About my painting in 2019

Sasslong da Alpe di Siusi

  

 Corvara

Abbaye de la Cambre

Sunset over Duino

 

 Nocturne

Popera grey

Whitby

Forest pond autumn

Forest pond winter

Andy and Clara at Rüdesheim

Birch in Oulanka

Terze da Gera

Leaf in stream

Cherry blossom

 

Irises

Wheatfields near Loonbeek 2

 

Wheatfields near Loonbeek 1 

Somacco

About yachting in Croatia

This summer we had the opportunity of spending nine days on board our friends’ Gianni and Serena’s yacht off Croatia.  When I say yacht I don’t mean a floating gin palace but a modest 11 metre sailing boat.  It’s actually their summer mobile home away from home, somewhat more attractive to me of course than a caravan.

Gianni who is from the mountains and also a ski instructor had always told me that as a mountain lover I would also love yachting.  That may seem paradoxical but it turned out to be quite true.  You have in both cases to adapt to a more modest lifestyle closer to nature.  In the mountains you only have with you what you can carry and you accept with gratitude the modicum of comfort a mountain hut has to offer ;  on a yacht space is at a premium and you have to simplify your daily habits.  In the mountains there are certain technical procedures you have to master and use as second nature ; on a yacht too (should I mention here the special pump action of the on-board toilets).  In the mountains you are in contact with vast open spaces and have to respect the forces of nature ; on a yacht too.  In the mountains you experience a feeling of awe at the scale and beauty of nature and a humility before it ; at sea on a small vessel too. In the mountains working together as a team in this environment gives you a sense of solidarity, camaraderie and freedom ; on a yacht too.

Gianni and Serena are both experienced seafarers. Theirs is an original love-story.  Both had recently broken up from their first marriage. Gianni as a hospital doctor had accumulated a vast amount of overtime he had to take at short notice in November as leave.  Serena having extricated herself from the small business she ran with her former husband wanted some time away.  Both being keen sailors and wanting to realize their dream of crossing the Atlantic on a yacht they signed up for the same three week trip on which all on board had to participate in navigating the sailing boat taking it in turn in watches round the clock. Serena was the only woman on board. That was how they met. If you can survive such an intense close quarter experience, you’re probably off to a good start for living together.  As land came into sight they we’re the only ones sad that it was over.  Back home at different ends of Northern Italy it didn’t take long before Serena moved to Piedmont. Later Gianni stopped working and they bought a small yacht together to sail away for a year and a half from Italy to Greece and Turkey.  Astridos, their present bigger boat is their second.  Suffice it to say that living on a boat is second nature to them.

Before taking up their generous offer to join them on board, there were  three main concerns in my mind.  What would it be like living in close confinement with another couple for a week ?  Would I be seasick ?  Would I fry to death being with nowhere to hide from the sun all around and reverberating off the water ?  Actually none of these fears was founded.

Gianni, Serena, Clara and myself have been on holiday three times together skiing in the Dolomites, staying in self-catering accommodation and spending the whole day outdoors together.  So we know we get along fine, share the daily food related chores without any problem, and have often sat all four of us together on the same chair-lift.  In fact on an 11 metre boat there is plenty of space with a separate cabin for each couple at opposite ends and anyway in a Croatian summer you’re outdoors most of the time, so we never felt on top of each other.

Off the Croatian coast there are one or two chains of islands.  If you sail between these and the mainland you never actually enter the open Adriatic.  The whole time you are on a calm inner sea.  The biggest waves to contend with are when some moron in a high-powered speed-boat unnecessarily cuts across your bows.  Actually an 11 metre boat is big and heavy enough to be pretty stable, it doesn’t rock when you walk up and down it, or do anything else energetic for that matter. So sea-sickness is really not an issue.

