Thursday 27 June 2013 Tyrrhenian Sea

Hello to all

This morning we docked in Naples.  It was the perfect day for our tour of Capri.  We had been there once before and I have always been able to close my eyes and smell the perfume of Capri.  This tour was the entire day so we chose this.  We assembled in the Princess Theatre at 7.10 not such a bad start considering we have had to assemble at least an hour earlier than this for previous tours. 

We met our tour guide Antonio as we left the ship and it was only a very short walk to our ferry which is about a 55 min journey to the island.  We arrived about 9.00 am and went by bus along very narrow roads to Anacapri on the other side of the island, we had not been there previously.

After a little stroll into the town (village) Antonio suggested we could go with him to the Museum or go on the chairlift and then do what we wished and meet him at about 11.30, we took that option, went on the chairlift up to the top of the island, the most amazing scenery, beyond beautiful, stayed at the top for 20 mins or so, caught the chairlift down, WOW hard to describe really such beauty.  The museum, gardens, perfect really.  We then caught the bus to Capri had a lovely lunch overlooking the ocean, met some more of our cruisers and then on to the rest of the town, through the gardens, did some shopping, the shops are just beautiful, such a lovely place, at one point Sam and I said your know if you were told you had 12 months to live (he said 6) you would just come here and enjoy the time you had left, so funny we said it at exactly the same time.  We then met up with Antonio again, caught the Funicolare down the mountain and the ferry back to our home, there were another two ships in today as well, the new Princess Line “Royal Princess” Kate christened her the other day and the “Celebration Reflection” these two ships made ours look like a tug.  We were back by 6.15 and our Captain set sail by about 7.00pm, we had a quick dinner and came back to our room, I was desperately needing a hair colour, no appt on the ship for at least 10 days so I have done it myself, Sam said it looks so much better than when you had them to do it anyway.  We have anor early day tomorrow, dock in Rome (Civitavecchia) the port which is about 80 ks from Rome at about 7.00 am and we have to be assembled by 7.25 for our tour of Orvieto and Duomo,  I am going to hand this over to Sam he went to the talk by the Chief Engineer so he will you all the details of how the ship runs, cost of fuel for this 104 days etc. 

The Chief Engineer presented all the facts about the technical aspects of the ship, he talked for two hours, very interesting, so now I know how everything works.  He stated many facts but one figure which stuck was that the fuel bill for the whole 104 day trip is $6.5m!  All the fresh water on the ship is produced from sea water either by flash evaporation or reverse osmosis, with 1500 tonnes of water produced each day by the former method and 400 tonnes each day by the latter.  The ship produces enough electricity to supply a city of 100,000 people.  The Chief Engineer has a staff of 95 to keep everything running smoothly.

Time to sign off and post this now. Love to all  Sam and Sabine   XXX