Nearly 48 hours after leaving Tripoli, Minerva reached Greece yesterday, tying up in Heraklion, Crete, just before lunchtime. Today's blog should have been all about Knossos, which was the main attraction we all trooped off to see.
My coach started with around 20 people; by the end of the tour we had dwindled to seven as people got bored, fed up, older passengers were unable to cope with the steps and so on. Back on the coach I overheard the woman behind me say: "So that was Knossos; I won't be going there again."
I stuck with the tour through to the bitter end, sure there must be something really good lurking around one of the corners, but I think we had all been so spoilt on this Swan Hellenic cruise by the wonderful sights in Libya.
So I will just say Knossos is the site of an old Minoan palace, destroyed in the 14th-century BC, when the Minoans - who came from the Middle East - also died out, and tell you instead some more about the passengers on board Minerva.
There are 347 of us - including the lecturers and their wives - so the ship is pretty full (it holds a maximum of 352).
I have met one other Hebridean refugee - regulars readers will remember I was supposed to visit Libya last month on what as then called Hebridean International Cruises, before the company sold the ship - and she tells me there is at least one other couple who were saved by Swan, possibly a few others but we have not found them.
Most of the people I've met are charming, well-cruised and well-travelled sorts, quite elderly, but I heard tonight there is a couple on their honeymoon.
Many have only ever cruised with Swan Hellenic and have no desire to try another line; a few are happy to shop around. Some have been on since Mombasa and came through Pirate Alley; this morning I met a couple who have been on for seven weeks, since Minerva left Cape Town in South Africa.
Another couple I met today were on a Spirit of Adventure cruise I did around South Africa a couple of years ago (SoA, by the way, is a Swan lookalike, started by Saga, but for all ages, when it looked like Swan would disappear for ever).
We were happily reminiscing about the day we were supposed to visit Durban, but it was so rough that the pilot, who risked all to get on board, had to be winched off by helicopter. We never got to Durban and finally ended up in Maputo, in Mozambique, which I now feel able to happily strike from "must-visit" list (note - actually if you never go there it won't be a great loss!).
As Walt says: "It's a small world after all."
Jane Archer