Astridos has a very comfortable main area below deck in which you can stand up, so it was possible to retreat inside if necessary during the hottest hours of the day.  Outside she is well equipped with a big and thick canopy over the steering area so that you can stay out of the sun there too.  I actually pursued a policy of no sun-cream, just stay in the shade and managed not to get sun-burned at all, apart from…

The main and most enjoyable activity for me on a Croatian summer holiday is swimming in the warm crystal clear water of the sea.  On a boat you don’t have to walk to the beach, you just go over the side when you feel like it.  The first thing I would do in the morning at 7 or before would be to get out of bed, walk through the boat and go straight into the water for half an hour or more.  Then several times again in the course of the day, as of when we had anchored or moored somewhere.  In fact I was swimming two to three hours a day every day.  Bliss.  Soon, as we settled in and became more relaxed so as not to stand on ceremony, it became clear that swimming costumes were a waste of time as they only slow down drying off.  Moreover, swimming naked is one of life’s great pleasurable sensations.  The only problem is that some parts of us are not so often exposed and therefore rather delicate, so I did get fairly sun-burned on my bum.

Serena and Gianni keep their boat in Monfalcone which is at the northermost point of the Adriatic (indeed of the Mediterranean for that matter) .   From there they sail South along the Croatian coast for two months every summer, until such time in the future when for family reasons they may be freer to take longer and go further.  To get the boat there to begin with they also had to sail it all the way round Italy from Liguria.  Of all the places they have sailed they reckon Croatia is the best.  The coast is really beautiful, there are countless islands, hidden inlets and bays, and plenty of protection from the open sea if needed.  It’s one big playground for yachtsman and in the season there’s plenty of them, including quite a few inexperiended ones on charter boats. Therefore, they prefer to go in June and July and be back for August when it’s too hot and too busy and they can return to the cool and peace of their home in the Alps.  Sounds like a good plan to me. 

This means that when we joined them early in July they were already on their way back up.  I mention this because the predominant winds in the Adriatic blow down from the North.  This was all too well known to the great maritime republic of Venice, the Serenissima, which could deploy its naval forces southwards quickly. However, coming back home means the wind is predominantly against you.  So although we hoisted the sails whenever we could on Astridos, most of the time we made a stately progress under power.  So I can’t claim we were actually ‘sailing’ most of the time, but when we were it was something else.  There is something truly magnificent about being under sail, the sudden silence where the engine noise is replaced by the whoosh and creaking of being driven along by the force of nature. Perfectly on cue, the very first time we hoisted sail, we saw our first dolphins leaping out of the water in the middle distance, it seemed somehow appropriate.

So there wasn’t really enough opportunity to become expert in the finer points of sail management but I was happy to pull on a rope or feed one out when told to.  On the other hand I did take my hand at steering quite a bit, even if Astridos has a modern auto-pilot.  In fact she is superbly equipped with electronic gadgetry displaying at an easy glance, the compass bearing, wind speed, actual speed of the boat and depth of water under the boat (which can vary quite alarmingly off some islands) , plus of course GPS to show you exactly where you are and how you’ve been zigzagging. Steering under sail was the most fun, seeing how much speed you could get up, actually faster than with the engine, by steering more or less into the wind. It would be easy to get interested in the techinical skills and arts of sailing and navigating and I admire those who have mastered them.  I think I admire especially the ability to manœuvre at close quarters, which would certainly have me worried about banging into something and doing irreperable damage.  Needless to say the skilled sailors took over from the novices as soon as things got tricky !

Perhaps I should briefly describe our itinerary, though ultimately it is of secondary importance.  We joined Astridos at a marina in Murter from where we sailed to a fine bay on the island of Zirje and discovered how for the night you can tie up at a specially installed buoy and part with your rubbish to the man who comes in a boat to collect your not exactly modest parking fee.  Our next overnight was for free in a small fjord like estuary south of the more famous Krka one.  From there it was too Prvic Luka off a small port on a typical small Croatian island with neat old villages linked by an attractive path through Mediterranean vegetation.

