opened the front door and ushered us inside to a gorgeous hallway and then into a living room so big you could stage the Wimbledon singles finals in it. In one corner, far away, there was a grand piano and facing us a wall of windows and beyond that the lush garden and a glimpse of a pool. We were asked to sit and make ourselves comfortable. Coffee and iced water were brought. Something to nibble as well. We were told that Mr Peck wouldn’t be long. He was just coming back from his morning jog which he did without leaving the grounds. So we sat, sipped and nibbled in our smart clothes. I was particularly proud of my Gucci loafers. They seemed quite at home. Then Mr Peck strode into the room, offering us an outstretched paw the size of a tennis racket. I noticed how grey his hair was and how black his eyebrows were. He was still arguably the handsomest movie star who ever lived. He was amazingly Presidential. He was also sweating profusely, apologising profusely, wearing an old track suit and muddy trainers. And people wonder why I don’t give a damn about dress codes on fancy cruise ships.

4: SHAKEN NOT STIRRED Let me fill you in on our situation on the Spirit. As soon as we boarded this ship back in Piraeus we became aware of vibrations. Not good vibrations as in Beach Boys but bad vibes as in rattling, shaking and shuddering. Far more than normal. In the restaurant you could see everyone’s water moving in their tumblers and it was particularly irksome when we tried to have our pre-dinner drinkies on the Panorama Deck where our martinis were shaken not stirred, all by themselves. And when we climbed into bed, amidships on Deck 8, we could see the sheets quivering, you could hear a sort of rumbling in the bowels of the ship, and if you put your head on the pillows or the headboard you got the full cranial massage. We addressed our concerns to Reception where the woman said no one had ever mentioned this before. She said we should have called them at 3am and got someone from the engineering department to get into bed with us to check the source of the problem. I said the source of the problem was the entire ship. Then another passenger chimed in and said her cabin had the same problem as well. That was oddly reassuring. The upshot is they have moved us and they couldn’t have been sweeter about it. We are now about 10 cabins nearer the bow, and on the port side this time, and that has made a big difference. The vibrations are now imperceptible and we can have a proper night’s sleep. Today it was Bodrum. Another once sleepy village transformed into a bustling resort, noticeably prettier than Kusadasi. Outside the town there are several mass market mega-resorts catering to Russians and there is also a Mandarin Oriental that charges as much per night as Silversea charges for an entire cruise. And an Amanresort that charges as much as two cruises. And for that you don’t even get a beach, just a short strip of pebbles and a bit of wooden decking. In the morning we ventured out on a ship’s tour to a Hellenistic site called Euromos. Our guide would have won any competition for non-stop chatter. They have no idea how exhausting they can be at 8.30 in the morning. On reaching Euromos we did our usual thing and let everyone else take half an hour using the facilities while we strode up to the site and enjoyed it for ourselves. That way I can climb over a fence and get a better camera angle without anyone noticing. There is a temple here which is currently being subjected to perhaps the least sensitive restoration I have ever seen. They are actually making Corinthian columns and pediments from phoney white marble and erecting them next to the real ones which have turned black with age. The site was right on a main road and that spoiled the ambience somewhat, though the setting was lovely, all pine and olive trees with dappled sunlight on the fallen masonry. We are berthed next to the Seabourn Encore. We have sailed on its sister ship, Seabourn Ovation, and love the design of all the Seabourn vessels. Looking at this ship I felt quite homesick. Lunch aboard the Spirit at La Terrazza was enlivened somewhat by an aerial display by an enthusiastic member of the Turkish Air Force. This guy swooped, dived, looped the loop, did everything in fact except launch a guided missile. Apparently they are practising for the 100th anniversary bash for Turkiye's rebirth under Ataturk.

