This was the day we were to drive to Ravenna to board the Azamara Pursuit, our floating home for the next seven days.
We went out for coffee and pastry at Piano Piano, then to a bank to get change for our difficult-to-use one hundred Euro bills. Then we walked into the Basilica de San Petronio, the huge, old church in the center of Piazza Maggiore. The church was interesting, but not super impressive. We were getting a bit tired of old European gothic churches.
A little later we left our apartment and rolled our suitcases around the corner to the hotel proper and checked out. We then waited for the limo to pick us up and take us to the Ravenna Cruise Terminal. The ride took about an hour. The driver was talkative but his English was good and he told humorous stories of his childhood.
We arrived earlier than our scheduled embarkation time but so did a lot of other people. I won’t bother describing the whole process but it took about an hour to get onto the ship - not bad. We were immediately directed to our muster station where one of the ship’s entertainers gave the shortest muster indoctrination we have experienced. On all our previous cruise (nine as of now) the muster drill was a big deal, some of them quite onerous. One required you go outside to the lifeboat deck wearing your life vests, and that day it was raining. This one was a five minute speech and a two-minute demonstration of how to put on a life vest.
We then found our stateroom and a few minutes later when we were about to go out to explore the ship our suitcases were already outside our door. We dragged them into the room but put off unpacking until later. We explored some of the ship, and then, since our stateroom class included a complementary fine dining restaurant for one night, we made a reservation for dinner the same evening at the steakhouse restaurant. We had read that the reservations for the specialty restaurants on cruise ships tend to fill up quickly so it's a good idea to book as soon as possible.
We then went to the buffet to have a late lunch. The buffet was small, but the ship was also. The buffet was not self-serve. You had to ask the staff behind each counter to serve you something you wanted. We found a table outside and had our lunch, and were served complementary wines with lunch, and then finished with good gelato for dessert.
After lunch we explored a little more and then went back to our stateroom to unpack. As we were unpacking, our young, female, Indonesian stateroom attendant came to introduce herself and explained some things to us. Her name was Rodin, which was on a card on our stateroom desk, so I had assumed that our stateroom attendant was an old French sculptor, or possibly a misspelled Japanese flying monster
A small side note - I told Donnie that we may not bother to go ashore in any of the ports. The reason being that we may just stay on the ship and get totally smashed. Azamara cruises include a number of complementary alcoholic beverages including wines, spirits, beers and cocktails. In addition, when we purchased this cruise, Azamara was offering a special deal which gave a very large onboard credit, so we can use that to purchase fancier wines, spirits, and cocktails which are not complementary. Finally, our stateroom class includes one in-room bottle of spirits, which Rodin asked us to choose from a list. I chose Bombay Gin. So, we have many, many complementary ways to get completely soused - oh dear. We had read that Azamara has a very loyal group of customers. Now I know why. So, of course, after unpacking we went down to a lounge called The Den and had drinks and listened to the pianist.
Eventually we went to have our complementary dinner at the specialty steakhouse. When we got there they asked us to sit at the bar for a few minutes while they got the tables ready. So, of course we ordered drinks. Then after we got to our table they served delicious breads dipped in olive oil and balsamic vinegar and then an amuse bouche which was a piece of bruschetta - bread topped with olive oil, garlic and chopped tomato. Our first course was a smoked fish platter which we both had and which was delicious. For the main course I had steak Diane and Donnie had Chilean Sea Bass. It was too much food. Then we were given the dessert menu. There were several items that we would have loved to have but we were stuffed. So we had raspberry sorbet. The waiter insisted that we have two scoops each and then brought over some miniature pastries and candies.
I was about to explode.
As we were leaving the waiter asked me to wait a moment so he could give me a check to sign. The check was for $00.00 - weird!
As we were getting ready for bed, Donnie was reading the information about Opatija, the Croatian town the ship was to stop at the next day. One of the highlights she read about was "The Croatian Museum of Tourism". I am not making this up. I then realized how brilliant these Opatijans were.
Here’s my imagined idea of how the Croatian Museum of Tourism is set up. First you go to the ticket booth and pay the $24.95 entrance fee. Then, after receiving your tickets you enter a long, dark hallway and eventually arrive in a large almost pitch black room. After enough people have arrived in the room, they suddenly turn on the lights to reveal a large wall-sized mirror. Behold, tourists! Pretty sharp these Opatijans!
