Med alert: How to beat the heat and crowds of Europe’s top hotspots

Barcelona is cool. Of that there is no dispute. There’s Gaudi’s gaudy but glorious La Sagrada Familia, the finest tapas on tap at bars such as Cal Pep (queue here, please) and Mercat de Santa Caterina with its swirling psychedelic mosaic roof designed to honour the fabulous Catalan produce for sale below.

But, here and now in the fashionable El Born barrio, safely removed from the overtouristed ruckus of Las Ramblas, it literally is cool, with the early morning temperature hovering around the low teens.

Happily, being a few weeks before winter, there’s also little risk of being fired upon. I refer, of course, to water-pistol toting anti-tourism activists who last year notoriously targeted unsuspecting visitors to the Catalan capital.

In fact, with the atmosphere cooled in every sense by a more subdued season, Barcelonans do appear, if not exactly delighted to see tourists, remarkably relaxed and even welcoming.

Mdina, a 4000-year-old fortified hilltop town, 20 minutes by road from Valletta.Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto

I’m at the start of one of Viking’s new “Quiet Season Mediterranean” voyages collections designed to operate between the northern autumn to spring.

The itinerary aboard Viking Saturn includes visits to Marseille and Ajaccio, France, Valletta, Malta, and Cadiz and Malaga, Spain and, in a first for Viking Cruises, Tunis, Tunisia, and Algiers, Algeria and Casablanca, Morocco.

That latter trio of destinations is set to add a sprinkling of unfamiliar North African spice to what would otherwise represent a somewhat more conventional Mediterranean itinerary.

Thanks to global warming, once desirable “high” seasons have been rendered “nigh” seasons.

The route.

Indeed, the past four years have seen three of the four hottest months of July in at least eight decades for Greece, a popular cruise destination, with average temperature for July in Greece rising in the last 60 years by 2.5 degrees.

The objective of this “coolcation” is to avoid the crowds and intense heat of summer for which much of the Med is rapidly becoming known.

In fact, the whole notion of high seasons, low seasons and shoulder seasons for travel is not far from being turned upside down, as tourism numbers are spread more evenly across the year.

Forget the carry-on of the checked luggage cult. For this cruise, just to be sure, I’ve packed more layers than a premium wedding cake for this near-winter voyage.

Days one to three: From Paul Cezanne’s resting place to Napoleon Bonaparte’s birthplace

Watching the town hall clock in Aix-en-Provence.Credit: Photo: Getty Images

After an overnight voyage aboard Viking Saturn my destination for a morning shore excursion from the undervalued French port Marseilles is the hilltop city of Aix-en-Provence, with the weather forecasters predicting a high of 17 degrees and a low of 10 degrees.

Marseille and Aix-en-Provence are separated by a mere half an hour by road and, even though they belong to the same country and same fabled region, they are worlds removed from each other. If there was ever a case of vive la difference, this is surely it.

Marseille is roughly as close to Algiers, the little-visited capital of Algeria, as Sydney is from Melbourne, something that’s wholly evident as the coach passes through the noticeably less affluent French-Arab neighbourhoods of the city and climbs into the hills towards Aix-en-Provence.

It’s those same hills, most notably Mont Sainte-Victoire, which overlooks Aix-en-Provence, that provided inspiration for the French post-impressionist painter Paul Cezanne, who was born and died here.

However by the time our party reaches the outskirts of the city, the mountain and the city itself is shrouded in fog which is eventually replaced by sunshine. It’s a Sunday morning and there is a fun run under way in Aix-en-Provence.

Panting joggers pass along cobbled streets lined with antique apartments guarded by the fiercest gargoyles, and where many of the timber front doors are splendidly chiselled masterworks of the carvers’ art.

Typical of most fun runs, few of the competitors appear to be having much fun, but there’s a jolly moment when an elderly woman, weathering the morning chill in a snug-fitting bonnet, flings open the faded shutters of her apartment a few floors above ground.

She produces a small tricolore which she waves in encouragement at members of the mobile perspiring throng.

Not unlike one of Cezanne’s paintings, cruise ship shore excursions are innately impressionistic and, after a leisurely afternoon spent in Marseille, before we know it, it’s already time to return to Viking Saturn for our next port of call on this western Mediterranean odyssey.

Although we’re still in France by the time the ship arrives at the port of Ajaccio on the island of Corsica, it could easily be Italy, with the French region separated from the Italian island of Sardinia by slender strait.

Ajaccio’s harbour and old town.Credit: iStock

Add to that the fact that Ajaccio is the birthplace of Napoleon Bonaparte, and it was entirely by chance that he was born French, let alone rose to the role of emperor of France.

After Napoleon’s family migrated to Corsica from the Italian mainland in the 16th century, the island was transferred from the Republic of Genoa to France only one year before his birth.

Even his christening name, Napoleone di Buonaparte, is Italian. In fact, as a boy, it’s claimed that Napoleon detested the French. Like most Corsicans, he regarded them as oppressors.