3: AT THE RACES We were in Kusadasi today, one of the premier resorts on the Turkish coast. We first went here in 1974 - yes, we are that young - when Turkiye’s tourist industry was in its infancy and when Turkiye was spelt Turkey. We were on a coach tour organised by a firm called Wallace Arnold. Remember them? The tour began in Istanbul and headed south through Troy, Pergamon, Ephesus, Pammukale and on to the south coast near Antalya. The roads were dreadful, designed mainly for horse and carts, though big trucks thundered through, headed for Iran. On board our battle bus was an interesting group of intrepid souls, from teenagers to an elderly priest. Kusadasi was a sleepy little fishing village with two or three hotels. I doubt if there were more than fifty people wandering around the ruins of Ephesus. The library in those days was a heap of rubble. We went back in 1990 as independent travellers. Kusadasi then was a sleepy little fishing village with four or five hotels. We stayed at a rather sophisticated little place called the Kismet which was apparently demolished only last week. I doubt if there were more than 200 people wandering around the ruins of Ephesus. The library had been bolted back together again to make it as good as old, as authentic as a movie set. That year we also took a taxi out to Turkey’s grandest ancient ruins, the Graeco-Roman city of Aphrodisias, which was awash with red poppies, a blissful sight. Today Kusadasi is a bustling city with scores of hotels and a busy cruise terminal. There were four ships in port today, including the Spirit, with a potential 6500 passengers all headed for Ephesus. We were not. We booked a private car which turned out to be a van for 20 people, just for the two of us. Our destination was a Roman site called Magnesia am Meander, about 20 miles south of Kusadasi and way off the tourist trail, so we had the place entirely to ourselves. A vast amount of archaeological work still needs to be done here, and it probably never will be, so it’s not going to appeal to your average jolly Ephesian cruiser. There are hints of monuments, huge numbers of bits and pieces, made of marble, elaborated carved and sculpted, a sort of jumble sale. And then there is Magnesia’s showpiece. We drove there and had to have the place unlocked, unfortified, for a great secret lay behind these steel gates and fences. It is a Roman stadium, one of the greatest in antiquity, a rival to the one in Aphrodisias and also the one at Tyre in Lebanon. A stadium was built for racing with chariots and is not a theatre or an amphitheatre and very few have survived. This one was excavated about ten years ago and has been allowed to fester so the weeds are taking hold. Even so, and perhaps because of its overgrown nature, it was a majestic, sublimely romantic site that lived up to all our expectations. After Magnesia we went to another Classical site, Milet, or Miletos, which we have been to twice before. There is a fabulous theatre here, perhaps more spectacular than the one at Ephesus, and we saw some tortoises mating in the Roman baths. What a bonus that was. If only I had Pausanias’s gift of the stylus to describe it.

