Peter's Travel Blog

Today, we arrived in Varna, Bulgaria. This morning, we visited a ‘Petrified Forest’ on the outskirts of Varna (roughly a 30-minute drive) that, quite frankly, is neither petrified, nor, strictly speaking, a forest. The area is very reminiscent of other limestone-eroded natural parks (check out Brimham Rocks in North Yorkshire), that result in weird stone shapes and an air of...

Today, we arrived at Constanta in Romania. Having no escorting duties and a whole day to ourselves (bliss), we decided to have a leisurely trip into the town by shuttle bus – see what’s occurring, then make our way back to the ship on foot. Constanta as a whole is quite vast; it stretches out, around a large bay, to...

According to our captain, he doesn’t remember having ever seen conditions like we’ve had today. The sea was so still and the visibility so clear that you could see for 20 miles in all directions. The sea’s surface, totally wave-free, and sporting only the gentlest of ripple patterns, was as blue as the sky and as still as treacle…photos of...

Today, we’ve been at sea. Things are warming up considerably, and the cold and wet of Sochi has become a distant memory. At lunchtime we were treated to a barbeque of epic proportions on the back deck, which was far nicer than it ought to have been (I told myself I didn’t really want a large lunch… then I saw...

Today, we arrived in the Olympic City of Sochi. Oh… those Russians… With the amount of time and palavar it took to get through immigration, one could easily be fooled into thinking they don’t really want tourists visiting at all. Add to this the dreadful, wet and drizzly weather, and our tour to see Agura Waterfalls was starting to look...