Zelyonaya Roshcha Sochi

Another day and another port with our ship arriving in Sochi and mooring off the coast. Sochi is the longest city in Europe, stretching some 140 kilometres along the Black Sea coast and there were beaches and seaside attractions evident in the area alongside the harbour. After breakfast we waited in the Queen's Lounge for our excursion to be called and were amongst the first off the ship, with the bureaucracy from the port taking time to set up ...

... stopover in the European Russian town of Staryy Oskol, I began to admire an old friend named Elina for her conversational abilities. You could tell she was skillful, because, amidst her story-telling, she regularly used the phrase, "Sam ponimaesh." (You yourself understand.) And whenever we argued, she won. I realized too late that what I wanted to do with her, rather than drink, or argue, was tell her how fondly I remembered our Summer of ...

The first of our eastern block countries. The news about Sochi was that they were waiting to see the outcome of their winter Olympics bid. We heard when we arrived back to Sydney that they were successful in that bid. The only issue I have with that is that they will probably need to have an etiquette crash course as I found them particularly unfriendly. You would imagine if they were practising hosting the Olympics that they ...

... but it doesn't really show much of the town. Today is a day at Sea. These days are quite boring because there are so many guests onboard that we can't really use any of the guest facilities, so I end up working most of the day. Tonight Verne Lundquist from CBS Sports is the entertainment so I might go watch that for a lack of something better to do. I have put pictures from Kusadasi and Yalta up. Take Care,