2: THE PERUVIAN BLUE ANORAK SOCIETY There is a fancy Michelin-starred joint hereabouts in Piraeus, down by the yachties, which has decidedly mixed reviews so we saved ourselves a few hundred Euros and a trek through the crowded and polluted streets where people constantly blow cigarette smoke at you. Instead we had dinner at the restaurant adjoining our hotel which was busy and buzzy and served remarkably good, sensibly priced food, washed down with a sturdy red from the Macedonian region. My main dish was described as ‘Black Angus’ but I would have put money on the pale-coloured meat being veal. The waiter insisted it was beef so I wonder if it’s all to do with the grazing the cows get in parched Greece as opposed to the lush grazing they get in the UK. We had a morning to kill in Piraeus. Like most port cities, it’s a bit scruffy and almost everyone seemed to be killing time and defending their kids and suitcases from marauders. We strolled around the ferry port and looked across to the cruise ships. There were a great many here today, including one of those tres elegante Ponant ships, the Seven Seas Voyager and of course our own Spirit (see my photo). We were glad to get on board at midday and have a buffet lunch on the back deck. We were even gladder to discover that we had been upgraded from our GTY Vista Suite to a Deluxe Veranda Suite, amidships on Deck 8. This is only our fourth Silversea cruise, with another one already booked, so if they want to encourage loyalty they are going the right way about it. We like the look of Deck 8 as it’s only a quick stroll to the back of the ship for an early morning coffee on the outside deck, a location we are always drawn to on any ship. It’s quite a handsome vessel, the Spirit, and you wouldn’t know that Silversea cut it in half and added a section to make it longer, bigger and more profitable. As it hasn’t yet split in two I guess the joins are fairly secure, like the titanium plate my wife has in her wrist, thanks to a floating jetty in Fiji. It seems to vibrate a bit, not as bad as the Seven Seas Vibrator (sorry Seven Seas Navigator) but we’ll monitor that for you. I now want to be frank. No, not Sinatra, just open and honest. This cruise was originally going to Israel and we had booked up the two-day, overnight excursion to Jerusalem and Masada, the latter being the scene of the Jewish War which was written up most eloquently by the historian Josephus. I had a well-thumbed copy ready to go. Going to Jerusalem and Masada was the main reason - maybe the only reason - we booked this cruise. And now, for the saddest and most tragic reasons imaginable, we are not going to Israel. Silversea has tacked on three more Greek Islands - Patmos, Mykonos, Syros - and I must commend them for the speed in which they handled this situation. Getting a 600 passenger ship into little ports at short notice, with all the logistics required for shore excursions and so on, must have been quite quite a challenge. I must say we are slightly queasy about going anywhere near the Eastern Med at this time and we did think about asking if we could transfer our booking to another cruise because we would never have booked it as it now stands. But we thought let’s not mess around. Let’s just go and enjoy the ship and the scenery. So here we are, ready to cast off. Which we did at 7pm. We have long given up on Silversea for dinners. We have great breakfasts and lunches and use dinners simply to quaff cheap table wine and people watch. Tonight we were in La Terrazza and had a mud bath. They called it Osso Bucco. We called it mud bath. People watching was far more rewarding. One woman wore a black leather mini-skirt and sparkly anklets and her man wore shorts and flip-flops. Jeans were commonplace. One man was wearing a suit and tie. And then there was a group of maybe sixteen people, all wearing blue anoraks. We enquired and discovered they were all from Peru and they didn’t speak English and they wore these anoraks so that they could recognise each other at a distance. Isn’t that cute? That’s what we like about Silversea. Does Seabourn offer a dress code: blue anorak night? Of course not.

1: SILVERSEA FOR SKINFLINTS Now, where was I? Oh yes, I was in Athens at the Grande Bretagne Hotel, having breakfast overlooking an old ruin that long ago lost its marbles. A bit like me. The previous day I had disembarked the Silver Cloud having sailed from Muscat via Djibouti, Saudi Arabia and Alexandria. You may well have read my positively Homeric bloggy thing last April and May. Well, here I am again in Athens about to embark the Silver Spirit, bound for, well, that’s only the half of it. And about to embark on another bloggy thing. You can’t have one without the other. This time things are a bit different. To begin with, the Spirit is a much bigger ship than the Cloud and about as big as we are prepared to go. Unlike our Cloud trip and unlike our forthcoming voyage on the Silver Wind, both of which nearly broke our piggy bank, this little pleasure cruise on the Spirit came at a knockdown price and we knocked it down even further. Welcome to our world of budget travel. In full skinflint mode, we left home at 2am and drove down to Heathrow Airport because we were too mean to shell out for a grotty airport hotel. To get to Athens we flew economy on Finnair/BA using a companion fare and some Avios points. We shunned the Grande Bretagne or any fancy hotel in the centre of Athens because it’s pricey, noisy, choked with traffic, choked with tourists, defaced by graffiti and ravaged by everything else that typifies most cities these days. I’m sure Pericles said the same thing back in the day. From the airport we took the train to Piraeus, a journey lasting about an hour and costing 9 Euros each as opposed to the 90 minutes and 100 Euros it would have been by taxi. This turned out to be a trip we would recommend to anyone as the train is almost always above ground and gives a close-up view of Athens’s backside. It trundles right through the centre of neighbourhoods, stopping frequently, and where else would you find a station called Metamorphosis? I guess people tend change there. We peered into apartments, marvelled at the greenery on people’s balconies, and we saw many shops selling car tyres and alloy wheels. We also had some glimpses of the Parthenon. We are staying at a pleasant, newish hotel called Port Square for a relative pittance which gives us a penthouse suite, a terrace and a distant view of the . . . yes, you’ve guess it, that bloody Parthenon again (see photo). They must have more than one as it pops up everywhere. Crane your neck and you can also see the cruise port. Open your ears and sounds positively melodic compared to the theme from Zorba the Greek. In an hour we skinflints will venture out to see if we can scavenge some food off the pavements that the seagulls don’t fancy. I’m kidding about that last bit, we might just fork out for a restaurant. Tomorrow afternoon we board the Spirit where we have booked a Vista Suite, the cheapest category. We are treating the Spirit as we do all cruise ships, a little disrespectfully, like a hop-on-hop-off bus if you will, a conveyance to get us from Athens to Athens via a few places in between. If you fancy reading what we get up to, hop on board! Feel free to hop off anytime you like.

