Travel Maven Blog ...... David Molyneaux posts from TheTravelMavens.com

On a luxury cruise in the Arabian Sea, on the lookout for pirates

Pirates seldom dominate our thoughts beyond movie myths and Halloween costumes, but real pirates still threaten danger for the unwary.

As my ship, the 600-passenger luxury Seabourn Encore, cruised recently on the Gulf of Aden, with Yemen to the north and Somalia to the south, the ship’s crew prepared for a pirate attack.

Container ships and tankers in a convoy heading north in the Suez Canal. (photos by David G. Molyneaux, TheTravelMavens.com)

Passengers, too, were ready, with a set of instructions about when and where to go to hide if the captain sent us a signal.

As expected, the signal never came.

No matter what anyone tells you about the dangers of pirates boarding a cruise ship in this part of the world, keep in mind two competing realities:

Cruising the Lower Danube River, incongruities from Bucharest to Budapest

 On Emerald Waterways' Emerald Dawn

 

The stone church at Snagov Monastery, in Romania, dates from the 15th century. It sits on a small lake island that has held a church since the 11th century. (Photos by David G. Molyneaux, TheTravelMavens.com)

Despite the familiar credit card labels pasted on shop doors and ATMs, none of my American cards worked in modern Bucharest, Romania. Across the Danube River, in Bulgaria, crumbling factories and houses remain eerily empty more than 25 years after the fall of the Iron Curtain.

Up the river toward Hungary, Serbia’s capital city of Belgrade is bustling with thriving businesses that sit next door to jagged metal and concrete hulks of bombed out buildings from war with NATO in 1999. “We call them tourist attractions,” said a resident.

If you cruise the Lower Danube River between Bucharest and Budapest, be prepared for such incongruousness.

 

Budapest glows at night from the Danube River

 

Cruising on Costa Favolosa, a slice of Italy

When chunks of parmesan grace the buffet lines in bowls the size of washtubs.

When dining room tables each burn a red candle for the evening meal.

When a multi-cultural group of cabin attendants greets you in the morning with a chorus of “Buon giorno.”

Then, you know you are cruising on a Costa ship.

If you are looking at a Mediterranean cruise out of Venice yet this summer or a 2011-2012 winter sojourn in the waters near Dubai, you might consider Costa’s newest ship, the 3,800-passenger Favolosa.

The vessel, Costa's largest, is an exhibition of design, materials and ingredients with a “Made in Italy” stamp.

Each time I picked out a chunk from the parmesan bowl, pictured above, I could only imagine the price tag for such an extravagance in the United States.

Read more about Costa and the Favolosa at TheTravelMavens.com.

 

Cruising on Costa Favolosa, a naming ceremony in Trieste

As many as 10,000 local townsfolk and formally-attired invited guests watched an extravagant naming ceremony Saturday night in Trieste, Italy, for a new cruise ship, the 3,800-passenger Costa Favolosa.

Favolosa, now Costa’s largest vessel, was built near Venice, but it was the first major ship christened in ancient Trieste in 50 years. The event also was part of national celebrations for the 150th anniversary of the unification of Italy.

Actors, musicians, and dancers provided a spectacular show at Trieste’s Piazza Unita d’Italia, said to be Europe’s biggest square. The dancers included a woman in filmy white who  soared above the audience, held aloft by helium balloons on a windy night as she moved to the sounds of a classical piano performce by Italian composer Ludovico Einaudi.

Zadar, Croatia, cruise port with sea organ

The joke going around the Seabourn Odyssey, a 450-passenger cruise ship sailing between Athens and Venice, is that the captain found the port of Zadar, Croatia, by Googling it on his computer.

Because so many passengers said they had never heard of Zadar, Captain Geir-Arne Thue-Nilsen feigned ignorance, too, as if he had stumbled upon Zadar while wandering up the Dalmatian Coast of the Adriatic Sea. “I just Googled it this morning,” he would say.

Zadar may be off the radar for some modern travelers, but ship captains have been stopping at this port for more than 700 years.