Naples & Pompeii, Italy

Legend docked Monday morning in Naples in southern Italy.  We were soon off the ship and headed on foot for the railway station where we caught a train to Pompeii at the base of Mt Vesuvius.  A big crowd was already lined up at the ticket box to the Pompeii ruin when we got there.  Our expectations were high but we were left decidedly underwhelmed.  In our opinion the reality didn’t match the fame and hype of Pompeii.  It was a mildly interesting site at best and  a couple of hours were enough for us.

More interesting was the Naples city centre that we explored after the return train journey.  In places Naples is edgy and grungy, but it also has several fine piazzas with grand buildings.

We wandered from piazza to piazza, eventually stopping for a slab of pizza each on the sidewalk, then strolling back down to the docks and reboarding Legend in plenty of time for our 7pm departure.

Olbia, Sardinia, Italy

A week out from Barcelona and we’d become very comfortable with ship-board life.  No daily checking in or out of hotels, no struggling with luggage on buses, no timetables or schedules to work out, no meals to think about.  Legend docked in the small port city of Olbia in Sardinia, but with both of us battling heavy colds we did no more than walk up and down the quaint main street and buy a couple more packs of Fisherman’s Friends before returning to the ship.   

Day in Marseille, France

Marseille on France’s Mediterranean coast is the country’s second-largest city and biggest port.  Over past decades it’s been through tough economic times and become run down with high unemployment, particularly amongst the many immigrants who enter France here.  But some giant infrastructure projects are underway to brighten up both the city’s streetscapes and its economy.  We took a bus from the port into the city centre and ambled along the waterfront, inspecting the small fish market and shops along the way. It was now a case of Bon Jour rather than Hola, and Merci rather than Gracias.        

Palma de Mallorca, Spain

The Spanish island of Mallorca (aka Majorca) lies in the Mediterranean Sea about 200 km out from Barcelona.  It’s the largest island in the Balearic archipelago, and a playground for affluent boaties and tour groups that stream in from all over Europe to enjoy the beaches and soak up the sunshine.  We had just a day here and spent our time wandering around the centre of the main town, Palma. There was a large market underway in Plaza Mayor pulling in the crowds.  As did the Palma Cathedral on the waterfront, featuring some characteristic interior work by Barcelona’s famous son Antoni Gaudi.

Barcelona, Spain

Just when you think you’ve seen everything there’s Gaudi - Antoni Gaudi.

Barcelona seems a less formal, more laid-back city than Madrid.  It’s certainly a pleasant place to walk around and we did plenty of that, checking out the popular tourist sights in the old town centre and down at the international ferry and cruise ship port.

The highlight for us was undoubtedly the work of the Spanish “modernist” architect Antoni Gaudi. We travelled the metro to check out some of his residential buildings still standing on city boulevards, and in Park Guell to the north of the city where Gaudi lived in his later years.  But without a doubt his crowning achievement is the soaring cathedral La Sagrada Familia. Still unfinished after more than 100 years of construction, it’s supposed to be completed within the next 10 years.  All that remains to be done are several external towers.  Unfortunately Gaudi won’t be there for the final cutting of the ribbon.  He died nearly a century ago in the 1920s, an elderly man, though his life still sadly cut short when he was run down by a city tram.          

Outside, La Sagrada Familia is rather drab; organic and forest-like in appearance, tree bark-like in colour.  But step inside and prepare to be astonished.  We’ve never seen a building like this one.  The interior seemed a case of ‘Jesus meets Star Wars’.  Was Gaudi on drugs when he designed this place, we wondered.  The answer was in the basement in a small museum explaining Gaudi’s inspirations and designs.  No, he wasn’t on hallucinogenics. Rather, Gaudi was a devoutly religious man, and as an architect, deeply inspired by the geometry in plants, of which he had a deep mathematical understanding.

With that information, the interior took on a whole new perspective.  Speaking of perspective, every step or tilt of the head introduced a new one.  And the interplay of structure and light streaming through the stained glass was magic, in one place resembling a large volume of suspended crumpled linen. This really is a rivetingly beautiful building.

La Sagrada Familia is ample reason alone to come to Barcelona. Everything else, and there is plenty more, could be considered a mere bonus.

Cuenca & Toledo, Spain

During our week in Madrid we made two day trips out of the city.  On Monday we spent the day in world heritage listed Cuenca, less than an hour away by bullet train.  Cuenca’s old town centre contains a row of amazing medieval buildings fused to the cliff faces of Rio Huecar.  These casas colgadas (hanging houses with wooden balconies) date from the 16th century and appear almost to have grown out of the cliff faces, so expertly are they fused to the rock.