I was awakened by the stateroom telephone. The ship’s staff were calling to inform Donnie that her breakfast was on the way. She had decided that she wanted breakfast in our stateroom because she didn’t like to have to wash and dress before going out to breakfast. I, on the other hand, prefer to have my breakfast hot, and with coffee that isn’t incredibly weak "Jus de Chausette" as the French describe it, which means "sock juice", but, wonderful husband that I am, I gave in and Donnie ordered her in-room breakfast. I just had bad coffee.
We felt like NOT rushing out to see Opatija, but chilling for a while and maybe going out later, since, from everything we had read, one could experience the highlights of Opatija in about fifteen minutes. Ok, maybe that’s a bit too cynical. From our balcony, Opatija looked quite pretty. We were just a little tired.
After chilling on our balcony for a while we headed out. We got onto Croatian soil, or more accurately, concrete at 10:45. We soon found a park containing something called the "Walk of fame" which was a wall covered with several mural drawings of famous people, a few of whom I recognized, like Albert Einstein, and many others that I never heard of. We walked through the park which also had a large variety of unusual trees, including a California Sequoia.
Opatija was really a very pretty little town, adjacent to very beautiful, clear water. We walked for about an hour along the waterside promenade. We saw the "Girl With The Seagull", purportedly a famous statue, which, of course, we had never heard of.
Ultimately we got back to the ship a bit after noon. Although very pretty, Opatija has mostly eighteenth century or later buildings so I guess we can’t claim that we found any Medieval Mediterranean marvels today.
After dropping our encumbrances in our stateroom, we ended up going to The Windows Cafe, otherwise known as the buffet, for lunch. We were surprised that it was totally empty. Then we were told that it would open in five minutes. Still, the was nobody waiting to get in, nobody sitting at the indoor tables and only a few people sitting at the outdoor tables. This was surprising to us because on all our previous cruises the buffet was always crowded.
We grabbed an outdoor table and when the buffet opened we got lunch. Another surprise was that, unlike lunch yesterday, today you could serve yourself. You didn’t have to ask a server to get the food for you.
After lunch we went up to the Living Room a very airy, comfortable lounge area at the top of the ship with beautiful views out the front and very comfortable chairs and we did a crossword puzzle and had beverages, free beverages!.
At 4:00 we went to a Pub Quiz or Trivia contest. We joined up with a couple from England and a young man from Switzerland. We got eighteen and a half out of twenty. We won! Ahh, isn't cruise life wonderful.
They gave out pieces of paper with half-inch squares printed on them and told us that you collect stamps on the paper to win prizes at the end of the cruise. You get one stamped square each for participating in a quiz and another each for winning. So now we already had four squares stamped. Oh boy! Not only that but they said that one of the prizes was an Azamara pencil!
At 6:00 we went out on deck to watch the ship sail away from Opatija. Then we checked the menu at the main dining room and then checked out the only onboard shop that was open, the jewelry shop. Donnie was admiring some small pearl earrings so a salesman came to show them off. Donnie asked the price. They were over $4000. She declined. Actually she went screaming from the shop - just kidding. We then went and had some drinks in The Den while once again listening to the pianist.
We had a very good dinner in the main dining room. Unlike other cruises, we didn’t have to wait for a table but we were seated immediately. The atmosphere was very nice and the food was quite good. We finished just in time to attend the captains reception, which Donnie wanted to go to. The Finnish Captain, known as Captain Mikhael, fancied himself as a comedian. He wasn’t.
Afterwards, they started the show which was a rock 'n' roll show which I wasn't too thrilled about when they announced it, but it turned out really good. It starred a singer/piano player named Martin Kaye. He sang quite well and played the piano amazingly. He was a madman. He never stopped moving. Banging his legs up and down. Jumping around, jumping up on the piano. But he sang and played really well. He did songs by Jerry Lee Lewis, The Beatles, Elvis, Johnny Cash, and Elton John. Even though this wasn’t my favorite music genre, I enjoyed the show. Donnie loved it.
