Blog Three: MSC Fantasia, Zadar, Croatia, Matera, Italy
MSC Fantasia [21-23 September]
After a slightly chaotic embarkation process, we get to our fab cabin and begin to orientate ourselves on the MSC Fantasia. We hadn’t quite appreciated the advantages that buying the Aurea package which we bought for the original cruise to South America, and retained through all 6 reincarnations of the cruise since 2020, until we are ushered past a gaggle of tutting passengers from a variety of countries to immediately have lunch in the quite swanky Red Velvet restaurant (colour scheme perhaps a little too close to the hospitality suites at Tynecastle). Everybody else seems to have been told to go to the buffet.
We set sail from Trieste, having got there from Croatia via Slovenia, and our first stop is Zadar in, er, Croatia. Zadar is apparently the oldest continuously habited Croatian city – it has the ruins of a nice Roman Forum and some lovely churches from later eras.
Zadar’s premier claim to fame, however, it that it boasts a very large organ (oooer matron). What’s unique about it is that the waves from the Adriatic Sea change the pressure in a number of organ pipes cut below sea level, which emerge as barely noticable holes in the long promenade. The sea then plays an erratic symphony, which lots of vistors happily sit and listen to, and which is at the same time strangely haunting and comforting. When a boat goes by, the tones change and the music speeds up, which adds a bit of variety.
The waterfront also features the Monument to the Sun, a kind of glass disco floor, which flashes multi-coloured lights using energy it has stored from the sun’s rays during the day. We were there in the morning and afternoon, so obviously we didn’t see it in action. Shame.
The other abiding memory of Zadar is a town which features lots of attractive and intact or restored old architecture, side by side with the brutalist buildings dating from its communist bloc past. The Roman Forum is a case in point, with one entire side being flanked by the blocky concrete archeological musem.
Next stop is Bari in the region of Puglia in southern Italy. Leaving the cruise terminal by bus we travel through fairly desolate industrial estates, some of which have apartment blocks incongruously planted in the middle of them. There is an air of depression about the parts of the city we see, and on the road to Matera. It looks like Bari and its environs have not recovered from the 2008 crash, with another recession on the way.
Vignettes from the road trip include a number of attractive Trulli houses – stone built with their distinctive conical roofs; a car in flames on the opposite carriageway, attended by all of the emergency services; a shack-like house beside the road, in front of which a number of women parade in their underwear, waving and blowing kisses to the passing cars. I am indebted to Fiona for the detail on the last observation, as I naturally avert my eyes.
An hour or so on the bus takes us to Matera, the ancient city of former cave dwellings which featured in the latest James Bond movie. The ancient quarter known as the Sassi di Matera is a crowded and haphazard complex of former cave dwellings, which were carved into an ancient river canyon. The Sassi has apparently been occupied through time by the Romans, Longobards, Byzantines, Saracens, Swabians, Angevins, Aragonese, and Bourbons.
By the late 1800s, Matera’s dwellings became noted for intractable poverty, terrible sanitation, poor working conditions, and rampant disease. The Sassi was known as the Shame of Italy. Evacuated by order of the Italian government in 1952, the population was relocated to modern housing, and the Sassi (Italian for “stones”) lay abandoned until the 1980s. Some of the cave dwellings have now been converted into boutique hotels, restaurants, small museums, and craft workshops.
Matera was the only stop at which we book a guided tour, mainly because we are led to believe that this is the only way we could enter the area. We are rapidly reminded why we never go on guided tours. The guide routinely speaks a few words of English, then indulges in a 10 minute soliloquy in Italian complete with jokes and audience interaction. He then repeats what he’d said in English previously, but slightly louder. Any other nationalities are ignored. We learn nothing we didn’t already know from guidebooks, become increasingly ratty, and eventually abandon him to make the long climb up the hill to the main square of Matera.
We sit down in two cafes for a much need drink and snack, but are ignored in both. We leave and end up in a 24 hour food and drinks vending facility, which we finally persuade to give us some sustenance, after practically having to iron our banknotes before the machines accept them.
We repair to sit by the fountain in the main square, only to be deafened by a man on a stage speaking in an empassioned manner into a microphone. It is election time in Italy.
We return to the bus grizzling and make the return trip to Bari, and back to the cruise ship. It has, however, been a lesson re-learned!
My dozen favourite images from our first two ports of call on the MSC Fantasia are included in the gallery below. Click on a thumbnail to see a bigger image. If you’re using a mobile phone, turn your screen sideways to see the bigger image to best effect.
Image Gallery
