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Sat Oct 14 Messina (Sicily): Hints of summer, an Italian summer: A great canvas awning, in green & yellow and with scalloped edges, flapped gently in the soft breeze wafting in from the Mediterranean. The midday sky was sapphire blue, soft and limitless, and with clouds like huge, ever-changing swirls of billowing cotton. A ferry and a small freighter or two were down below, off in the silhouetted distance, ornaments as if on sheets of shimmering blue glass. The veranda faced on well-tended gardens, greens and shrubs and punctuated by great stone & ceramic pots of richly colored flowers --- Bougainvillea and Oleander and, of course, Geraniums. Shaded serenity! Classic, whiskey-colored rattan chairs stood against small, neatly set tables. Stiff white napkins, like soldiers awaiting the start of the Battle of Luncheon, were posed in orderly formation. We were --- high above the Gulf of Naxos & with the Mediterranean beyond --- in charming Taormina on Sicily.

Soft breezes: I had been most kindly invited (through Cunard) to lunch at the Hotel Gran Excelsior, a classic 1920s structure complete with columned entrance, large, flower-boxed windows & small, iron-railed balconies. The bar, adjacent to the restaurant, is small, but invitingly cozy with polished dark woods, richly varnished stools and a backdrop of silken sheets (and which some ancient Roman emperor would have loved) in bone white & which gently fill, almost like sails on a old ship, as those elegant breezes come up, drifting off the sea. With the full blown summertime Mediterranean tourist season drawing to a close, the hotel was quite empty, almost enchantingly still. There were a few Germans, I suspect, in a corner. But then, gathered round a table and drinking those miniature cups of coffee, the air above them filled with clouds of cigarette smoke, were a half-dozen aged Italian men. They chatted away, dressed in suits & ties, even if their days “at business” had long past. They wore brimmed, summery straw hats. Together, they created a classic staging, say extras on the set of a Fellini movie, one leaning back to, perhaps, Mussolini’s Italy of the Thirties. One or two stared intently at us, almost as if, coming from another world, a different time to theirs. We have in fact interrupted, almost trespassed. Within, the hotel itself is the classically styled, mountainside palazzo --- an enchanting, almost hypnotic world of cool marble interiors, heavy furniture, overstuffed sofas, vintage Persian carpets laid on highly polished floors & huge mirrors with over-gilded frames and these all together on this warm autumn afternoon. The lamp lights were dimmed, the vast shades on them often fringed. The mood was utter & complete Mediterranean, mid afternoon, an almost sleepy enchantment.

Dancing feet: Jill & Jess are sisters (Jillian & Jessica and from London), cruise two or three times a year on Cunard and come almost just for the dancing. They spend hours in the big ballroom, promptly starting at the first dance and then keeping the gentlemen hosts busy til the wee hours. In their early 80s they tell me, they swirl, twirl, move with precision. They are very typical English-cruise ladies of a type: blonde hair, strap shoes in gold & silver and a blaze of rhinestones. They wear the full skirts or gowns that go so well with waltzes, two-steps, those reels. But most of all, they are happy – every day, each hour in fact, they are happy. Both widowed, they have remade themselves – and they are having fun together!

Sun Oct 15 Olympia (from Katakolon, Greece): Quaint little harbor with a few shops dotting the waterfront & then a short distance to Olympia, with lots of ruins dating back, well, a few years, to 776 BC, to the very first Olympic Games. Columns, walls & an 800-seat amphitheater. All pure Ancient Greece – straight out of the history books!

Praises! Dada is our Serbian-born shore excursions manager and, having attended every one of her superbly illustrated talks, I rate her as one of the best ever on a ship. With a degree in history, having lived in Greece and speaking 5 or 6 languages (well, of course!), she made us feel – through her talks – as if we'd already been ashore. And her talks were not only meticulously prepared but full of useful information – and also what we could do on our own and so without buying one of the ship's tours. Comparatively, I recall one port lecturer who, in his talks, showed the occasional photo and which he described simply as "a pretty place" and then promptly moved on.

​photo: OLYMPIC COUNTESS off Santorini, July 1998​