TUESDAY 7th JULY 2009 (ON-BOARD the 'CALEDONIA')

TUESDAY 7th JULY 2009



Hey, THANKS everyone for the birthday wishes. Each and every one of them were great to read. Managed to see them BEFORE getting on-board the 'Caledonia' where there was NO email facility (of course!).



I could never in 100 years envisage I'd spend my 50th on-board a skanky ship crossing the Black Sea en-route to Istanbul. But that's exactly what happened.


Despite the fact this floating scrap-heap had the worst meals, the most unfriendly ship crew and ablution blocks that can't be written about didn't put a dampner on it at all.



On the plus side we'd befriended a young lad, Peter, from London who was back-packing his way to anywhere for a few months;
Marc, from Holland, who was cycling his way to unknown lands;
Chris (also from Holland) a freelance computer journalist and last, but not least,
Stanislav, who was a policeman in the Ural Mountains of Russia (we liked him because of where he was from!). They all spoke ENGLISH. Such a wonderful sound. Apart from that all other passengers were from either Ukraine, Turkey, Syria or Russia.

For meals we were allocated a table and a time we must eat. We were in the 'first sitting' and shared the company of Hasan CAKIR (pronouned CHUCKA) and one of his girlfriends Natalia. Hasan was the man we picked out at Customs that we'd hoped we weren't sharing a room with...!!! However, he turned out to be okay although his girlfirend was most uninteresting. Hasan travels the world taking photo's - this is his hobby. He then proudly told us he has one million photo's on his computer and we MUST WAIT and he will show us...!!! OH NO...we didn't want to see them, certainly not all one million! But you do not argue with a man that would make an old, crusty sea-lion look like a baby kitten! And so we sat......
Fortunately Hasan only showed us a few hundred and packed the computer away. They were the worst photo's we've ever seen!


It was out on deck for us, just in time to witness the life-boat drill. It was hilarious. One of the crew is demonstrating the life jackets while several passengers were sun-baking on the plastic lounge-chairs, others were more intent on taking his photo (not listening at all) while others leaned on the rails and gazed out to sea. Others still never left the smoke-filled lounge-bar area where many board games were in progress.


It was lovely outside and eventually we witnessed the sun setting on the Black Sea.





Before we turned in Stanislav appeared with a BIG grin on his face. He put some coins in my hand and told me in broken English what each one was and where it was from. And then he announced "HAPPY BIRTHDAY".

Yes it wasn't too bad a day at all.