After breakfast we disembarked the ship and walked into Zadar. The first thing we came to was the "Greeting to the Sun", a solar powered light show circle in the concrete pavement. We hope to come back after dark and see it in action. The next thing we passed was the "Sea Organ", a man made musical instrument that looks like some small holes in the concrete walkway right next to the water. It’s driven by the waves and makes a sound like an organ. Both were created by a Croatian artist.
Afterwards we visited the Church of St Donat, which is circular and dates from the ninth century. We had to pay three Euros apiece to enter and see the interior which was very bare, but it was interesting to see.
Then we walked around old Zadar, which does contain some very old buildings and some Roman ruins but there were quite a few modern buildings also. One unusual thing we noticed was that there were a very large number of ATM’s, almost one every few feet and also quite a large number of eyeglass stores. There were the same things in every Croatian town we later visited. I have no idea why.
It was also interesting to try and read the signs. We’re used to European languages that have Latin roots, which means that we, having studied French in school, and having a tiny smattering of Italian, can usually guess the meaning of some sign. But Croatian doesn’t appear to any relation to Latin, so the signs, for the most part, meant nothing to us. However, we figured out from one of the signs for the ferries that we aren’t even in Croatia. We’re in Hrvatska. That’s the real name for this country.
As we were walking slowly back in the direction of the ship, I saw a little shop with a shirt displayed outside which was identical to one I had tried to buy recently on our trip to Venice. It had a picture of Albert Einstein proudly showing off his arm covered in tattoos. We went into the shop and asked the woman there for the price of the shirt. She quoted us an amount in Croatian Kunas, so I asked for the price in Euros. She said forty euros. I said we’d think about it and come back later and started to walk out. This, of course, was a signal for her to start bargaining. Eventually the price worked its way down to twenty seven euros so said ok and took some bills from my wallet. I had a twenty and a five so I said how about twenty five. She didn’t look happy but she agreed. It was still too much to pay for the shirt but was way better than forty, which I wouldn't have paid.
Having read about the things to see in Zadar, the next item on our list was the Cathedral of Saint Anastasia. Checking our devices, we found that we were only a block away so we headed to the front of the cathedral. As we approached we started to hear organ music. When we entered the cathedral, we were enveloped by the huge sound of the large pipe organ on a balcony above the entrance. The sound was magnificent. We enjoyed the concert tremendously. What luck finding the cathedral just at the right time.
Back on the ship, at 3:30 we went to meet our trivia team from yesterday in The Den. This time there were seven of us. Amazingly we won with only twelve correct out of twenty. The questions were hard. After the General Knowledge quiz, there was a music quiz and we hadn’t planned to stay but our team convinced us to stay. The quiz was all about Beatles songs, about which we knew nothing. The host played ten second clips and you had to write down the song title. We had no clue, but our team got 20 out of 20!
At 5:00 we went up to the Living Room to attend the Azamara Circle cocktail reception. We had some specially prepared cocktails, as they were described, and some snacks and Donnie chatted briefly with one of the ships officers who was from New Zealand.
After sunset we went back out on land to see the Greeting to the Sun lights. It was spectacular. There was even a guy playing the Saxophone right in the middle of the lighted circle. We took a lot of pictures and then walked over to the Sea Organ which was in full voice. It was a fun end to the day.
Today we got another late start, which was becoming normal. We did the very long walk from the ship to the old town. During his announcement this morning, the Captain said that it was a five minute walk. Perhaps this was one of his attempts at humor. It was more like twenty minutes.
Split is famous for Diocletian's Palace which is an ancient palace built for the Roman emperor Diocletian around 300 AD. Its remaining parts comprise about half the old town part of Split. We walked through the Brass Gate (which isn't brass) down some steps into an old interior space called the Palace Basements, which is now occupied by some vendors selling things like antiques and collectables.
Then, going up some steps we were in an open area with Roman columns called the Peristil. Other parts of the old palace that we saw included the Bell Tower, the Silver Gate, the Golden Gate (which were neither silver or gold), and, not part of the palace, the huge statue of the protector of Split, Grgura Ninskog. Given his expression, I called him Saint Pissed-off. We were told that we were supposed to rub his big toe for luck. We declined.
