A cruise is a good “sampler” to help decide what locations to
revisit to explore in more depth. There’s lots I’d like to see in the various
Balkan countries (former Yugoslavia) as well as in Greece. I’m glad I got to
touch Albania but don’t see it as a future destination, nor do I have a desire to revisit Sicily or Rome, though I would love to explore Tuscany and Venice. Malta
would be great to revisit, though it’s unlikely given how difficult it would be
to get there. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Prior to Sicily all of our local tour guides were at least
good and some were great. The highest praise I can offer the Sicilian guide is
that at least she kept quiet most of the end of the day. For what it's worth, I did not see a single
person from our typically generous group give her a tip.
There was a bit of a delay getting connected with our 2 guides and 2 buses
at the beginning of the day and they seemed remarkably blase and not apologetic about it. The tour started with a long drive on a winding road to Mt. Etna, a
single (short) opportunity to get out and walk along the craters, and another lengthy
drive compounded by a local festival impacting traffic in a small town all
before lunch. The best line of the day went to a cacher who noticed an upcoming
tight turn with lots of traffic and involuntarily said “Jesus Christ” just as a
church with a prominent picture of the Virgin Mary appeared – a nice stress
release for a hangry crowd to hear deities invoked.
We finally arrived at the turn-off to the family-owned winery
that was our lunch spot but the road up was so narrow that the 51-seat bus
couldn’t drive it so the 20-seat bus turned into a shuttle. Except for starting
after 3pm, the lunch was ok though I learned that I dislike even good olives, that
I can only choke down so much eggplant, and that it’s easy to get buzzed
tasting 4 wines on a relatively empty stomach. Jana ate at a different table
and shared after the meal that both guides were similarly unimpressive. As a result
of the delayed timing, traffic, and our first “weather” or the trip, we never
made it to the town of Taormina which I'd been looking forward to.
I did manage to learn the following from Josie: Etna erupted
in 1669 and again in 1693 which explains why the Catania city center is Baroque.
She also acknowledged that driving in Sicily is “wild, no rules” though at the end of tour she scolded us for being culturally insensitive to Sicily's ways for gasping at the safety issue when several pedestrians strolled in front of the
bus for awhile at a pedestrian/bus mall.
Unfortunately, our guide in Malta was also not the best. Anna
spoke excellent English which was a great improvement, and the information she provided
on the bus was interesting and worthwhile. Her foible was that once we were on
foot she gave directions like “look here” which was probably useful for the few
people close enough to see where “here” was, and not sufficiently detailed for
the rest of us. She also had her set agenda and was not interested in adjusting
the tour to the geocachers – she kept assuming that we would use our free time
for coffee, souvenirs and restrooms. I reached a point of “I need to get away
from this before I explode” and informed one of our leaders that I would be
deviating from the group’s route and would connect at the agreed upon meeting time
and place; I was pleasantly surprised that several cachers joined me and we had
a lovely uninterrupted walk to the nearby cache.
Other that the tour, Malta was fascinating and utterly
enjoyable. I was fascinated by the brightly colored doors on many buildings, a stark contrast to the more achromatic Balkan Old Towns, and my photos show many different doors. I will describe one of my favorite activities of the whole vacation, the afternoon adventure, in my next entry. I've since learned that the landsharkz try to arrange for private tours
but use ship tours when they cannot find a private tour with consistently good
ratings. Needless to say, both of these (as well as our upcoming tour to
Pompeii) were ship tours, and I now have useful data to use for future planning.
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