Dining At Sea, Exploring Southern France, And Travel News And Views

It’s that time again when I round up any new content added to the site that people who don’t subscribe to the full RSS feed or who don’t follow along or spot posts on social media might miss along with any other things I want to get off my chest and, of course, all those travel-related posts from other people that have attracted my attention recently.

Site Content

In terms of site design and features there’s nothing new to report although I’m continuing to monitor the existing plugins to see what is the likely cause of a persistent, intermittent database corruption in the options table. Another one surfaced on our most recent cruise and since it was nice enough to do it while we were at sea and without internet connection I didn’t notice for three days that the site was offline. Feel my frustration. One plugin that I know is playing up a bit is the RSS Aggregator that feeds the Cruise And Travel Feeds page (edit: removed). Paging is a horrible mess right now and I’m hoping the developer issues a fix before I have to consider making my own version without that display problem in it.

Page content on Cruise History and Travel Achievements have now been updated to reflect the most recent cruise on Marella and the home page introduction blurb as well as the brief About text at the foot of the page has been modified to include references to Mark and Marie’s Travels as that’s the branding (I hate that word and what it symbolises but, sigh) under which our travel content tends to be published across social media.

I keep saying I’ll start to use our Pinterest more and never really get around to it. I’ve made a start at sorting out some boards and have seen a little bit of traffic trickle in now and then but I keep forgetting to really use it. Yes, I’m kicking it old-school blogging with a paragraph like this.

There are, of course, some new posts on the website. Two posts cover our time exploring southern France on a cruise excursion during our Emerald Princess stop at the port of Marseille.

• Van Gogh and the Arles Amphitheatre describes the first half of the day ashore in Provence where we took a trip to the city of Arles to see its impressive evidence of Roman and Medieval occupation. For a while this city was also the home of Vincent Van Gogh and we got to see some of the locations in which he painted several of his works of art.
• Les Baux-de-Provence is a French commune atop a rocky spur in the mountains with some fantastic views across the countryside and it was here that we explored following our morning in Arles and some lunch.

There are also three posts looking at some of the dining options available on Emerald Princess so if you’re interested in seeing how these venues compare or just want to see and salivate over the sort of food served up in a cruise ship’s restaurant then check out:

• The Salty Dog Gastropub was where we dined in the evening after our visit to Gibraltar.
• On our sea day between Gibraltar and France we then managed to get a seat at the Steamers Seafood restaurant.
• While both of those dining establishments on the ship were ones you could only book onboard we’d been able to reserve dinner at SHARE by Curtis Stone ahead of the cruise and following our day in Marseille it was here that we dined that evening.

There’s also a new Photo Rework post on the site explaining a reprocessing of a photo taken from a bus in Buenos Aires of a man having his shoes shined.

Social Media Soap Opera

Only a minor update in the soap opera-like life of co-existing with other cruise and travel bloggers online. A development from The Barry Incident is that Barry’s post-incident behaviour now mimics that of a certain other big blogger of note. I am, of course, reciprocating without calling it out and only drawing attention to it here in vague terms for posterity and where I know it likely won’t be seen. I did wonder if there would be a third candidate in the silent treatment group following someone else’s subtweeting directed at me online this week (it wasn’t just me who spotted it) after a difference of opinion and potential misunderstanding but that doesn’t appear to be the case so far. I’ll be keeping an eye out on that, though.

Travel News

Virgin have announced their next ship will be called Valiant Lady and that she’ll run week-long itineraries in the Mediterranean. An interesting-looking ship with some appealing elements but still a large concern that style may be trumping practicality in some areas. There’s also the question of pricing considering what’s not included in the base cost which is already far too high for my liking on its Caribbean-based ship and I’ve never known Mediterranean cruises to be anywhere near as affordable as those across the Atlantic. I still can’t get over the fact that the cruise line looks like it’s targeting a demographic too narrow for the size of vessel and I wonder how many people are going to pay full price for a cruise twice. I even wonder just how many people who wind up getting free trips for PR purposes will actually book a full cruise when comparing with other options. Time will tell, and I’m sure that those people who really like new ships will take a shine to her (until the next shiny thing comes along, naturally) while those people more like us who like to consider the whole package might not find them competitive enough in terms of cost and itinerary interest.

Travel Discoveries

And now the moment that everyone who likes to gain some microscopic gain from PR or DA or any other number of acronyms connected with the almighty SEO are waiting for, the travel-related online content that’s caught my eye and deserves a quick mention.

If you’re a Facebook user and you like to cruise or are interested in it then there’s a reasonably new group for that purpose called Let’s Cruise. Set up by the same team who administer the P&O Cruises – UK Fan Page it aims to be a more generic cruising group and I’m pleased to say it still enforces the restrictions on certain topics/questions that its bigger group does so heads banging against the desk at the sight of the hundredth post about tips or formal wear won’t be a thing you’ll need to worry about.

Komodo Island Boat Tour From Lombok To Flores covers – you won’t be surprised to hear – a boat tour. If you like the idea of backpacking and don’t mind hostel-like accommodation on a boat for several days then this looks well worth the money for the experiences and the sights. Just go read that, look at the photos of the Komodo Dragons and the islands, and picture yourself there. Me, I prefer my luxuries when I travel, but even still this looks a fabulous trip.

Sanna breaks down the news that Carnival Legend will be cruising a European season which might be of interest if you’re after fun days at sea. Or “fun days” at sea as they like to describe them. I worry when I see “unnecessary” quotation marks. Who knows just what a “fun day” really is when it comes to the cruise line with that funnel design?

I seem to have spotted an awful lot of people visiting Sri Lanka recently on various social media platforms I follow although because they’re mostly on the trips right now or have literally just finished there hasn’t been anything worthwhile to link to. Until I spotted Highlights of Sri Lanka: An Express 7 Day Sri Lanka Itinerary for First Time Visitors by one of my favourite travellers out there, Flo, that is. We haven’t been to Sri Lanka yet – we’ve not been to that region of the world at all – but it’s not hard to see why so many are raving about it. This isn’t the first time I’ve linked to a Sri Lankan guide by a travelblogger in these round-up posts so I suspect I’m being prodded by my subliminal mind to do something about that.

To finish, two videos relating to two very different Princess cruise ships now. First up is one of the oldest in the fleet, Sun Princess, and a short vlog from Scott embarking in Australia. He’s very excitable. Very excitable. Of course, I’m sharing it because we’ll be joining this ship in Japan in 2021 ahead of a trans-Pacific to Alaska and it’s great to see some of the design differences in this older class of ship in the fleet.

Finally, at the other end of the ship spectrum and the newest vessel in the Princess line, Sky Princess, with Rich and Helen exploring dining options aboard. We’ll be on the next ship, Enchanted Princess, next year so it’s nice to see some of the elements we’ll experience then. We’re actually looking forward to the French bistro despite some criticism over the food and/or portion sizes as that tends to suit our palate but the surprising element from the video is the Chef’s Table Lumiere option which hadn’t previously been on our eating radar. We might now see if we can try that out for ourselves.