Dikili - Turkey

4th November 2009

Good Day, (Merhaba), from Dikili, a pretty little fishing port, it’s the cruise port for the great ancient ruins of the city of Pergamum.

We are just half way through this 25 night cruise so I thought you might like an update on how it is going! The autumn is a super time for a Med cruise, the intense heat of the summer is gone but it’s still hot enough to sunbathe. The very best feature of cruising this time of year is that the ports are not so busy and the children are back to school over Europe so you can get to see all the great sights without the crowds you experience in midsummer.

The weather so far this cruise has been very kind to us, we have had calm seas and the sun has shone every day. It’s been just about perfect, I wish you had all been here!

I usually send my boss in Southampton off a mid cruise report but if he reads this blog I will not have to! Morgan please read!!!

The entertainment is going really well, certainly that is the feedback I am getting from our passengers! On any of our voyages choice and variety are paramount but as this one is nearly a month long it becomes extra important.

Our Production Shows are the highlight of the evening entertainment for a great many of our passengers. So far this cruise our Headliners Theatre Company have performed four shows with five still to go on during the second half. The four cabaret acts that we have presented so far have offered a great deal of variety with vocal entertainer Jimmy James being the passengers number 1 choice. We have five more cabaret acts to entertain the passengers during the second half of the cruise. Tonight it's Iris Williams OBE performing in the Theatre Royal. Iris is best known for her worldwide hit single Cavatina, the theme to the movie ‘The Deer Hunter’. We also have the Magic and Illusion of Matthew McGurk, West End vocalist David Karl, Francisco Yglesia, (a former member of the group Los Paraguayos) and the brilliant Irish Comic Adrian Walsh, there is great variety there and something for all tastes.

For the entire cruise we have a wonderful Concert Pianist travelling with us, Naomi Edemariam, she will have performed nine classical recitals by the time we get back to Southampton on 16th November.

We pride ourselves with our commitment to live music at P&O Cruises and we have four bands on board as well as a cocktail pianist - twenty fantastic musicians in all, offering a great of music variety each and every day and night.

Movie buffs love Oriana, we have Chaplin's Cinema and this cruise we will have shown 25 recently released films! There are screenings on sea days, port days and every evening!
As you can probably tell I am very, very proud of the entertainment we have on offer.
Also during the evenings we have quizzes and Game Shows, all run by the Entertainment Officers. Every evening we have a Syndicate Quiz, this is always very popular but on this long voyage particularly so, we are averaging 22 tables a night with up to 6 passengers on each table so about 120 passengers are present. You can go along as a team or the Entertainment Officers will form teams for you, the Syndicate Quiz is really popular with passengers travelling alone.
Some passengers will do this quiz every single night of the cruise and choose not go to any shows or cabarets at all!

I will chat another day about all of the Guest Speakers and day time activities that we have on the second half of this cruise.

Myself running the Syndicate Quiz on 29th October.

Oriana, as we are today at anchor running a tender service ashore.


Cheerio
(Allaha ismarladik)

Nigel