It’s now mid Spring and the weather’s warming up. It reached 25C on Monday, a mirror image of the –25C we experienced above the Arctic Circle a few weeks ago. It was warm work climbing the steep track to the lookout on the eastern side of town, presided over by an enormous Jesus statue a bit like Rio de Janeiro’s, then to the very top of Cuenca’s old town centre itself.  From both places there were excellent views of the casas colgadas.  

It was mid afternoon when we walked into Plaza Mayor and we were hungry and hankering for some vegetables (like many places in the world, Spain’s cuisine seems a bit light on greens).  We found a shady spot on the edge of the town square and ordered a big salad and a freshly cooked paella also packed with vegies. A pleasant hour or so followed as we watched the comings and goings in the Plaza.

On Tuesday morning we were on another bullet train out of Madrid, this one bound for Toledo.  Toledo’s an old hill fortress town, its centre many centuries old.  400 years of Muslim rule ended here in 1085 AD, and shortly afterwards Toledo was recognized by the Vatican as a seat of the Spanish church.  It built a huge cathedral to match its place in the hierarchy; construction took 300 years and its interior remains astonishingly ornate.  Toledo once had pretensions to be the nation’s capital but that never came to pass and the city went into decline for a few centuries.  But today it’s a hive of activity once again as hordes of tourists sweep in daily to admire its aspect and architecture and ambience.

Madrid, Spain

Madrid has plenty of grand buildings but when we arrived from Oporto on Saturday we were looking forward to spending some time in a nice green park or two.  And there was no better option than Madrid’s Parque del Buen Retiro just up from the Atocha train station near to where we were staying.  We kicked off Sunday with a picnic lunch in manicured Real Jardin Botanico ablaze with the reds and yellows of flowering tulips and dahlias, then moved next door to the huge Buen Retiro. Thousands of Madrid residents were already there; this was obviously one of the city’s favourite weekend relaxation spots.

Near the Park are three of the world’s great art museums and we spent an hour in Museo del Prado admiring works by El Greco, Rubens and Goya amongst others.  But the highlight of our afternoon was the nearby Spanish Museum of Naval History.  Although not nautical buffs, both of us thought this was a fantastic museum.  The objects displayed were of very high quality and of great historical interest.  That most of the annotations were in Spanish didn’t seem to matter.  There were some incredible scale models of Spanish galleons, along with old navigation instruments, weapons and paintings including a romanticized image of Columbus’ first steps in America.

Madrid is a beautiful, green, clean, lively city with many different areas and facets.  It has countless attractive plazas and small side streets with quaint bars, shops and inns.  We liked it very much.

Oporto & the Douro Valley, Portugal

The city of Oporto in northern Portugal lies on the banks of the Rio Douro (River Douro).  It’s been a trading centre for centuries and is perhaps best known as the home of port wine, made from grapes that grow on the sunny slopes of the Douro Valley upriver.  Central Oporto is perched on the steep northern bank of the Douro, while south of the river the port wine manufacturers, each with their production plant, warehouse and retail outlet, are clustered together within an easy walk of each other.  We spent an afternoon checking out some of the visitor centres and sampling their wares; all very nice but no better or worse than South Australian ports.

Oporto escaped the devastating earthquake that destroyed much of Lisbon in the late 1700s.  As a result, although Oporto is generally more grungy than Lisbon, its central civic and commercial buildings are older and grander than Lisbon’s.  And its Sao Bento train station is special too; inside the entrance the walls are adorned with murals made up from 20,000 painted ceramic tiles.  Oporto seemed to us to have a unique ambience; it felt good to be walking around and we got plenty of exercise making our way up and down the steep streets between the Douro riverbank and our hotel in Liberdade Square in the heart of the city .

On Friday we took a train inland, into the Douro Valley.  The countryside was picturesque without being spectacular, and in places the terraced vineyards sprawled down the hill almost to the water.  We left the train at the small town of Pinhao in the centre of Douro viticulture, and enjoyed a long lunch at a country style restaurant where we served up chunky roasted pork and potatoes in red wine, stewed pork neck with tomatoes, vegetables, bread, olives etc.  It all came with a bottle of wine and several glasses of port (all Douro Valley of course) before, during and after the meal.  It wasn’t hard to doze off on the two hour train journey back to Oporto.

Sintra, Portugal

We took a train out of Lisbon for the day to the world-heritage listed village of Sintra in the hills not too far away.  Around Sintra there are several impressive castles, palaces and gardens dating from Moorish times, and more recently from the period of the reign of the 17th to 19th century Portuguese royal families.  The palaces have been restored and furnished to give a good idea of royal domesticity during those times.  The Portuguese are partial to painted blue and white ceramic tiles and there were plenty of these on display too. Although no longer lived in, the palaces are still used for state occasions.

The weather was bad and walks in the terraced gardens were out of the question, so we confined ourselves to exploring the palace interiors. We visited two – Pena palace, and the National Palace of Portugal.  From the latter it was a short walk back to the village centre and we were on the 6pm train back to Lisbon.