At the moment we are in an internet cafe in Izmir Turkey, almost a week after our last posting. The delay between postings is because first we could not find an internet cafe in the three hours we had to spend ashore in Salerno Italy, and the second reason is because Greek immigration would not let us leave the ship when we docked in Volos Greece yesterday. But we are getting ahead of the story.
After a nice day going past the Rock of Gibralter, which by the way only looks like it does in the Prudential ads from the east, and its not really as big as the ad shows it to be, we had another day of stormy weather heading for Italy. But then after an fairly calm day, we entered the Salerno harbor at about 4:00am the next day, and we headed ashore after breakfast. Salerno is a nice seaside city with lots of yachts tied up to the promonade stern-to, and downtown is not too far from the commercial docks. But at 8:30 in the morning everything was closed except a few coffee shops and the post office. But we did manage to buy a postcard, and mail it even, although the ATM machine at the Post Office bank refused to give us any Euros even though it took the card and the password. Hmmmm.
We headed back to the ship early since we were supposed to leave at noon, but it didn't actually get underway until 2:30pm. Once outside the harbor entrance we headed south toward the Messina straits, the narrow passage between Italy proper and the island of Sicily. It was dark by time we entered the passage, and with a pilot guiding us we managed to weave our way around several ferries and even passed another freighter going the same way. There used to be electrical cables stretched between the two tall towers on either side of the entrance, but they must have been replaced by underwater ones since we saw no evidence of anything above us as we passed by.
We then headed east for the day and a half run to Pireaus Greece, but quickly discovered that we were going instead to the port of Volos on the far east side of Greece instead because there was a dock workers strike in Piraeus. We docked in Volos at about 2:00pm yesterday, and got ready to go ashore to find an internet cafe. But to our surprise and dismay we were told by the 2nd mate that Greek immigration would let the other passengers, all EU members from Britian, go ashore, but that "the Americans" were not allowed off the ship. At first we thought our government had done something offensive to the rest of the world again, but the Captain later informed us that it was just because the immigration office was closed on Saturday afternoon and didn't have anyone there to process us. So we spent the afternoon reading and relaxing on board, and were pleasantly surprised when one of the British passengers brought us back a chocolate bar for us (we had mentioned that getting chocolate was one of our tasks when we went ashore).
We did see a lot of things from the ship however, including a long sleek white ship at least 6 decks high above the main deck that was named the Prince Alaweed and had the name of Jedah as its home port, probably the second home for one of the Saudi Arabian royalty. And across from us were two ships that had just unloaded a huge amount of scrap metal that was being loaded onto trucks, which means that not all scrap steel is going to China afterall, and that there was probably a steel mill somewhere near Volos.
We left Volos around 2:00 in the morning, and after a nice day of crossing the Agean sea we entered Turkish waters soon after noon, and docked here in Izmir around 3:00pm. Izmir is a huge city, with minarets everywhere you look. But the population here in the waterfront downtown area is very young and modern looking, with very few women wearing veils.
A few random observations and things we have noticed the last few weeks at sea.
We tend to wake up to the rather unpleasant smell of the disenfectant they use when they swab (mop) the hallway outside our cabin.
The pilots and harbor masters all seem to get gifts of cartons of Marlborl cigaretts or bottles of wine from the Captain when they leave the ship.
After leaving Salerno the menu has gotten more varied, with large Kiwis and bananas joining apples for the fourth course of fruit. And all of a sudden we are getting eggs and bacon for breakfast!
The five British passengers are all emmigrating to Cyprus, selling their now high priced real estate in England and buying a lot more for their English pounds there, a lot like Californians who come to the Midwest. And we were told that the Germans tend to emmigrate to Spain or Italy, no one seems to be content to live where they are currently.
And watching cars being unloaded has become a sport of a sort since everyonce in a while one of them will turn up with a dead battery, or some other problem. The the other night in Volos it was a new Jaguar with a dead battery, they had to push it down the 6 decks to the ramp. And this morning it was a Mercedes, but we got that one started by jumper cables from a lowly Ford parked next to it.
And a wake up call to the realities of sea travel came yesterday with a request for all ships in the region to be on the look out for a ship with 20 people on board that reported it was sinking, and then late a report of wreckage seen in the water and a request for ships in the region to look out for "persons in the water". We did get a good look at the inside of our life boats this morning, so we feel pretty safe, although one of the Grimaldie line ships did run aground recently, and another hit some rocks on the way into Pireaus,
Weather in the upper regions of the Med has been cold and rainy, not anything to be jealous of. But we hope by the time we get to Cyprus in a few days it will be warmer, and then Alexandria Egypt will seem like Florida, we hope. We are at the moment five days behind schedule, so we might have to disembark in Italy or Portugal and find a quicker way back to London to make our flight home. We shall see.
More in Limasoll Cyprus,
Lynn & Linda
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