But that all changed after he was sent, aged nine, by his father to Brienne, a French military school.

Even though Napoleon spent only nine years of his life in Corsica, having been born there on August 15, 1769, any visit to Ajaccio is dominated by relics of when the so-called Little Corporal was merely a little boy.

One such artefact, and an easily overlooked one at that, can be found inside the local cathedral. It’s the marble baptismal font in which Napoleon was christened on July 21, 1771.

The plain basin was carved with the coat of arms of Giovanni Giustiniani Longo, Genoese nobleman and mercenary and defender of Constantinople during its siege in 1453.

A bronze font cover was added in 1900 bearing the Latin inscription in gold lettering “Heic baptisatus Imperator Magnus”, which translates simply as “Here the Great Emperor was baptised”.

Elsewhere, there’s an enormous statue of Napoleon inside the gardens of Place d’Austerlitz, near where it’s claimed that, as a boy, he came to “dream conquest and glory” as he gazed out at the all-encompassing Mediterranean.

Days four to seven: On a beeline to the land of honey

The golden glow of Malta’s capital Valletta. Credit: Photo: iStock

One of the consequences of global warming is that while it renders some destinations prohibitively hot in summer for many visitors, it now also makes some places extremely agreeable climatically at other times of the year.

Already some of fellow passengers aboard the ship are bemoaning they didn’t pack enough light clothing for the cruise, and most locals report it should be much cooler at this time of the year.

Life aboard this low-key, no-kids-or-casinos ship on sea days on this Mediterranean cruise offers an opportunity for rest and recuperation after the foot-slogging of the previous days on shore.

The ship has a capacity of under 1000 passengers, qualifying it as a “small ship” in cruising terms, with each relatively compact liner engineered to allow direct access to most ports on their itineraries.

A few days later, after a visit to Rome (which, in true Italian style, is preparing itself at the very last minute for this year’s papal jubilee), Viking Saturn eases its way into the spectacle that is Valletta’s ancient harbour, rather than intruding into it like so many other bulkier vessels.

Viking’s Wintergarden Lounge, a place for all seasons.

Since most of the Maltese capital’s monuments and buildings are constructed of Globigerina limestone, the ship approaches the port not long after sunrise with the capital saturated, even in the weaker light of near winter, in a shimmering golden glow.

The scene unfurls magnificently before me from the balcony of my stateroom like a precious gold necklace carefully removed from its jewellery box.

Malta’s name is derived from the Greek word Melite, which translates to “honey sweet”, a reference to the island’s apiculture traditions, and, even before disembarking, how sweet it feels to finally be here.

I spend a rewarding, though at times rainy, day exploring the myriad wonders of the immensely walkable Maltese capital, which, with a population of 6000, ranks as Europe’s most diminutive.

A bright harbour building in among the walkable streets of Valletta.Credit: Getty Images

Valletta, with its multicoloured timber balconies suggestive of the North Africa that awaits us, proves to be everything I expected it to be, and more, with a highlight being a viewing inside the city’s ornate St John’s Co-Cathedral of The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist.

It’s the masterpiece painted in Malta by the artist Caravaggio while he was on the run for murder in his native Italy.

What does prove a surprise comes the next day on a shore excursion. It’s a visit to Mdina, a 4000-year-old fortified hilltop town only 20 minutes by road from Valletta.

A former capital until medieval times, Mdina’s population has dwindled to only 250 people, rendering it almost ghostly , even in the daylight hours, with the silence punctured only by the clip-clop on its cobbled streets of touristic horse-drawn carriages.

No wonder the Maltese refer to it as “The Silent City” and, being here in the off-season and having arrived before other visitors, we’re experiencing a Mdina true to its epithet.

From the ramparts of this walled city there are views of Valletta and the surrounding countryside and sea, and I can even make out our ship which is waiting to take us to Tunis, little more than 300 nautical miles west of the Maltese capital, where the weather forecast for tomorrow is for a sunny day with a high of 17.

Days eight to 12: Lost in space

Shisha in the Tunis medina, Tunisia.Credit: Photo: Alamy

At the entrance to Grand Souk Des Chechias, near Rue de la Kasba, deep inside the Medina of Tunis, the capital of Tunisia, the tour guide pinpoints the meeting place where our shore excursion will regroup. Don’t worry, you can’t get lost.

After a half an hour or so wandering the labyrinthine narrow passages that form the souk next to Al-Zaytuna Mosque, I have to admit it. In the souk where you can’t get lost, I’m lost. No matter how many laps I make of the souk, I can’t remember the meeting point.

Then I recognise an American couple from my shore excursion group. Rather than disturbing them, and more to the point, having to confess my predicament – who wants to reveal themselves as a souk sook – I remain ignominiously incognito.

I follow them, and they eventually find their way, and unbeknown to them, my way back to the meeting point.