We wandered around the little twisty streets, all different. Once again there were ATM’s every five feet. This is not an exaggeration. I have never seen so many ATM’s. It was weird. There must have been over a hundred. We wanted to see the Temple of Jupiter, but when we found it we discovered that it was tiny, had been turned from an ancient Roman Temple into a baptistery, and also had a large admission charge, so we skipped it. Eventually we exited the palace via the Iron gate and then started back on the long walk to the ship.
At 4:00 we went again to join our team for the Pub quiz. Our team triple tied, getting sixteen correct out of twenty. This time the host chose to do a tiebreaker. Our newest team members got the tiebreaker so we won again. We sat in for "The British Invasion" music quiz. Our team won again, getting an amazing nineteen out of twenty. Donnie and I contributed nothing.
At 6:00 the "White Night" event started on the pool deck. This is a feature of all Azamara cruises. It's a buffet dinner and party on the pool deck (weather permitting) where everyone is requested to wear white if possible. Some people took this request a little far - wearing their terrycloth bathrobes with towels wrapped around their heads. The deck was decorated with lights and lots of tables and chairs.
We joined Cindy and Rick, a couple that we had met during the Pub Quiz and had been part of our team. They, too were serious travelers and it was fun talking to them.
There was a huge selection of food and drinks. They even had charcoal barbecue grills running, on a ship!
About 7:00 the band started playing and it became too loud to carry on a conversation. People were dancing and the party was going strong and a little loud and crazy, but about 9:00 it got windy and I got cold so we made our excuses and went back to our stateroom. It was a lot of fun.
At 8:00 the Captain sounded the ship’s horn and we split from Split. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist)
We woke up in the harbor of Dubrovnik. It was cloudy but with occasional sun. The ship couldn't dock in Dubrovnik so this was a tender port, which meant that you had to take small boats, referred to as tenders, into town. In this case the tenders were the ship's lifeboats.
Dubrovnik is a very beautiful old town. It’s a very, very popular destination these days, sometimes being very crowded. Luckily for us we seem to have picked a good time to come because it wasn’t too crowded.
After we tendered into the town, and wandered a little we had to do the one thing that everyone recommended to do in Dubrovnik which was to walk on the old city walls. So we paid about fifty euros (ouch) entrance fee and then climbed one hundred steep stone steps up to the city wall. We read in many places that the city wall was spectacular and not to be missed. They weren’t wrong.
We walked the wall, climbed up and down many old stone steps, sometimes without any handrails or even something to steady oneself on, and took lots of pictures. We walked around the wall for about an hour and then went down and had a drink and a small snack in a little outdoor cafe.
We continued to wander around Dubrovnik, which is what we do in pretty old cities. Dubrovnik is a much more sophisticated place than our previous ports. The ATM’s were every fifteen feet instead of every five. The pizzerias were every five feet. Oh, and one other sophisticated thing about Dubrovnik - they must have filmed some scenes from some TV show or movie called "The Game of Thrones" in Dubrovnik. There were lots and lots of shops selling all kinds of "Game of Thrones" plastic merchandise, signs advertising "Game of Thrones" tours, etc. It really added to the medieval tone of the city. Eventually we grew tired and so we took a tender back to the ship and had a late lunch.
News Flash: This afternoon Donnie was happy - she did laundry.
We attended the Pub Quizzes. We lost - both the general knowledge and the music quizzes - by one point. At least we got stamped for participating.
At 6:30 we went to the "Destination Celebration Event", which is what Azamara calls their special entertainment event, another feature of Azamara cruises. Before Covid they had these events somewhere off the ship and they were called AzAmazing evenings. They said they would be reinstating them soon but now they’re onboard.
The pool deck was set up with cloth covered chairs. They gave out blankets. There were hors d’oeuvres. The guest artist was Ana Rucner, a very pretty young Croatian woman, who played a skeletonized electric cello and did very animated renditions of portions of jazzed up classical pieces, among other pieces.
To my surprise, she started with a small part of Orff’s Carmina Burana, a very sophisticated classical choral work. Next was Ravel’s Bolero - then a bit of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons - then some more popular music which she sang also. Even some Croatian folk songs. And then… a jazzed up Beethoven’s Fifth! And yes, a jazzy Ode To Joy from Beethoven's Ninth. Poor Ludwig! She ended by singing some old American pop song while dancing around in the audience. It was an entertaining event, but not really spectacular, and not really something we appreciated much.