The best 'sticky' I ever tasted was at the Cloudy Bay vineyard in NZ. Not for export we were told. Agree about Suduiraut of the French sauternes. I enjoy it with Christmas pud. Only had Yquem once, years ago, at the Grosvenor House Hotel on Park Lane when the recently late lamented Nico Ladenis was the chef and had three Michelin stars. I was with the veteran Hollywood actor Joseph Cotten and Nico came out and gave us all a glass on the house.

Yes, the Endeavour would be a better choice than the Cloud or the Wind.

Terry . . . there are far better ships out there. Seabourn Pursuit and Venture, the Lindblad fleet and so on. I'm on the Wind next April/May and it is only the itinerary that draws me to that ship. There is no alternative. Antarctica has heaps of alternatives.

Sorry to read about the plumbing issues . . . no hint of anything like that on our month on the Cloud last April/May. However, I did think the ship was well past its prime and the lack of a proper forward-facing outer deck is shocking for a so-called expedition ship. We're on the Wind for a month next April and expect a slightly better ship but not by much. If Silversea dispense with both vessels they surely can't exist with just the one expedition ship. So they must have a plan. At present they seem way behind Seabourn in this sector of the cruise market.

And I fell asleep reading it . . . 😉 Looking forward to this trip.

I was on the Cloud earlier this year which spent nearly a week in Saudi. My understanding then and now (for UK citizens) is that for stays of more than a day you need the full e-visa obtainable online. It is a simple procedure as long as your photo is the right size and is in their guidelines. If you visit for just the day then the ship will provide visas on arrival. There were a few people on our ship who did not get off the ship and did not need a visa.

I think George Armstrong Custer said that.

Whenever I see the words 'tasting' and 'menu' conjoined I run a mile. Ditto the phrase 'fine dining.' This style of eating has virtually taken over the world's smart restaurants and that has been a colossal turn-off for me. These multi-course tasting menus can be prepared mostly in advance, the food sits for hours in those deadly sous vide things, they have aggressive portion control, they are artfully presented, often leave the diner starving by the end or bored to death because they take so long to serve. They have been created by accountants to produce high profit margins. Michelin has encouraged them so there is now a thing called 'Michelin cuisine' which has replaced French cuisine, Italian cuisine and so on. It all looks identical, from Tokyo to London to New York - a blob of this, a smear of that, a foam of this and half an asparagus stalk. There is a glimmer of hope that some restaurants are abandoning them and returning to carte style of dining. So when I see Silversea offering tasting menus in their pretentious Dame restaurants I think they are a few years behind the curve. The latest surcharge is a total joke though I'm sure there might be a few gullible people out there who enjoy fancy cutlery and glassware . . .

Santorini today: https://www.skylinewebcams.com/en/webcam/ellada/naigaio/kyklades/santorini-firostefani.html

For Santorini you might be wise to check the number of cruise ships in port that day - the island is infamous as one of the most heavily over-touristed places on the planet. It is also awkward to visit because of very limited transport up the cliff to the villages, especially critical if you have maybe 5000 or even 10,000 people all wanting to do the same thing. We are there in October and plan to stay on the ship. https://www.cruisetimetables.com/#ports