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Greetings!
Greetings from impossibly beautiful Sorrento, where Explora I is docked for a generous 2 hours. By the time you read this, I will have returned to the ship for my final early evening lecture on the art and architecture of Rome. Tomorrow we disembark and head home to Riga.
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I will be sad to leave Explora. This was a brief engagement — perhaps even an audition — and I very much hope I’ve done a good job, because I’ve really fallen for what Explora Journeys calls “the Ocean State of Mind.”
I like all the lines I work for: if I don’t like them or the way they do enrichment, or it’s just not a good fit, I don’t pursue a relationship with them. I really admire what Explora has achieved with these ships: an understated elegance, a complete lack of friction, and a truly memorable dining experience. You are free to do whatever you like: active exploration, quiet, restorative relaxation, or any of the many activities available on board, from wine-tastings to Formula I simulation. I never once felt things were crowded; I never ever felt rushed, and I never felt that I was in the way.
The staterooms are equally comfortable with lots of modern conveniences, including lots of thoughtful touches such charging plates on the bedside tables, a coffee and tea station (always a major plus for me), a steamer and a pair of binoculars for sightseeing from the comfortable balcony. I like the soothing grey and taupe color combination, which makes the stateroom relaxing and restful.
The food has been next-level fantastic. Dmitry loves oysters, so we begin each dinner with a few of those and other items from the generous raw bar, hosted by the charming Valentine, who could not be more welcoming. I love the pasta station with its daily fresh selections that can be paired with one of 9 different sauces. The bread is also outstanding, and this is a weak point on many cruise lines. Not Explora.
Okay.
One thing I really welcome is the lack of a huge formal dining room, which I feel is outdated, stuffy, lackluster, and way too much work for both staff and guests. Explora agrees, and instead of the big Grand Dining room, they have four smaller but excellent speciality restaurants: Fil Rouge, with classic French cuisine, The Mediterranean Yacht restaurant; the Japanese restaurant, Sakura where we had an excellent lunch with fabulous sushi, and the Marble Steak House. As the cruise was fully booked, we were asked not to reserve the steak house or Sakura in the evening, but we enjoyed a superb dinner at Fil Rouge where we enjoyed meeting the charming Vincent, who is perhaps the very best fine dining server I have ever met.
The wine selection is truly impressive. I’ve been dialing back on my consumption this autumn, so I’ve been enjoying smaller quantities of much better wines. It’s been fun to try new vintages and learn from the knowledgeable sommeliers on board.
The pool and gym facilities are state-of-the-art, with a lovely thermal zone, similar to the one on Queen Mary 2 and the Viking ships, with a salt room, steam, and sauna. Dmitry heads there each day for his daily dose of sweat.
The staff are fantastic at what they do: polite, efficient, friendly, and consummate professionals. The guests are a delightful mix of people from all around the world and of different ages, which is also fun.
I’m super impressed with Explora. I hope they feel the same way about me, because I’m excited to come back for a longer engagement. My role on board is slightly different from what I usually do. On Explora, I give a daily Port Talk about the next day’s destination. This has been a fun new skill to learn, and of course it feeds right into making new 8-Hour Guides, as well as leading to my new map-making project, which you can visit here. I will be actively building these out and making ones to go with the 8-Hour Guides. I also really like the way Explora prioritizes enrichment as a key element of the guest experience. That means a lot to me.
I was most fortunate to have a superb mentor help me get ready for my engagement on Explora: the lovely Karen Worrall, a.k.a. Cruise Ship Karen. If you aren’t already following her on social media, do! Karen’s enthusiasm for enrichment lecturing and luxury cruising is infectious, and she gave me so much support and advice as I created my new port talks. Thank you, Karen!
This week I really focused on being ready for my talks, so I did not venture out as much as I usually do. The exception was in Malta, where the ship was docked at Boiler Point, across the Grand Harbor from Valletta’s cruise terminal. This gave us the opportunity to explore the Three Cities, which we hadn’t done for a while. We had a superb luncheon of mussels made with garlic, white wine and ‘Nudja, which I plan to try to replicate as soon as I get home to Riga. They were out of this world/scrape each drop in with extra bread, wonderful.
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This is the time of year when I consider new talks for next year’s cruises and go through the expansive and occasionally foolhardy exercise of deciding which new talks I need to develop between now and springtime. I have a huge pipeline of talks I want to develop by now, and it is hard to choose between them.
This year, I revisited three books, each about an exceptionally interesting female ruler, and this was a delightful exercise. I’ve been tiptoeing around all three, but am ready to take the plunge and bring them to life in PowerPoint. Each of these is extremely well-researched and written, and a joy to read. Put them on your TBR list and you won’t be disappointed!
Roxelana has been cast as a sorceress, a seductress, and a villain for the better part of five centuries, and Leslie Peirce's biography retires all three. Empress of the East follows a girl taken from her Ruthenian childhood into the harem of Topkapı Palace, where she learned with startling speed how power worked in the sixteenth-century Ottoman world, and where Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent decided to marry her. Peirce treats that marriage as a political act with institutional consequences, and the harem as a training ground for sovereignty in which intelligence and emotional discipline were the real currency.