The highlight for me though was always going to be sailing through the National Park of the Kornati islands, a large arhicpelago of barren round islands with stone walls and grazing sheep, somehow strangely reminiscent of Yorkshire.  This was the way to visit them, leisurely on our peaceful boat with an overnight stay at the park’s marina, instead of being packed onto a day outing boat from one of the ports on the mainland.  Next came the wonderful Telascica Bay with its famous cliffs, every bit as good as their reputation.  Logistics compelled us to spend a night back in civilization at the noisy port of Sali.  Here we decided to stay on an extra two days allowing us to overnight at Mala Rava, one of Gianni and Serena’s favourite spots, and very pretty it was too with the usual excellent swimming.  From there it was to Brgulje from where we could get an early morning ferry to Zadar and a taxi back to our starting point, leaving our friends to continue sedately northwards back to Monfalcone.

As a new experience I found it all quite enthralling and quite in keeping with my temperament.  The mountaineer in me found he relished the similar experience of sailing and the holiday-maker was more than happy to adapt to the slower pace, with time for enjoying the simpler pleasures of life and contemplating the beauty of the surroundings.  All of this of course is wonderful to share with friends.

About my reading in 2012

I don't seem to have read that many books last year, or maybe it's just that some of them were rather thick.

As it was the Dickens bi-centenary I was going to read a few of his thick novels that I hadn't already read, but in the end two were enough.  "Dombey and Son" has all the usual comic and tear-jerking elements,  many-layered plot and host of well drawn characters.  "Martin Chuzzlewit" is particularly amusing in its put down of Americans; it's interesting to see how little love was lost between the British and them already a century and a half ago (or maybe historically post American Revolution that should be 'still').  Afterwards I contented myself with David Lean's film of "Oliver Twist" and a BBC "David Copperfield" featuring among others a very cute pre Harry Potter Daniel Radcliffe as the boy David.  No, rereading all of them was going to be too much like hard work: it takes a degree of patience and determination to plough through Dickens for all his good points.

A somewhat thinner comic novel from the 19thC was Thackeray's "Barry Lyndon" which is terrific fun, faster moving and lighter than Dickens (also of course an excellent Kubrick film).

Another thick novel was Grosman's "Life and fate", a Soviet attempt at « War and Peace » set around the battle for Stalingrad and actually banned in the USSR for its not too flattering portrayal of society.  It's certainly not as good as Tolstoy but pretty interesting, though admittedly rather bleak.

On the recent fiction front I read Ian McEwan's latest novel "Sweet tooth" about spying in the 70's which I enjoyed.  

Julian Barne's "Arthur and George" is based on the true story of a man wrongly accused of killing horses and Conan Doyle who took up his cause.  

Kathryn Stockett's highly successful "the Help" is also based on the true stories of black servants working for white families in the Southern States in the 60s.  

Philip Roth's family saga "American Pastoral" is the tale of how a Jewish immigrant's son's quest to be an all American hero is wrecked by his daughter's anti-Vietnam war terrorist activities. It starts well but in the end I found its inconclusiveness rather frustrating.  

Last year's Graham Greene was his late and comic  "Monsignor Quixote" a delightful road trip through Franco's Spain between a priest in disgrace and a communist former mayor, affording plenty of opportunities for amusing philosophical discussions.

In a gesture towards reading in German I read the fascinating "die Purpurlinie" written by Wolfram Fleischhauer (a colleague of mine) which explores the possible story behind the curious painting in the Louvre of two naked women in a bath-tub, one pinching the other's nipple.

On to genuine history and biography.  My (re)reading of Gibbon took me through volume 2 of "Decline and Fall" but faltered around Justinian in volume 3.

