Seating on the ship’s Sports Deck
tree sculptures. We put on our best dresses and head here for afternoon tea. A pianist, whose repertoire ranges from Rachmaninoff to Radiohead, greets us as we sit down to a three-tiered centrepiece stacked with delicate sandwiches and pastries. Bathing in the 2pm sun, we nibble, sip, tap our heels and natter about everything from high-school memories to where we should eat in Marseille.
Between the spa, next-level snacking and the seven restaurants on board – the main dining venue, aptly named The Restaurant, has a rotating, destination-inspired menu; in France, we enjoyed lobster thermidor and in Italy it’s fresh fettuccine with saffron cream and crab – we have two small daily tasks. We must complete a health survey on our TV (a short series of yes/no questions about symptoms) and have a COVID PCR test, which is processed in an on-board laboratory. After that, our days are filled with lazing on lounge chairs, massages, turning pages, drinking Mimosas and making our way onto land to explore.
At each port there’s a free excursion, typically a tour of the local area with transport to and from the ship, and a selection of paid excursions with speciality activities, such as tastings at vineyards or tapas restaurants or visiting a medieval castle. You can reacquaint yourself with the icons: marvel at the lofty, forestlike interior of La Sagrada Familia or play a few hands at the tables in the glitzy Casino de Monte-Carlo. And you can discover unexpected delights. At Sète, a port city in the south-east of France known for its canals and sandy beaches, a passionate guide gives us a tour of a fresh food market as he dances and plays traditional music on a flute.
When we arrive in Livorno, the main port of Tuscany, we opt for some epic postcard moments: the Leaning Tower of Pisa and Florence. If the weather is the only measure of the day, it’s dreadful: overcast, cold with a near constant drizzle. But by any other metric it feels like magic; we’re too blissfully present to care about a bit of rain and wind. We shop along cobblestoned streets, cross the Ponte Vecchio (Old Bridge) and spend nearly 30 minutes standing in Florence’s Piazza della Signoria, with its statues of David, Hercules and Neptune, admiring a scale and style of ornate art and architecture unlike anything else in the world.
As the sky darkens, we find a café on a side street. There are just a few tables inside, along a thin corridor next to a bar, where we order a caffè and a biscuit and sit quietly waiting on our stools. Streetlights illuminate the characterful buildings against the deepnavy sky and the puddles on the ground shimmer. We listen to the patter of rain and the music of the beautiful Italian language as two locals chat. The café owner puts two small, white porcelain cups down in front of us and smiles. We take a sip of water and stir the crema into the dark liquid. “Salute.”