Our first stop was to the very cool Hamburg to reconnect with our friend Petra, Chris’shipmate from the Cape Race Expedition to Greenland in 2024 and the former owner of the legendary Pelikan Apotheke, a pharmacy which has been around since 1696. That’s not a typo; not 1966, 1696! We also took in a concert at the stunning Elbphilharmonie, built for a cost of 800m Euro! It seats 2,100 concert goers, none of whom are more than 35m from the conductor! A perfect venue to listen to fusion of Baroque music and ABBA!
Our second stop was at die Schlei, a 42-kilometer-long narrow inlet to the Baltic Sea in the Schlewig-Holstein area of northern Germany. It was there that Petra introduced us to the unhurried life enjoyed by its very fortunate residents. A great immersion into this rural germanic culture.
The Oceania cruise started in Civitavecchia where we met up with our friends Alex & Karen. We were celebrating Alex’s 80th birthday and visiting some new countries for us, with stops which included Malta, Greece (Milos and Skiathos) and Turkey (Ephesus).
The final destination was Turkey’s fascinating and historic Istanbul and, finally, the surreal Cappadocia where Chris was planning to fly in a hot air balloon - what could possibly go wrong?
