Terry
Smith’s Site |
Decided on this cruise, aboard Saga Sapphire, because it coincided with our anniversary. Nothing too exciting (this was reflected in the fact that there were only 475 passengers on board a ship that takes over 700) but a couple of ports we had not visited before. The trip over the Bay (of Biscay - notorious) was pretty bad. We're always saying that we've crossed the Bay many times and have not had too many bad crossings - now we've had one more! Weather was, actually, not very good (except for one or two bright spots) but what the hey! We hadn't come aboard for the weather.Ports visited were Cadiz, Ibiza, Barcelona, Tarragona, Alicante, Motril, Malaga, Leixoes We did know that we were going to see on board Hilary Davie (the Social Hostess who we had first met on her first trip as hostess, Christmas 2016) and Stuart Anderson (her partner) and it was lovely to join them on sailaway. Later on we bought Stuart's CD and we've played it at home a couple of days ago (April 2018) and it is STUNNING. Have bought many CDs on cruises but this is the best because nearly every song is composed by Stuart (sorry all those other people that we have previously bought CDs from). Quality.Many other highlights. We dined on the Captain's table (the third time in 17+ years of Saga Cruising) although we had dined with this Captain before. On his first Saga cruise he was invited to the Diamond dinner of Alf Smith (as were we).
The greatest highlight, we had Royalty on board! Princess Michael of Kent. She gave a couple of talks and was excellent. Our wine waitress, (Lucelle) got very excited about having a Princess on board but wondered why she had a boy's name. We explained that she was the wife of a Prince Michael and took his name and that he was a cousin of the Queen. The Queen, she was now really excited. The entertainment was fair to excellent. On the plus side there was Stuart (see above) and The Victory Piano Quartet from Ukraine (who we had seen before in July 2017, we thought they were above average then, we think they are excellent now!). Another star on board was Francisco Yglesia (Paraguayan Harpist). We'd seen him before and bought the CD, absolutely brilliant! |
Barcelona &
the Western Med. 2018 |