I think the book I most enjoyed last year was Edmund De Waal's "The Hare with amber eyes" which is a history of his Jewish family, the Ephrussis who originated as grain merchants in Odessa moving on to become important financiers in Vienna and Paris.  The main character in the section on late 19thC Paris was one of the models for Proust's Swann. He amassed a collection of Japanese miniature sculptures or 'netsuke' including the hare with amber eyes of the title.  The collection passed as a wedding present to the Vienna branch of the family who are described in the next section from the apogee of the Austro-Hungarian empire with the cultural and intellectual ferment in Vienna, through to the Anschluss by the Nazis and the inevitable catastrophe for the family.  The netsuke collection survives and comes back to Japan with the author's uncle who settles in Tokyo.  It's a fascinating and beautifully told story covering some momentous periods in European history as experienced by family members. 

Alex Ross's "the Rest is noise" is a stimulating and broad account of the history of 20thC classical music, refreshingly free from the critics' common obsession with Schoenberg and his un-listenable successors, and instead keen to present enthusiastically all the many strands interwoven in the serious music of the last century, in a way whch had me reaching for some of the less listened to parts of my CD collection.

Last year's De Botton was "Essays in love" which dissects in his usual amusing and insightful way the psychological and philosophical implications of progress through a love affair.  This prompted me also to re-read Alberoni's "Inamoramento e amore", which is far more serious.

On my way to seeing/reading the complete works of Shakespeare, as well as a preparatory pre-perfromance reading of "Richard II" I also read "Troilus and Cressida" for the first time.  I've got another four to go.

I admit to re-reading Woolf's "the Waves", for the seventh time.  I don't tire of it because of the beauty of the language and truth of the feelings described.  In a particulalry sad moment I also re-read all of Baudelaire's "les Fleurs du Mal" for the first time in a long while, but I had to conclude that alongside my favourite poems, there are a good many I don't care that much for, so I'll stick to my edited highlights in the future.

A fairly thin crop for 2012 then, with the usual domination of fiction and some re-reading.

About snow-shoeing

For all my winter outdoor activities over the years I had never got round to snow-shoeing.  I guess that's partly because as a skier I had always regarded it as a bit infra dig.

However, my mountaineering companion, Alex, doesn't ski and so for a winter weekend in the mountains snow-shoeing was always a possible option for the two of us.

Quite suddenly on New Year's Eve Alex proposed an outing and three days later we were on the evening plane to Geneva.  There is something exhilirating about doing something at the drop of a hat on minimal forward-planning.  With no time to build up expectations everything is a pleasant surprise. I think I shall make spontaneity a New Year's resolution, if that is not an oxymoron.

A short drive in a hire car brought us late at night to the small picturesque Savoyard village of Abondance in France to the South of the lake.

There was little snow left in the village (850m) and the valley was in cloud the next morning – not a promising start.  Still we hired the snow shoes and bought the wherewithal for a picnic, crusty baguette, the outstanding local mountain cheese and a saucisson and then headed up a steep side road in the car to where the snow started (1100m).

This looked more like it, a bit off the beaten track but signs of other walkers having set out, I confess to not actually having the relevant map.  The basic idea was to stick to a totally safe non avalanche-prone route mainly on forest track.  There would be no ARVA, shovel and probe for this one, unlike when I go ski-touring.  Actually I was in the mood for something risk-free and non-technical.

We adjusted the straps and foot-length on the snow shoes as explained in the shop.  In the old days they looked like a pair of tennis rackets (hence the French expression "raquettes") but not any more.  Your modern snow shoe is a fairly lightweight piece of heavy-duty plastic shaped like a boat.  It is equipped underneath with several steel points to stop it slipping when icy.  You strap it onto a regular hiking boot by tightening adjustable straps similar to those on a snowboard.  The heel is free but can be blocked for steep descent, so you don't go arse over tit if your foot gets stuck.  The rear blocker can also be used as a wedge beneath the heel for steep ascent, all this being very similar to a ski-touring binding.  The pivoting toe section is equipped with crampon front pointers should the going get really tough.  In short the modern snow shoe is a convincing bit of kit, with several refinements that go beyond merely presenting a large enough surface to prevent sinking into the snow too far.  The only other thing you need of course is a pair of sticks.

