Venice - birthplace of portExplore...
On Valentines day I was thinking about the title of ‘Most Romantic City in the World’ in relation to cruise destinations and for me the most romantic destination for cruisers it just HAS to be Venice! I know the title is meant for Paris, but much as I like Le Havre it doesn’t seem a very Romantic cruise destination!! So I’m voting for Venice (for as long as they’ll have us!) and it was while I was looking for some pictures from my various visits that I thought that I should tell you the story of how PortExplore was born in Venice…
Our cruise was ending in Venice, but our flight wasn’t until the evening. Princess Cruises were being absolutely awesome and allowing passengers to store their baggage onboard and use all the ships facilities until it was time to leave for the airport at 16.00. So having watched the ‘sail in’ at dawn we still had almost a whole day ahead of us, once we had checked out of our room at 8.00...
St Marks Square, The Campanile and the Doges Palace
We really like the system of fixed sitting mixed dining tables on Princess and on this cruise we had been sharing a table every night with a lovely family of very experienced cruisers - mum, dad and two adult kids. We’d all got on like a house on fire - until the very last evening at we talked about our plans for a day ashore in Venice...
“What are you planning to do tomorrow?” I asked...
‘Oh we’re just staying on board’ Mum replied....
‘We’ve seen it before so there’s no point paying out for a trip....’
Seen it BEFORE?!?!?! VENICE!!!!
Are you KIDDING me?!?! ... I very carefully DIDN’T say!
My best ever picture of Venice!
Now I was not a stranger to Venice - it is probably my favourite place and my favourite port. I’ve watched the New Year fireworks over the lagoon from an island hotel, spent a week living in an apartment on Guidecca , chased the ghost of Vivaldi in his buildings and manuscripts with my musician daughter, visited Torcello and Burano to avoid midsummer crowds, wandered around, got lost and eaten a Kosher meal in the Ghetto...
And I still could not WAIT to get off the ship and see more...
So I spent the rest of the meal trying to convince them... I told them all about
People mover..
The monorail ‘people mover’ to Piazzale Roma...
The day pass for the vaporetto so they could go anywhere and back again...
The vaporetto route thats just a big circle and comes back to where it started...
The variety of Venice -everything that is not St Marks or the Doges Palace
About the Bridges that aren’t sighing...
Standing room only Gondolas that cross the Grand canal for 2€…
The spooky graveyard island and its famous inhabitants…
Floating Vaporetto stop
But to absolutely no avail - they were too nervous to even think about it! They could not conceive of leaving the ship without a tour guide - “We might miss the bus to the airport” they said! “We never go ashore on our own, it’s too dangerous.”
Saint Marks Square Vaporetto stop
Honestly I was completely gobsmacked! (translation for non UK readers… blindsided, surprised, unbelieving!!) I’d never thought of myself as anything other than a confident traveller who happened to be on a ship. So in the same way I could stay in a hotel and explore a city, I was perfectly happy to get off a ship and do the same! It never crossed my mind to think of a cruise as any different … I know we need to be backboard before the ship leaves but Im perfectly capable of going out for the day and being back at a specific time - I was really surprised that others thought it was a potential problem. But it was best left - they weren’t going to change their minds…
And so they spent the day on board - whereas we spent the day wandering the backstreets of Venice. We had a lovely morning - we even fell across serendipitously falling across the end of Season Parade of the racing Gondolas association. They were all processing along the Grand Canal in their special uniforms with pennants and flags waving, it was a real party atmosphere. Such a wonderful, joyful experience and our friends had missed it because I couldn’t convince them to come with us! I felt like a real failure and it bugged me for weeks that I hadn’t managed to change their minds...
portExplore books - find them in the Bookshop section!
Eventually the seed that had been planted grew into portExplore. I set up a Facebook page all about going ashore and poured everything I knew about planning for a day ashore into a book The Confident portExplorer. Later the Cruise Planners were published and of course this Blog but it all grew form that after dinner conversation. So if I’ve managed to convince just one family since that you really don’t have to choose between spending a fortune on a cruise excursion and sitting on board all day then I’m really happy!
I hope you enjoyed reading about our beginnings - I would love to know what you think so it would be great if you commented below! There are also some small affiliate links there which help towards the running of the website - if you click through and buy anything from them it gives us a few pence but doesn’t cost you any extra! It’s a great help and thanks to all those who do!
Happy portExploring!
Cathy
xx
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