Monday Nov 15 and Tuesday Nov 16, 2010
The at sea pictures (along with a few others) can be seen in the Miscellaneous photo gallery.
After a flurry of hectic days, vacation time had finally arrived. We had been going pretty much non stop for an entire week. We'd left Houston the previous Monday, and it was Monday again. In between, we'd made a long transatlantic flight, toured Barcelona, gotten on the ship, and then bang, bang, bang: Toulon, Saint Tropez and the French Riviera in France; Livorno, Tuscany and the Chianti region (yes, the region is named after the variety of wine) in mid-northern Italy; and Civitavecchia, Cerveteri (including an Etruscan necropolis), Ceri and Bracciano (including a really neat castle). Between the trip and the time of me getting these trip stories posted to my website, I've often described this trip as more of an "adventure-cation" rather than a vacation. Vacations imply that you have ample time to rest and recharge the proverbial batteries. This trip...not so much. As I've mentioned, we were going and going and going throughout the majority of the trip. We had tours in every one of our ports of call except Santorini, and all of the tours we did were full-day excursions. We would start between 7:30 and 8:30 am every port morning, and we wouldn't return to the ship until late in the afternoon. I think our earliest return to the ship was about 4:30 pm (to make a 6:00 pm sailing time), and sometimes we weren't back to the ship until 6:00 pm for a 7:00 pm sailing. They were FULL days. Granted, some of the time we were in the van/mini-bus transiting to another location to see, but there was a lot of walking and absorbtion of history. It was tiring to both the body AND the brain.
Needless to say, a respite from the can-till-can't excursions (on top of the long flights, busy Barcelona schedule, and a cold...) was quite welcomed by me - and I believe by the majority of our travel crew. Monday Nov 15 and Tuesday Nov 16 were at-sea days on the trip as we repositioned from Civitavecchia to Piraeus. Piraeus was our port-of-call city for Athens. I've cruised multiple times before - in fact, this was my sixth cruise - but all of them were in the Caribbean. This was my first cruise in the Mediterranean, and I was surprised and intrigued by the fact that we would be sailing past - and within visual range of - land and islands. There were several occurrences of this on our at-sea days, but the one the struck me the most was our first full day at sea on Monday. We sailed out of visual range of the mainland of Italy until later in the day when we passed through the Strait of Messina. However, one of the cool things we did was sail within visual range of Stromboli and a few of the islands off the northern coast of Sicily. I didn't realize it (again...lack of homework regarding our destinations and route of travel), but Stromboli is actually an active volcano (one of three in Italy) that has been in an almost constant state of eruption for - are you ready for this - the past 20,000 years!!! And there are people that live on this island!!! The day we sailed past, we could see some of the eruption in the form of a smoke cloud coming from the vents of the volcano's crater. I took quite a few shots of Stromboli as we sailed past (probably too many), but I did use the super-zoom capability of my new camera to "reach out and touch" the crater.
 Stromboli   |
 Stromboli |
 Stromboli |
 Stromboli Volcano |
 Stromboli |
 Stromboli |
We sailed past Stromboli between noon and 1:00 pm on Monday. After I took some photos, we had some lunch and I went back to my cabin for some more rest and to work on some of the pictures I'd taken to that point in the trip. Oh, one thing I did take a few shots of before retiring to my cabin: the Tyrrhenian Sea. Yeah, sounds kind of boring, but the notable thing about it was how calm it was - and had been, and would continue to be for the majority of the remainder of the cruise. If you'll remember back to the Greek mythology you read back in high school or whenever, you recall them telling stories of the wicked storms and high seas that would plague the "ships" of the day. Granted, we were on a ship that was almost 1,000 feet long and 106 feet wide, so "big" seas in mythology would have been comfortable and quite manageable in a ship the size of ours. Side note: the Brilliance of the Seas experienced some damage two trips after ours. On December 10, the ship was approaching Alexandria, Egypt when it got into a storm with high winds and seas. Several people were injured, and it tossed around some items inside the ship, breaking some glass on the interior of the ship. Needless to say, we didn't experience anything like that, although the ship finally had some movement on our final day at sea between Naples and Barcelona. Here are some pictures of what the sea was like for the majority of our cruise.
 Ship's Wake |
 Tyrrhenian Sea |
 Tyrrhenian Sea |
The other interesting contrast to my previou sailings was the ship traffic we saw. We saw quite a bit of it, whereas on my previous cruises I might have seen one or two other ships while cruising at sea. I guess that comes from the fact of the Mediterranean being a smaller enclosed body of water as compared to the Caribbean Sea or the Gulf of Mexico.
This particular day was a busy one in terms of things to see at sea. As mentioned, earlier in the day we sailed past Stromboli. A few hours later at about 3:15, we began our approach to the Strait of Messina. On the original graphic of the cruise route, it showed us sailing to the west of Sicily and around south that way. Instead, we were going to shoot the narrow strait between Sicily and the boot of Italy. At its narrowest point, the strait is only 1.9 miles wide. There is also a lot of shipping and ferry traffic in the strait, and apparently it can be a little perilous to navigate. So much so that a pilot is required for ships transiting the strait. The Brilliance approached the strait, we took on a pilot, and then navigated between Italy and Sicily to make the turn to the east around the southern end of the boot of Italy. The scenery as we sailed through the strait was gorgeous, as there were things to see on both sides.
 Strait of Messina |
 Strait of Messina |
 Strait of Messina |
 Scilla, Italy |
 Torre Faro, Sicily |
 Reggio di Calabria |
It got dark pretty quickly after we transited the strait, and then it was off to supper. This particular night was the first formal night on the ship. Needless to say, I didn't attend as I hadn't brought a suit or anything approaching formal wear. While the folks and some of the other group members that didn't go to formal night hit the the Windjammer Cafe, I had the privilege of joining the McHaneys in Chops Grill. Along with Portofino, it was one of two specialty restaurants on-board. For an extra fee of $25 per person, you could make reservations and order from a special menu. Our particular restaurant was a steakhouse-themed affair, and I have to say that I had the finest illet Mignon I think I've ever had in my life. The rest of the meal was fantastic, too, and it didn't hurt that I had such great company. So thanks to the McHaneys for including me!
On Tuesday Nov 16, I was again on a mission to be a bum. It was another full day at sea, and I took the opportunity to sleep in a little bit. I had a leisurely morning and a late breakfast in the Windjammer Cafe, and used the majority of the day to read on my Kindle. The weather was amazing - not too windy and not too cool. Temps were in the upper 60s, so it was just right for finding a spot out on deck out of the wind to read. I found a deserted side deck, not something up by the pool, and read and watched the sea go by for probably 5 hours that afternoon. The area where I was - deck 5, port side, roughly amidships underneath the lifeboats - saw maybe 10 other people walk by during the whole time I was there. The peace and quiet and seeming isolation from the roughly 2,000 other passengers was refreshing and relaxing. That evening after supper, I used some of the time to upload some of the pictures of the trip thus far to my Facebook page. The on-board Internet service wasn't cheap, but I'd been receiving requests for pictures and trip updates from quite a few of my FB friends, so I figured why not? I found a hotspot on the top floor in the cigar bar (thankfully nobody was smoking yet), enjoyed a cognac and uploaded pictures. Then it was off to bed to prepare for another full day excursion in Athens.
To continue the story, read about our stop in Athens here.