For the traveler bound for Istanbul, the reward is a new way of reading the skyline. The mosques, külliyes, courtyards, and charitable complexes of the imperial city were paid for by royal women and by sultans, and philanthropy was how Roxelana made her position legitimate.
Ships dock in Naples directly beneath the dark round towers of Castel Nuovo, the fortress from which Joanna I ruled her kingdom for almost four decades, and most passengers walk past it without ever learning her name. Nancy Goldstone's The Lady Queen restores it to them. Joanna inherited her throne as a teenager, outlived four husbands, survived two Hungarian invasions and the Black Death, and in March 1348 stood before the papal court at Avignon to answer for the murder of her first husband, who had been strangled and thrown from a window at Aversa. She was acquitted and sold Avignon to the pope for 80,000 florins to win her kingdom back.
Goldstone is on Joanna's side and does not pretend otherwise, but she is delightfully readable, and almost every scene takes place somewhere that can still be visited, with Castel Nuovo, Santa Chiara, and Santa Maria Incoronata all a short walk from the cruise terminal.
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The silver throne made for Queen Christina's coronation in 1650 still stands in the Hall of State in Stockholm, and it has been empty since she abdicated four years later. Veronica Buckley's Christina, Queen of Sweden begins with the father, Gustavus Adolphus, who made Sweden the dominant power in the Baltic and left his imprint on Riga, Tallinn, Gothenburg, and Tartu. She then turned to the daughter who was educated as a prince, brought Descartes to Stockholm, refused to marry, removed her own crown at Uppsala in 1654, and crossed Denmark in men's clothes on her way to Rome and the Catholic Church.
Buckley's great merit is that she declines to be dazzled, and her Christina is cleverer than she is wise. For Baltic travelers, few royal lives offer so many rooms that can still be entered, from Storkyrkan, where Christina was crowned, to Riddarholmen Church, where her father lies.
Bayeux Tapestry fever continues unabated. I tried to get a ticket and failed utterly, but have set a timer for the next release. To assuage my disappointment, I contented myself with listening to some of the better podcasts covering the Tapestry and 1066. This discussion on Instant Classics with Mary Beard and Charlotte Higgins about the Latin script on the Tapestry was superb. I always love the Gone Medieval folks, and their exploration of how the Tapestry might have been made was fun. If you want a deeper dive, I highly recommend History Hit’s multi-episode series: Unravelling the Bayeux Tapestry Ep1: When, where and why was the Tapestry made?
I’ve been making my slow way through back episodes of The Secret Life of Books, but I also caught one of their more recent episodes on Shakespeare’s Troilius and Cressida, which I thoroughly enjoyed.
If you want to explore the three queens from the book reviews above, there are several episodes to enjoy: Vulgar History does a nice deep dive into Joanna of Naples, referring to the Goldstone book; The Other Half Podcast also devotes an episode to Joanna.
Leslie Peirce joins the excellent Ottoman History podcast for this lively discussion of Roxelanna. Christopher de Bellaigue appeared on the Spectator Books podcast for an equally interesting discussion of his book, The Lion House, about Sulieman, which is a must-read novel.
I enjoyed this podcast about Queen Christina from the fun people at Even the Royals: the only one I found enjoyable enough to recommend.
I am still riveted to my seat by Bear Hunt, which if you haven’t started listening to, stop reading this and download it.
What have you been listening to this week?
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Be sure to check in with the Destination Resources Reading Lists, which I update regularly with new books, podcasts, TV and film, and other resources designed to make your travel meaningful. I did a big update recently, changing the format to make it easier to navigate. Visit via this link! |
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Seabourn came out with its 2029 voyage schedule, and they are doing so many interesting itineraries with wonderful new destinations.
I’m booked on these two voyages, both now completely sold out. If you are on one (or both) of these, write and let me know! I’m very excited about the Finnish skerries: these are seldom visited parts of the Baltic, and June and July are the perfect time to go with the long white nights. And it is always fun to sail into Riga and go home for a few hours.
14-Day Normandy's Shores, Spanish Flavors & Seine River
May 26 - Jun 9, 2029 | Lisbon - Dover
42-Day In-depth Exploration Of Scandinavia & The Baltic
09 June - 21 July 2029 | Dover - Dover
As a subscriber to the Destination Curation Newsletter, you have access to my cruise schedule , which you can visit here. If any of these voyages align with your travel plans, I'd love to share the journey with you.
If you'd like to share it with a friend, just forward them this URL: jennifereremeeva.com/subscribe, and share it in any way you wish! I deeply appreciate your support for my work!
We sail onwards (for a few hours more). I am sad to leave Explora, but looking forward to some downtime at home in Riga before we head back out: this time on Regent Seven Seas Grandeur for an Atlantic Crossing. This year has gone by so quickly and enjoyably! I can hardly believe it's already October.
How are you enjoying autumn? Write in and let me know what you’ve been reading, listening to, and watching!
Safe onward travels!
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