Saturday, 2 July 2011 - Taoramina, Italy
I wanted to come back to Taoramina because I remembered it looked in
person so much better than my film snapshots of six years ago. The
ship--Silver Wind also for my birthday cruise of those many years
ago--anchored again in Noxos Bay and tendered to Gardinni Noxos where
beach resorts extend to the bottom of the cliff that Taoramina perches
on high above. Above Taormina is another town, Caselmola, which looks
like a crown. Three vertical towns for the price of one! Silversea
apparently originally wanted the price to be $69 each to charge for a
shuttle bus to Taormina itself but relented and ran a shuttle bus
after some complaints from a guest who had sent them the schedule for
the half hourly free shuttle they provided in a previous visit. (It
was a particularly well written letter, by the way).
We took the 1 1/2 hourly first shuttle--a compromise but $168 cheaper
per couple than it might have been--up to Taoramina proper and walked
extensively through this still lovelier in person Sicilian town. Signs
were most explicit about eating antipasti and opening your spinning
reel, I believe. The main street still had marzipan in the shape of
various things not usually made of almond paste, and the view of now
kind of scary erupting Mt. Etna was fantastic. We even bargained with
a cab driver down to his asking price for one hour of his time to take
us up to Caselmola and got some fantastic pictures of Taormina and its
"Greek Theater" from above. (This was what I had wanted to do for six
years. Guess I'll have to find another "life goal" now.)
We came back to Taormina and took another walk around for a beer as we
watched a Sicilian wedding. Hint, lots of black suits. A gift shop
full of strange looking household decorations must have been owned by
the Italian relatives of a Greek shopkeeper in Rhodes who hollered
whenever tourists took pictures of his very similar store, "Everyone
takes the pictures, but nobody buys anything." The Sicilian relative
evidently found a way to indicate the same feelings.
We got back to Silver Wind to see the new Captain was flying his Waldo
flag (various explanations abound on the ship as to what the usual,
"Answering", signal was being displayed continuously for a week) and
observed a new group that had come on in Venice. The Peterson family
consists of 20 some folks of three generations led by three middle
aged brothers, all very military looking. This mostly DC area group
includes three doctors, a mess of 20-somethings, and two or three very
well behaved kids. Like the still on board Australian Group, now
wearing their name tags in addition to their little pins and eating,
drinking, and perhaps making bathroom breaks together, the Peterson's
seem to do almost everything together. Included particularly is
standing around and discussing sports, slapping each other on their
rear ends, and staying up late for something called "disco" or
"discus" or something.
Like the Aussies, the Peterson's are not a problem per se, but
Silversea's product is compromised by such groups in subtle as well as
explicit ways as I mentioned earlier. Besides the obvious effects of
ship offered tours being canceled for lack of customers who have their
own arrangements--now with 70 out of the 275 or so guests not being
prospects for the best run tour desk in years--the two groups will be
a large presence in the alternative dining areas, form two large
essentially closed groups at tea time and in the bars (including the
kids), and act very, uh, closed to all the other guests. Well
Silversea guests are not joiners particularly and many of us eat at
two and four people tables, the opportunities for meeting others on
these two cruise segments has been quite compromised by the
exclusivilty of these two large groups. Also, in addition to the two
"groups" traveling together this second cruise segment has what
appears to me to be the most well off folks I've ever sailed with.
While it's fun to chat with people about their three houses in France,
NYC, and London or their "boats" in Dubrovnik, some of our fellow
guests are the biggest slobs I've ever seen on Silversea. They bump
their way during their morning jogs through those of us taking
pictures from the bow (where one is not supposed to jog as that area
is above the officers' quarters on a ship where sailors still work 4
hours on/4 hours off watches throughout the day), and many of the
people on this cruise leave their water bottles and drink glasss
randomly on deck for the "bottle fairies" to pick up in the middle of
the night and leave a mess around wherever they sit. Oh well. I
usually book lower per diem cruises. Now I know another reason why.
I've have much more on this and the running of the ship in general
after we get home, regretfully too soon, in a few days.
By the way, with essentially all day visits recently to the Naples
area for Pompeii and Herculeneum and yesterday an all day trip to Rome
via local (filthy) commuter train, today's visit shortly to Corsica
and tomorrow to Elba, I will be catching up as best I can on the ship
and recent shore experiences shortly after our return to Boulder on
Friday (Lufthansa willing).
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