Welcome!

This week marks my second visit to Venice. The first was in 2004. My opinion remains unchanged: Venice is one of the most interesting cities on the planet.

Corfu, Greece, is located offshore from mainland Greece at Greece’s northwest corner, offshore from Albania, which has a turbulent history with Greece.  Corfu is proud to be Greece’s greenest island, in terms of climate.

Malta is nicknamed the “navel of the Mediterranean” since it is in approximately the middle of the Mediterranean Sea.  Its location has made Malta the object of conquest, starting with the Phoenicians, and followed by the Carthaginians, Romans, Greeks, Arabs, Normans, Aragonese, the Knights of St. John, French, and finally the British in 1813-1974, when Malta became an independent neutral country. 

I write this blog with the Ukraine war present as a disturbing cloud on the mood of our pleasant cruise.  As I mentioned in my previous blog, the cruise schedule is very busy in the upcoming weeks in the Mediterranean.  In fact, we will be in port on seven consecutive days, including two days (and one night) in Venice.  So my upcoming blogs will combine several ports, with as many photos as the ship’s internet will enable.

Until today’s port visit, Cadiz was just a name I had encountered sometime in the past.  I didn’t know anything at all about it.  Now at the end of the day, I feel enriched by learning about this city, as well as having visited an historic village named Vejer de la Frontera. 

What a difference the distance of three sea days between Cape Verde and Madeira makes!  The country of Madeira, like Cape Verde, also discovered and settled by the Portuguese, is the opposite of Cape Verde...

I first heard of Cape Verde Islands in the title of a jazz composition by pianist Horace Silver, The Cape Verdean Blues. 

Several blog readers have requested a description of our cruise life. 

At every Viking port, several different excursions with local guides are offered.  We didn’t want to visit another winery or cattle farm.  So we chose a city tour which included a tango performance.  Our local tour guide began by acknowledging that Uruguay is not a tourist “destination”...