After a couple of false starts we headed off in the right direction and suddenly the clouds started to disperse, initially inundating us with a special blue light then lifting to reveal a wall of snow dusted cliffs and peaks at the end of the valley.  The forest track wound steadily upwards and walking with the snow shoes came naturally, you didn't have to keep your legs too far apart to prevent yourself standing on the other shoe and it was only marginally more tiring than walking without them.  However, stepping backwards to take a photo proved to be problematic.

At one point we could see that our track did a number of zig-zags before emerging out of the trees much higher and there was a clear direct steep route up off the track where people had skied down.  This was too good to resist so we struck out into some seriously deep and later steep snow to see how the shoes performed in more serious conditions.  They went remarkably well, holding me securely and comfortably.

We emerged from the shade into the sun at a high Alpine pasture dotted with small closed-up summer chalets under snow-covered roofs.  From here a narrower path was signed as leading to a pass up a safe looking route, so since it was still early this seemed a reasonable destination to aim for and we climbed on.  The views got better and better.  It was a tonic to see clear blue sky with the sun reflecting of the dazzling snow after two weeks of indifferent grey weather in Brussels.  At the top we could see across to a distant jagged ridge.  We realized from a sign that we had come up 600m and hence were feeling a bit tired so sat down to enjoy our picnic in the sun and admire the view.  This was most definitely what we had come for.

On the way down we couldn't resist the temptation of taking the same short cut and had to work out the best technique.  I went for blocking the heels and semi-gliding down in a line perpendicular to the slope.  The deep snow and steel points on the shoes offered sufficient grip to remain in control and it was geat fun to stride on down the steep hill through virgin snow.

Snow-shoeing was turning out to be easy and enjoyable.  I confess to being slightly envious of those on touring skis shooting past us occasionally.  It confirmed what I knew that it's faster and less tiring to ski back down (though obviously more tiring and a bit slower uphill given the weight of the skis on your feet).  Because of that you can cover much more ground on skis than on snow shoes. Still on relatively easy terrain for a leisurely day out snow shoes are an attractive option requiring little technique.  

Snow-shoeing offers a great opportunity to get out into that special crystal clear silent environment that is the mountains in winter.

About being here (6)

Dear reader,

Welcome to season 6 of about being here.

Last year’s posts again tailed off as I became otherwise (pre-)occupied.

Or maybe it’s simply because the subjects left to write on are running out.

So no objective for this year.

ABH

About happiness

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are among the fundamental rights of the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man.  They can be read together: a man or a woman has the right to live and to be free to seek out his or her own preferred form of happiness. Here we have to qualify with J.S. Mill “On Liberty” that freedom to pursue happiness is limited by its not causing harm to others.  A pessimist who sees life as a zero sum game might argue that one man’s happiness necessarily entails another man’s unhappiness.  The optimist in me, however, does not see life that way so I believe with the American founding fathers that a harmless pursuit of happiness is possible.

The whole point of having the freedom to pursue one’s own preferred form of happiness is that happiness can take many forms which may suit each individual differently.  What indeed is happiness ?  It is a word used to cover many quite different feelings and states of mind: joy, pleasure, delight, bliss, satisfaction, self-fulfilment, contentment, peace of mind, serenity, wisdom - to name but a few and they are all quite different things.  Generally, being happy is regarded as a positive and desirable state.

“Happiness” then is something of a catch-all word, not unlike “love”.  There are many forms of love: the parents’ love of their child, the child’s love of its parents; the first love of teenagers and the love of a couple married for twenty-five years; love of one’s friends - to name but a few, and they are all quite different things.  Happiness may or may not be possible without love; although also Aragon writes “Il n’y a pas d’amour heureux” (there is no happy love).  Since love implies engaging with someone else, the happiness that comes of love, active and passive, is of a greater human value.  Indeed can a solitary man or woman truly be happy ?

