Getting back into the swing of writing travelogues has proven to be difficult. Work has been busier than normal as it’s been summer and most people take some time off for summer, but we’re not most people and we don’t like being around all the people taking time off for summer so we stay home, and that means more work comes our way as a result. However, I think there has just been a bit of general fatigue following the months of tidying up content on the site that was covered in the last of these updates too. New travel content has been sporadic, but there has been some and I’ll go through them quickly now.
We had some time at the conclusion of our trip over the border into Slovenia to look around the city of Trieste and this turned out to be a fantastic place. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that this short look around immediately propelled Trieste to the top of our Italian cities chart. I bet you didn’t even know we had one of those. By the sea, beautiful architecture, clean, loads of historical ruins. Lovely. We must return to explore some more.
A post covers the evening aboard Azura and departure from Trieste which includes sighting of a luxury yacht seized by the authorities as part of sanctions against Russia’s launching of a war against Ukraine.
The penultimate port stop on this Adriatic cruise was the Croatian port of Zadar and we had a gorgeous day to see its interesting waterfront area with art installations and the old town centre with its fabulous Roman ruins.
Zadar Archaeological Museum was covered in a separate post primarily just to show some photos of some of the historical artifacts on display and to give some advice about visiting.
I’m fond of putting up posts covering the sail away portion from any cruise port and our departure from Zadar was no exception. Expect photos of the coastline of Croatia.
The most recent travelogue explores what we saw while walking around Dubrovnik, Croatia. We visited some churches and we drank beer, and we ultimately didn’t see anywhere near as much as we’d have liked so we’ll have to return one day.
In other travel news, Resilient Lady continued the tradition of Virgin Voyages conducting a few cruises out of Portsmouth, which you possibly know is where we live. In fact, when a cruise ship is in port here we can step out of the house to the front gate, look down the road, see the funnels of the vessel, and walk there in about ten minutes.
We’ve previously cruised on Scarlet Lady and Valiant Lady and enjoyed them both immensely, but with a caveat. We didn’t like that the ships were almost indistinguishable in terms of looks, venues, menus, and even entertainment, but we’d enjoyed our Rock Star suites on both voyages as the pandemic-era pricing made the upgrade affordable, and those spectacular rooms helped to offset the sameness of the ships in all other ways.
Had the pricing for Resilient Lady been similar then we’d have likely booked a cruise on her, and likely one of the longer itineraries just to get a new port or two in (sorry, but visiting Zeebrugge or Amsterdam on a Virgin ship is a very expensive way to see those places), but it wasn’t to be. Had we been allowed to apply our special discounts (for being early cruisers with Virgin) to the prices to bring them into consideration range then we’d have likely booked a cruise on Resilient too. That also wasn’t the case. These UK-based cruises were specifically excluded.
We didn’t fancy the idea of downgrading to an inside room or basic balcony cabin, and we didn’t fancy yet another trip to the Netherlands or Belgium (much as we like both of them) when we could go somewhere new for less. So that’s what we chose to do instead.
What a good decision that turned out to be.
This week has seen a lot of social media posts from those who did cruise with Resilient Lady and it would have been utterly overwhelming for us. We’re not extroverts and we like to remain anonymous from the majority of fellow cruise and travel bloggers so travelling with so many people we know on Instagram in particular could have been a trial. We like to choose who we interact with based largely on just how much they like travelling for the love of travelling versus just how much they like being the centre of attention plastering their faces over everything and getting freebies when they can. Not that there’s anything wrong with that – we’re all different, and fair play for gaming the system to get what you can – but it makes conversations and hanging out tricky and the likelihood of becoming friends slim. Being introverts doesn’t mean we’re not social. It means we’re picky.
More importantly, though, was that we didn’t see anything different on Resilient Lady from everyone’s posts that we hadn’t seen already on Scarlet Lady and Valiant Lady. The same venues. The same menus. The same theme nights. We would have felt a cruise with Virgin would have been a waste of money in retrospect, no matter how much fun was had at the time. If the entertainment gimmick is the same entertainment gimmick over and over again then it stops becoming a gimmick.
The cruise ship is not the destination for us. If it is for you, and you take the same sort of ship with the same features doing the same thing time after time, then we don’t see that there’s much difference between you and the sort of person who takes their family to the same hotel on the same Greek island for the same two weeks of the year, every year. In our opinion, it’s indicative of a lack of imagination.
Again, though, that’s just us. We’ve got a reputation for grumpiness to uphold. For those who love Virgin enough to cruise with them repeatedly… lovely.
Anyway, must think about packing. We’ve got two cruises still to come this year and the first of those is tomorrow.
The Dalmatian coast has been on our bucket list for awhile. Unfortunately we’re not booking anything new in 2025 until we see what happens with the election. I do have the 5 Stans trip with Smithsonian in October, which will either be epic or excruciating, as it is a 17 day road trip across 5 Third World countries. Hopefully, the fact that the tour is associated with a famous museum means I won’t be kidnapped/raped/murdered en route. We also have the Panama Canal cruise with Viking over Christmas at the end of the year. We just got done picking our excursions, and I was displeased to note that we had to pay separately for each of them. We also had to pay for a drink package, which I view as absolutely essential, as a cruise without booze is no cruise at all. Hubby got the cheaper one bc he’s a cheapskate. I hope I/we don’t regret that choice. I HATE bargain basement booze