Anthem of the Seas is coming to Sydney for her first Australian visit, and this guide has everything you need to know about the 4905-capacity ship. Anthem is a Quantum Class ship, the same as Ovation of the Seas and Quantum of the Seas.
Another sea day. And some of us are looking forward to it after three days of intense activity. It’s good to pick a cruise with sea days so you can enjoy the ship and on this voyage we’re covering a lot of nautical miles. But it’s also a time when you can be annoyed by details.
Attempt No. 2 to catch the train from Sorrento to Pompeii worked – a 30-minute journey that takes you right to the gates of arguably the most famous archeological site in the world. Having had local guides at Valletta and Mt Etna, we knew we’d benefit from the services of an official guide here, and, after paying the entrance fee (11 euros), were lucky enough to find the wonderfully informative and entertaining guide Mario Visconti (10 euros).
Our plan was to take the train from Sorrento to Pompeii but when we arrived at the station we discovered that there was a rail strike – these occur at random with little or no warning. Plan B was to take the local bus along the Amalfi Coast to Positano – but of course that was everyone else’s Plan B as well, so the queue was horrendous.
Best of the Best was a memorable dinner, hosted by Captain Ikiadis, cruise director Eric De Gray (very funny guy), hotel director Scott Daniels and chief engineer Evangelos Miskedakis. It was served in the Drawing Room while we sailed through the Strait of Messina...
For cruise traditionalists the three “must do” voyages are an Atlantic crossing and the two great canals – the Suez and Panama. I’m determined to savour every minute of the Panama Canal. But there’s a timelessness in an inside cabin so my alarm bleats in the dark. I turn on the TV and the bow cam shows we are approaching the entrance of the Panama Canal and it’s bright daylight outside. That certainly galvanizes me into action and a few minutes later I’m dressed and on the bow with a few hundred others. Looking up I see similar crowds on the open spaces facing forward on the upper decks.
For most of us, Colon is just a jumping off point to the nearby feature synonymous with the whole country of Panama – the Panama Canal. There are some human achievements that show that grand plans can come to fruition and we should be proud of what we can achieve. In an age when laying national broadband cables seems all too difficult, it’s hard to imagine looking at 77 kilometres of mountains and disease-ridden jungle and picking up pick and shovel and thinking “we can dig a ditch through this and link two oceans”...
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