Sunday, June 21, 2015

Last of the Cruise....


Our last port of call was Dubrovnik in Croatia. It was a beautiful place, the weather was hot and sunny and we had our last trip of the holiday there. 
Because we had free on board credit we decided that best way to spend it was on a trip package. We didn't have a choice as to what type of trip we did in Croatia as there was only one in the package. It was quite an experience!!! We took a coach from the ship to the walled city centre where me met our guide - Yacob. He spoke good English so encouraged we set off on the tour. It soon became clear that this was to be the quickest and least informative tour of the trip!! We walked down the slope and into the city, the pavements were made of marble, it was beautiful. Yacob marched on and we all scurried after him! All the tours are graded by the ship to give people an idea if they will be able to physically do them and this one was graded as suitable for limited mobility. It soon became clear that this was not the case. Yacob had certainly decided that it was in his interests to get the whole tour over as soon as possible. So we made a concerted effort to keep up with him, within 30 minutes the tour had been reduced to half of those that had started, undeterred Yacob marched on whizzing us through museums and churches. At one point we caught up with him and realised that he was simply reading passages off of the wall!! (I am good at reading and I am certain I could have managed that myself!!) The last stop of the tour was a museum at the top of a flight of 50 stone steps with no hand rails! This resulted in one lady having an asthma attack. We hung on to the end but I don't think we learnt anything !!




It was a very pretty town and I am sure it might have been interesting if the guide had been a bit better!!

We had been lucky enough to have a balcony cabin, but every time we docked in port our cabin had looked out over the sea and not the port. It is so hard to appreciate how big the ship is and I had planned to identify our balcony and photograph it from the shore. At last Dubrovnik was our only chance of doing so. So I  took a series of photos showing just how big the ship is!



So here is the ship docked.
I stuck a piece of white paper to the glass on our balcony to try and identify it.


Zoomed in a bit our balcony is above the second life boat from the left on the second floor.


Now you can start to see the piece of paper.


Finally a close up showing the piece of paper!! Its amazing just how huge the ship is !!

The holiday seems like ages ago now, I am already thinking about planning next years, I am keeping an eye on the promotions and I plan to book early, we might get lucky and sneak a free upgrade again!! 


So MSC if you have the Google bots set to search for references to your cruises just in case you are looking to give away a free cruise.... Choose ME!!!!!

Sailing away from Croatia we had the most beautiful sunset.


It was the only one of the cruise, which was odd as we had beautiful weather, it was just cloudy at sun set on the other evenings!

I have just returned from a week at Conference in Glasgow. I can honestly say that I am knackered and was really glad to sleep in my own bed again. I stayed in a Premier inn which was new and comfortable but you really quickly get fed up with eating out and hotel beds. 
The hotel was on the banks of the Clyde in an area that had been regenerated it was nice but with one major downside, no local facilities, no corner shop and a three stop train ride into central Glasgow. It meant that I was trapped in a small area as I had to be in conference at 9am and stayed until late on in the day. Because we were captive we had to buy from the venue which of course was venue prices. 
The one big bonus was the scenery I managed to get the below shots on my phone!!



So back to the usual slog this week! I hope you all have a good week.











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