If I were asked: Did you have a happy childhood ?  Is yours a happy marriage ?  Have you had a happy life ?  I would answer: “On the whole, yes.”  That is, all in all, taking the rough with the smooth, weighing everything in the balance, I have more often been happy than unhappy.  Happiness is not, nor could ever be, a permanent state in a normally constituted sentient human being living in this world.  It is a high to which there are always corresponding lows.  Its very elusiveness is indeed why it has to be pursued.

The main problem in the pursuit of happiness is recognizing when we have attained it.  Real happiness is here and now, it is of the present moment.  It is not the nostalgia for a sweetly remembered past which was not actually as we fondly imagine it to have been.  Nor is it the imagined perfection of a desired future which is actually unattainable.  Real happiness is only now and now is as good as it is ever going to get.  It never was better and it never will be better.  Perceived happiness is a clear case of the best being the enemy of the good.  The past and future can get in the way of full awareness of the present and prevent us from recognizing when we are happy.

Perhaps I am suggesting we should revise downwards our expectations of life.  I know I lowered mine a long time ago.  This is not being negative or settling for second best: it is merely embracing reality.  Some things are never going to happen, so get real and enjoy what you have for which you ought really to be very grateful.

In fact there is an awful lot to enjoy in what we have and what we are.  For example, as we recover from illness we are happy to have returned to good health; and yet we ought to be happy to be in good health whenever we are not unwell.  We have become blasé about the sheer miracle of being alive.  

If you can find enjoyment and satisfaction in the basic functions of life, a good meal, a good night’s sleep or in everyday society, a friend’s smile, an unexpected gesture of solidarity, or in nature, the warmth of the sun on your skin on an autumn day, the beauty of a tree, then you are well on your way to being happy.  I’m not suggesting that conversely when you’ve had a bad meal, a bad night’s sleep, somebody’s been rude to you, it’s raining and you’re surrounded by ugliness that you should automatically be unhappy; although I admit myself to soon becoming a grumpy old man in such circumstances.  I’m talking about an ability to recognize what is positive in everyday life which can become a background feeling that makes the difference between being predominantly happy or unhappy.

On a miserable day, however, we are going to have to fall back on some deeper form of happiness to avoid being unnecessarily sad.  Here we are moving away from the more sensual forms of happiness, joy and pleasure to the more rationalized forms of self-fulfilment, satisfaction, peace of mind and such.  It is a question of taking a step back from immediate impressions which may be adverse and unhappy, so as to relativize them by placing them in a broader context.  A lot of this has to do with getting outside of our immediate self and recognizing how we fit into something bigger, society, nature or put less abstractly how we relate to those who are close to us; in short recognizing our worth to others.  This is the motivation identified by Adam Smith in his “Theory of moral sentiments”: we try to behave in a way that will cause others to think well of us.

Perhaps all that I am saying is that we all want to be loved and if we know we are loved then we can be happy.

However, that is not something that is owed to us once we have outlived the child’s entitlement to be loved by its parents.  It is something we are going to have to work for.  A deeper happiness, therefore, entails some effort on our part.

The fleeting happiness of the moment, that of the senses, is a gift if you can recognize it, but you probably cannot hold onto it: Aragon again on man “quand il veut serrer son bonheur, il le broie” (when he wants to hold tight his happiness he crushes it).  The deeper happiness, however, is not given, it has to be pursued and striven for through engagement with others.  As such it is always subject to setbacks: our children fall ill; those dear to us die; our friends betray our trust.  There are real reasons to be unhappy.  Only a fool is happy the whole time.  Yet also it is foolish to be unhappy for trivial reasons.

Happiness remains possible but only here and now.

Happiness is about being here.

About cruising

I have just been on a cruise for the first time in my life.  I had never been on one before because it was not the kind of holiday I had really fancied, being one who generally by instinct flees the herd.  As such I was not keen on the idea of potentially being cooped up with a lot of people I might not want to be with, possibly even on a vessel pitching all over the place in bad weather.

