Cruise ships offer many ways to overindulge, and one of the best ways to do that with food and wine onboard Marina is at La Reserve, a serious special restaurant endorsed by the oenophiliac magazine “The Wine Spectator”, and limited to 24 guests, which features an extravagant, carefully chosen and prepared, seven-course food and wine…
Continue reading →After fog delays in London, we arrived late in Lisbon and were glad to be warmly welcomed at the charming Hotel Britania, a small boutique hotel just off the Avenida da Liberdade, sort of the 5th Avenue of Lisbon, and conveniently located to the city highlights. We came here several years ago and explored many…
Continue reading →Rangiroa, whose name means ” vast sky”, is the biggest atoll of French Polynesia, but aside from two main villages, the rest of it is almost uninhabitable and remote. It has a string of rich coral encircling a luminous turquoise and jade-green lagoon and is considered one of the world’s greatest dive destinations. Insignia anchored…
Continue reading →Rough seas and stormy weather forced us to skip our next port of Tauranga, New Zealand, so we spent the extra day at sea and headed on to Auckland, where we were greeted by scattered clouds and intermittent autumn showers, but looking forward to some old and some new sights. We were thankful for the…
Continue reading →On the east coast of New Zealand’s north island, the port of Napier, with its vast timber export industry, is in the heart of sunny Hawke’s Bay, the second largest wine region in the country, though when we arrived the weather was cloudy and drizzling. Napier, the Art Deco capital of New Zealand with a…
Continue reading →Some places you can’t get enough of. So, we were really excited to return to New Zealand where Dean and I had spent a couple of weeks in 2009, working our way from the bottom of the south island to the top of the north, weaving in and out of towns, cities, countryside, wineries. We…
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