All along the Mediterranean November 1st - 26th 2011

Back to being passengers on this lovely Fred Olsen ship, booked through cruise.co.uk, who send us frequent newsletters, some wryly amusing.

Just in case, I wrote a note to the Cruise Director, John Butt, saying we were pax but I did have my lectures with me, just in case & a list of them. This turned out to be a wise precaution.

The ship was the MV Boudicca, shown here in a photo I took on the cruise at Alanya in Turkey.

We were to pick it up at Portsmouth Cruise Terminal. I had booked a cab for 1115 & he got us to Waterloo quite quickly for £16, including booking fee & tip, so after I had got hot drinks (£3.90), we took the earlier 1200 train to Portsmouth Harbour. Outside, there were other cruisers waiting for the Fred's bus, which took about 40 minutes to arrive, just long enough to walk but Avis' bag was so heavy, I did not fancy it! Despite the enormous queue, we got our ship's bus passes quite quickly but sat around until our boarding numbers were called to, as it transpired, be bussed to the boat.

The trip took us from Portsmouth to
Motril in Theory, Spain
Port 2 - Cagliari, Sardinia
Port 3 - Trapani, Sicily
Port 4 - Alanya, Turkey
Port 5 - Iskenderun, Turkey
Port 6 - Limassol, Cyprus
Port 7 - Alexandria, Egypt
Port 8 - Catania, Sicily
Port 9 - Valetta, Malta
Port 10 - Algiers
Port 11 - Gibraltar
Port 12 - Lisbon, Portugal
& back to Portsmouth