To celebrate his eightieth birthday my father wanted to invite the whole family on a holiday together, initially thinking in terms of renting a villa somewhere.  At which point, my brother Simon who spent twenty years or so working on cruise liners and therefore knows them well and continues to holiday on them, suggested why not try a cruise.  Overcoming initial skepticism, the rest of us declared we were ready to give it a go, so he and his wife, Penny, who also used to work on cruises, were tasked with identifying a good one for our purposes.

The choice was for a twelve night Mediterranean cruise sailing from Barcelona on board the very up-market Celebrity Solstice.

As we were in a group of eight we had ourselves for company without having to worry about the other passengers. The agreement was to have dinner and spend the evening all together,  while being free to engage in different activities in varying sub-groups during the day.  This worked really well.

A modern cruise liner is a huge affair.  Ours was over 300 metres long with fourteen levels.  Basically it’s a very big floating luxury hotel, the size of a colossal apartment block.  On board were 2800 guests and 1200 crew.  And yet the Solstice is so well designed that to my amazement I never had the impression of sharing it with so many other people.  It was relatively easy to find comfortable spaces to ourselves.  So my main initial fear turned out to be unfounded and I could get on with enjoying myself.

Surprisingly also, given its improbably towering square shape that looks top-heavy (but isn’t really as all the heavy stuff is at the bottom), the ship was remarkably stable and you barely felt it moving - though I admit we were blessed with some partciularly calm seas. 

I now see why cruising has become so popular, so successful and such big business.  It offers the guests a secure, safe and clean environment where most creature comforts are readily available.  You unpack your suitcase once in a surprisingly spacious en-suite cabin (so much so it is actually called a “stateroom”), with your own balcony overlooking the sea and yet you are on tour and wake up in a different place each morning, as if by magic, thereby avoiding the hassle of repacking each time.

Most often the ship docks but occasionally it anchors in the bay and you are ferried ashore in tenders, which I actually found quite pleasant even if it means waiting your turn.  When we alighted that way in Villefranche on the Côte d’Azur and Kotor in Montenegro we were immediately in a picturesque small town.  The downside with docking is that the ship is so huge you can end up in a freight port looking at container ships miles from the centre of town, as in Livorno.  A great exception is Naples where you berth right next to downtown.

A lot of passengers opt for organized tours and as we docked in some ports I counted as many as 28 coaches lined up on the quay waiting for them.  However, all that is strictly optional and you’re perfectly free to do your own thing, which Clara and I did each time, knowing the language and indeed town in most ports of call.  The only thing you must remember is to make double sure you don’t miss the boat at the end of your time ashore, as it could prove expensive and difficult to catch up with it at its next stop.  How do they know if everyone’s got on ? The ship has a card and computer based system for counting everybody off and back on, being able to check faces against photos they take of you when you check in at the start of the cruise.

Our itinerary was basically to sail from Barcelona across to Italy then all the way around it to Venice and back to Barcelona, pausing on the Damatian coast on the way up and down the Adriatic.  The first stop was Villefranche near Nice where we spent the day with Italian friends who came to meet us from their house on the coast near Menton so we could go for a walk around Cap Ferrat on what later became a rather wet day.  From Livorno six of us did our own outing to Pisa.  From Civitavecchia we caught the train up to Rome to stroll around, see Umberto and Silvia and catch an unexpected glimpse of the Pope.  From Naples, Simon and Penny and the two of us visited Capri and did a fantastic walk high above the blue sea with views of rocky islets.  Then I showed Clara a bit of the centre of Naples.  

So after four intense days of shore visits I was actually ready for my first day all at sea without having much to do.  Nonetheless I found myself up at dawn watching us sail through the straits of Messina.  Since our party was having dinner early I found I became an early riser and visited the swimming pool at 7 every morning when it was very quiet before breakfast. 

