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The Star Princess from Rome To Venice, Part I

By John F. Rooney

John Lazzatti and I sailed on the Star Princess on a twelve night cruise from Rome to Venice from October 28, 2007 to November 9, 2007. (In another article I told about our stopovers in Rome and Venice before and after the cruise.)

The Star Princess, too wide to transit the Panama Canal, is a magnificent ship of 109,000 tons which entered service in 2002. It carries about 2600 passengers. We never felt that the ship was overcrowded, or that we faced long lines or hordes of people. On a trip like ours shore excursions were handled extremely well.

The ship has no single cabins so we each had a double cabin. We were in outside cabins without balconies on Emerald deck (Deck 8). We had partially obstructed views, but we could still get good views outside through the large windows. For the twelve night cruise we each paid a total of $3532.00 including all taxes and port charges. We used Pavlus Travel.

We didn’t know until we were on the ship that two of the three dining rooms, the Capri and the Portofino, all three holding about five hundred diners, were anytime dining rooms where you chose when you wished to eat and with whom you chose to eat. The Amalfi dining room has two seatings and has assigned seating. In addition there are two ala carte restaurants where for $15 or $20 you can have a restaurant experience similar to a landside restaurant. The Lido was another dining option.

We embarked at Civitavecchia, the port of Rome. Our first night at sea we spent at second sitting at our assigned table in the Amalfi dining room with a middle-aged couple from Seattle. Later we made new friends and ate with them at various times in the Portofino. John and I each spent a total of $818.00 for eight guided land bus tours which were charged to our ship’s account. Lunch was included in almost every land trip.

Our first stop was Naples, but we never saw the city because we chose to see places outside of town. We first stopped at a farm outside of Sorrento where we received our first of two lunches that day, saw a demonstration of cheese-making, and were guided around the working farm. We were shown how olives were shaken into nets. A shop sold preserves, food items and spices. Because our shore time was limited, this stop was an unnecessary one. A farm is a farm is a farm.

Then we stopped in beautiful Sorrento, had free time to visit the shops and look down the cliffs at the beaches and harbor.

We had lunch at a Sorrento restaurant right in the center of town. The winding hilly road down from Sorrento provided great vistas of the Bay of Naples as we made our way to Pompeii. We toured the excavated site with its streets and houses and the stepping stones in the road to surmount the rain water. In the distance was Mount Vesuvius which on those fateful days had vomited fire and lava. The models of the corpses dying in agony from the heat and gases still inhabit their glass cases, but it is the model of the dying dog which gets the most gasps and sympathy from the crowds.

At Pompeii we saw a frequent sight which would become familiar on our daily tours. Our walking groups led by a guide would be joined by stray dogs. Pack animals, they would attach themselves to our group and go on the entire walking trip. Each tourist group would have its own dog looking for affection and food hand-outs. They knew the routes better than the guides and took shortcuts. They lived in the ruins or towns we visited. At the end of the day in Pompeii a pack of them were lying down in the street near the tour buses. Perhaps their ancestors had been living in the ruins for centuries.

In Pompeii the guide had us walk a long distance to get to the bus instead of having the bus come to us and pick us up. The long-winded guide said traffic lights in Naples were merely a suggestion, not a mandate. He said Naples time required, “Never do today what you can do tomorrow, and what you can’t do tomorrow, don’t bother to do at all.” He punctuated almost every comment with “Mamma Mia” as he played his role of the stereotypical Italian tourist guide.

Day Three was our one and only day at sea. It was a day of leisure on a hectic cruise with a lot of port stops.

On Day Four we were on the island of Santorini in Greece. This was the only time on the cruise when we were tendered ashore; the tenders were large local boats. They left us off at one port at sea level where we could board buses. During the day our bus wound around the island and ended up at a cliffside port. The land area where we rode at the beginning, even though there were houses there, was arid, grim, barren, and craggy. The guide said that the island had more wine than water, no wood, almost more churches than houses, and more doggies than men. It is, the guide said, the top tourist attraction of the Greek islands because of its beaches, its vistas, and its tourist facilities.

On our tour we visited a winery, saw the volcanic carved-out calderas, a word meaning cauldrons, and saw the island’s oldest Byzantine church with gold crusted icons. We learned that Greek Orthodox churches are divided into three parts. The altar is behind a screen of icons, and this holiest of the holies sanctuary is not visible to tourists. There are thirteen villages on the island as well as three hundred whitewashed churches with blue domes. Our tour ended at the charming cliffside town of Fira with its beautiful views of the Aegean Sea and its whitewashed buildings with cliff houses built in caves. You can take donkey rides up and down the hill, or you can have a long wait for the cable cars to take you down to the port. There are two cables in use, each with six cars holding six persons. We opted for the cable cars. Four gleaming white cruise ships lay at anchor out in the harbor.

The island is one of Cyclades, the circle islands. It has thrilling views, but I do not think I’d like a long stay, even though the guide said it is the most visited of Greek islands. Day Five: We were docked in Rhodes, Greece, where years ago I had spent a week. I can remember swimming at the beach every day and seeing rocks floating nearby. They turned out to be pumice made of baked sand. Rhodes has the great fortress walls left over from the days of the Crusades. Seven countries shared knighthood within the fortress of Rhodes.

We were shown the point where the Colossus of Rhodes once stood, its legs astride the port entrance. Now columns with deer grace each side of the harbor entry. The mountains of Turkey could be seen in the distance.

After a tour of the palace, we took a forty kilometer ride to Lindos where there is a famous Acropolis. It was a long tiring climb up the steps to the hilltop fortress with its ruins, part of it through the hillside town of Lindos. On our way down we got lost in the maze of narrow streets.

As we finished our tiring tour of Rhodes and arrived back at the ship, we realized how attached we had become to the comforts and bonhomie of the ship.

John (Jack) Rooney’s latest novel is “The Rice Queen Spy.” His first book was the thriller “Nine Lives Too Many” featuring his series detective Denny Delaney pitted against the arch-terrorist Felix the Cat. That was followed by the suspenseful “The Daemon in Our Dreams” a blend of the naturalistic and the paranormal. His work schedule includes “Clawed Back from the Dead” a new Delaney effort.

He was born and educated in Springfield, Massachusetts (Classical High and American International College), went on to receive a master’s degree in English from Columbia University, and finished course work for his Ph.D. at N.Y.U. He has written book reviews, and feature and travel articles for newspapers and magazines. He served in the U.S. Army as a military policeman in AWOL apprehension and in Times Square and Vienna, Austria. Rooney’s website is http://www.senneffhouse.com

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