After the concert we went to dinner with Rick and Cindy and we used some of our onboard credit and bought a $122 bottle of wine for the table which Rick had recommended to us the previous night. He used to be a very serious wine collector. We chatted for quite a while. We’re were almost the last ones in the dining room. The wine was good but not worth the money, as far as we were concerned, then again we had to use up the onboard credit or lose it.
It was a beautiful sunny day today. We got a very, very late start again. We became good at that. We tendered ashore about 11:20 and after Donnie took the necessary two hundred pictures from the dock we walked along the waterside promenade in the opposite direction from town, where we saw nothing of note. We eventually turned around and headed back toward town and ran into Cindy and Rick who joined us and we all walked along the other side of the promenade for a while, once again seeing a large amount of non fascinating stuff. The resort season must have been over because everything seemed closed. Hvar also had a park filled with a wide variety of plants, all cacti.
Hvar is basically a beach resort. Their definition of "beach" is a patch of rocks at least two feet square, next to the water. They have no idea what sand is. Nonetheless there were a number of beach clubs with deck chairs and small buildings right by the water and the rocky patches. Surprisingly, there were a number of bathers, mostly locals but we met some people from the ship who were going to go swimming. We even saw a few dogs swimming with their owners. One border collie was an Olympic champion swimmer.
We walked and chatted with Cindy and Rick for a couple of hours and then tendered back to the ship. On the tender we ran into another couple, Jean and Ed who had joined our team the other afternoon so we invited them to join us again.
Once again we attended the Pub Quiz. So we now had a killer team - Donnie and me, Julie and Paul, Cindy and Rick, and Ed and Jean. We won the general knowledge quiz but lost the music quiz, which was about movie theme songs. We were doing pretty well on the movie quiz but another team beat us.
In the early evening we went up to the Living Room to enjoy the sunset and watch as the ship sailed away from Hvar. There was a singer and a small band playing relaxing songs and they were good.
We had noticed a little water on the floor of the bathroom last night and again this morning so I called guest relations and they sent a plumber who arrived quickly and fixed the leak quickly - good service.
We had booked an excursion today so we left the ship and met the tour guide and took a one hour bus ride to Trogir, described as an attractive medieval city, where we met up with a young woman who was the local tour guide for our half of the group. She walked us around Trogir for about 45 minutes describing things. Trogir was probably a nice little pretty town a few years ago, but now it’s too commercialized for my taste. There were hundreds of restaurants and hundreds of shops and the obligatory millions of ATM’s. We then had about an hour to walk around on our own. Then came the bus ride back to the ship.
During the bus ride the main tour guide, Mirko, told us how he learned good English. He said that even though Croatia requires mandatory English classes in school, the real way they pick up good English is by watching American and British TV shows. He said in the larger, more prosperous countries the TV shows were dubbed into the native language, but in smaller countries the shows are broadcast with the original English sound track and subtitled in the native language, so he would hear the English and read the translation, so he said he learned English from Seinfeld.
After lunch we had lots of fun - we started packing - ugh. Later, it only seemed like an eternity later, we took a break for the Pub Quiz. Our team of eight tied for first place and we tied for the tie breaker. We nearly won the music quiz which was on Jazz, but should have been called the Frank Sinatra quiz. So we ended up with sixty stamps on our tally sheets. Oh Boy! We had high hopes of getting some really cool prizes.
While the quiz was going on the captain announced that four people hadn’t made it back to the ship by the all-aboard time but that he was going to wait a little bit for them. He actually wanted forty-five minutes and they came running up to the ship. That was very nice of him.
At five fifteen we went up to the Living Room and redeemed our Pub Quiz points. They had lied to us - there weren't any Azamara pencils! But as the quiz host said, the prizes were life-changing. Donnie picked a Blue plastic Azamara tumbler and a blue Azamara lanyard. Wow - what a haul!
Then we hurried back to the stateroom to continue packing. What fun!
Copyright © 2022 by Jeff Kravitz