If there is a time and place for everything, choose Europe in the fall.
The summer sun has lost its intensity, cities such as Paris and Rome are back at work, children are in school and hoteliers are glad to see us. There is room to move on the roads and we don't mind slow-moving tractors piled high with grapes on country lanes.
Coming a long way and dreading the jet lag? A cruise ship is perfect for easing your way into a new time zone. Sit on the balcony with a glass of wine and reflect that cruising was born in the Mediterranean with the notion of going nowhere just for the pleasure of it. Times change and cruise lines now offer a variety of schedules, these days modified to avoid Turkish and North African ports, the aim being to visit the best places in a huge lake richly endowed with treasures.
My choice started with a flight to Athens and departure from the nearby bustling port of Piraeus. The ship was the elegant Silver Spirit of Silversea Cruises, as good as it gets afloat for just 540 lucky people. For example its cabins are rated among the world's best by the respected website Cruise Critic and good fortune had given me a Silver suite, twice the size of a veranda suite and boasting a coffee machine and big walk-in dressing area.
The marble bathrooms with tub and shower are places to linger and none on Silver Spirit have clingy shower curtains as found on lesser ships. Like every other cabin on the ship, we had the service of a butler to shine shoes, bring canapés and generally do what well-trained butlers do.
And so to the little island of Mykonos, just 150 km across an azure sea, where to land on the waterfront is one of travel's great joys. Here one just strolls and takes in the light and the colour, mostly white and blue, find a seat at a cafe, order an ouzo and watch people go by. How smart they look as well, many dressed by the boutiques that are everywhere, and that make you wonder why you brought anything from home.
Lunch was a delicious beetroot salad with feta at Captain's. We had also planned dinner ashore to take advantage of the 10 p.m. departure, but sadly the wind got up and we had to skip that. Back on board, Riccardo the restaurant manager found us a quiet window table.
This was to be a feature of the cruise. Silver Spirit never felt crowded. There was always a table for two in the main restaurant and for variety there's a cozy Asian room, the gourmet Le Champagne (these two at a $40 per person premium), a supper club, a popular Italian restaurant, and tables on deck serving superb meat and fish on hot rocks.
Contrast this with big ships carrying up to 6,000 passengers, where tables for 10 are the norm and on one line you have to pay for your wine before you even get to see the bottle. On Silversea the wines are included, as are all drinks. Good they are too — there was New Zealand sauvignon blanc and one night we enjoyed a 2009 Bordeaux.
It must be the sea air, but food is never far from a cruiser’s thoughts, although the shore excursion department did its best to keep us active. It was ably supported by Ira Feldman, who gave daily talks on ports and was always at hand with the right information.
And so on we sailed to Chania in Crete, which has a lively market with beautiful, inexpensive cotton shirts and dresses, and in a nod to the former Turkish occupation, lots of delicious lokum.
The main activity, as usual, was finding a good lunch and here Semiramis fit the bill. Most of the time I had a simple Greek salad, a happy memory of Orestes on Vancouver’s Westside.
Katakolon was our gateway for Olympia, where the museum with its stature of Zeus is wonderful. Syracuse in Sicily has very accessible Greek and Roman ruins, although this was not our best day as the lunchtime vongole was disappointing.
But then Sorrento. It’s said that the philosopher Nietzsche, not known for his effervescence, laughed with joy at the thought of coming here, and the writer Stendhal called it the most beautiful place on earth. We also took an excursion to Positano where an exclusive hotel opened its doors to a small Silversea group.
At fabulous Portofino we broke the bank at another of the coast's dreamy hotels and at a little restaurant in the village of Tarquinia, near Civitavecchia, I was delighted to find a vongole to rival that of Vancouver’s Umberto Menghi.
You too can have a superb vongole, probably without the leaving the ship, when Umberto Menghi does one of his stints as guest chef on Silver Spirit.
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