After the day lazing on board it was time for another four days’ intensive tourism.  Kotor is situated at the end of a long fjord in Montenegro, which makes for an impressive sail in and out.  To the amazement of the rest of our group, Clara and I climbed the 250m up to the fortress and back down before visiting the old town.  Then there was an an afternoon and a morning in Venice, which never fails to delight.  Sailing in and out of Venice is quite outrageous as the ship actually transits through the Giudecca canal between San Marco and San Giorgio, the Salute and Redentore.  Standing on level 15 it’s like arriving on a very low flying aircraft, as you’re actually above most buildings.  They say it can’t be doing the foundations of the islands any good. Our last port of call was Dubrovnik, for me one of the prettiest old towns on the Mediterranean.   The final two days cruising back to Barcelona seemed to pass very quickly

Part of the basic cruise formula is that there is a limitless supply of free food on board.  There’s a huge cold and cooked breakfast buffet and a huge cold and cooked lunch buffet.  On the Solstice there is a more formal sit down dinner with a menu and waiters.  In case you’re hungry in between there are snacks, beefburgers, pizza, ice-cream etc available.  The opportunities for over-eating are endless and among the many guests a fair few were seriously overweight, mainly but by no means all of them American.  To make it more difficult to resist temptation, the food was generally very good.  It took a degree of will power not to over indulge myself and I confess to having eaten two main courses one dinner - not actually a good idea as I realized afterwards waddling around the deck on my post-prandial stroll.

If the food was for free, that is included, the drinks certainly were not, with just a beer starting around 5€. Actually it was difficut to tell just how much because being an American run operation the prices on board were in dollars and the billing was American in so far as any price you saw then had tax and gratuities slapped on top of it.  However, since no cash changes hands as it’s all done by on board billing cards,  it’s all fairly painless.  Anyway my father was gnerously picking up the tab.  Basically like any hotel and catering operation it’s on the drinks that they make their money.   Otherwise there was always limitless ice cold water and hot coffee free of charge. 

Feeding 4000 people evry day is no mean feat and requires a lot of organization of which we got a glimpse one day at sea on a guided tour of the galleys.  About half of the crew work in the food and beverage department.

The crew were from sixty different countries, our dinner waiting team was from Peru, Colombia and Hungary.  The captain was Greek. The guests also came from all over the world, plenty of Americans and Canadians, but also Brits, Spanish, French, Latin Americans, Russians, Japanese, Chinese, Koreans etc.  (Announcements were in English, Spanish and French.)

Actually the people on the ship were a microcosm of the world: the guests were from the rich countries, the crew from the poor countries.  Most of the crew are paid a pittance, thus they can be so numerous that the ship can provide a top quality service

Cruising has of course been in the headlines this year because of the Costa Concordia wreck.  It all goes to show that no amount of technology can protect you from human error and folly.  Risking over 4000 lives and around $700 million of hardware requires an impressive degree of recklessness. The worst part of the story though was that having holed his ship instead of going down with it the captain was one of the first off and rather farcically was shouted at by the coastguards telling him to be a man and get back on it to do his duty.  It’s a great modern moral tale of human weakness and I’m sure it will be the subject of film and literature.  Of course it’s not really funny as over thirty people died in the ensuing confusion.  That in turn has served to remind people that though a cruise liner looks and feels like a luxury hotel it is actually still a ship at sea and all the usual laws of nature apply.  Guests now pay attention at the muster station drill.

We saw Costa’s latest even bigger ship when in Venice, according to an article we read it is fully booked for its first voyage.  So apparently punters have not been deterred.

In Venice we had our own bit of drama when high gusting winds pushed the ship so hard one of the bollards on the quayside gave way and the ship slipped its moorings.  Fortunately our crew was on the ball and the situation was soon brought under control with the assistance of some tugs and the ship was repositioned.  The captain gave a full explanation afterwards.  I felt I was in safe hands.

As an introduction to cruising, I have probably been spoilt, by the standard of comfort and cuisine, the ingenuity of design, the quality of hospitality and gentility of fellow passengers aboard the Solstice.

So my first experience of cruising, to quote our jovial waiter Felix, is that it is “an excellent choice”.