Before I got lost, I luckily managed to witness one of most distinctive and traditional items still produced in the souk.

They are chechias, Tunisia’s traditional blood-red felt caps, the heyday of which was in the 17th century when the souk first opened. Back then, a million chechias were made each year by as many as 15,000 craftsmen.

Today, there are less than a dozen chaouachis, or chechias milliners, producing the traditional Tunisian version of the red hat, as well as customised hats in a variety of colours and styles for export to other North and West African nations.

After the sheer magic and majesty of Malta, Tunis, or at least parts of it, can feel austere if not forbidding.

Cafe Chebaane in Sidi Bou Said, Tunisia, overlooking the Mediterranean.Credit: Photo: Alamy

However, there’s redemption in the hillside town-cum-suburb of Sidi Bou Said, with blue and white houses and cobbled streets, suggesting a Santorini transplanted to a North African promontory overlooking the Med, complete with al fresco restaurants and cafes.

Less than half-an-hour from the Medina, the main thoroughfare of Rue Habib Thameur is hopelessly crowded with tourists on the late Saturday afternoon of my visit.

But dip into the surrounding laneways and you can wander among the neat houses, some fringed with crimson bursts of bougainvillea, virtually unmolested.

Although Sidi Bou Said’s origins date to the 18th century when wealthy Tunis citizenry began to build homes, it wasn’t until the early 20th century that the town’s distinctive colour scheme was introduced, the brainchild of expatriate French painter and musicologist Baron Rodolphe d’Erlanger.

A seaside boulevard in the overlooked city of Algiers, the capital of Algeria.Credit: Photo: iStock

After another day at sea we arrive at our next port of call to be greeted, as Viking Saturn berths, by a green, red and white neon sign in both English and Arabic reading: “Welcome to Algeria”. Sure, but precisely how welcome?

“The authorities in Algiers have kindly provided an armed police escort for the duration of our visit,” the cruise director rather gaily announces over the ship’s public address before we disembark. “All of the coaches for our shore excursions will travel in convoy.”

As it eventuates, our welcome in Algeria, a country that traditionally receives, or for that matter, permits few Western tourists, is the antithesis of that for which Barcelona has become known.

Algeria, at 2,381,741 square kilometres, is now Africa’s largest country, after Sudan split into two nations in 2011.

Alegria is also one of the world’s least-visited destinations by foreigners, largely due to the country’s complex visa rules, which limit tourists and deny it valuable foreign exchange revenue. Fortunately, Viking has handled our visas before the cruise.

Not only is Viking Saturn the lone cruise ship in Algiers on the day of our visit, our mix of American, British and Australian passengers appear to be among the few Western tourists in town.

As a result, a long way from the water pistols of Barcelona, we represent a genuine novelty. Smiling locals wave at us from footpaths as we pass in our convoy of coaches, combined with plenty of sincere “welcome to Algeria” salutations.

It doesn’t take long after arriving in Algiers to realise what the world has been missing all this time with the capital’s spectacular steep hillside setting leading all the way to the waterfront dominated by rows of handsome white Haussmann-style apartment blocks, an elegant echo of the nation’s tumultuous French colonial rule.

But the most intriguing feature of Algiers is its extraordinary, though crumbling, UNESCO World Heritage-listed casbah.

Teetering high above the city with glimpses of the Mediterranean at the end of laneways, this is where the savage 1956-57 Battle of Algiers, part of the war of independence against the French colonialists, was fought and ultimately won.

Days 13 to 16: Some like it hot, some like it cold

The temple of tapas, El Pimpi, Malaga, Costa del Sol, Andalucia. Credit: Photo: Alamy

After almost a week sailing the waters of North Africa, the ship is steaming back to the cooler south-western Europe mainland across the Strait of Gibraltar following a visit to Casablanca.

It’s the least loved – unfairly so – of Morocco’s major cities, and where the mercury reaches an uncool coolcation temperature of nearly 30 degrees.

After so many visits to mosques and museums and cathedrals, all I want to do is wander the streets of the final ports of call on the itinerary and absorb the atmosphere of two of Spain’s most ancient cities.

Back into the cool embrace of the Med after a day spent in Cadiz, one of Europe’s oldest cities, Viking Saturn is on a course towards Malaga, the prosperous Costa del Sol city that gave the world Pablo Picasso.

The house in which Picasso was born has been converted to a small museum and contains some interesting mementoes of the artist’s childhood, including his actual christening robes.

Picasso died two years after restaurant El Pimpi’s opening in 1971, so I can’t be sure he even made it to Malaga’s extraordinary temple of tapas, set in the beating heart of the city’s restaurant and bar district, but I’m certain he would have loved it.

El Pimpi, named after a popular Malagueno identity who helped crew and passengers of boats that arrived at Malaga’s port, consists of a warren of wine-cellar-like spaces where customers dine beside towering casks of fortified wine as they indulge in the food and drink specific to this captivating part of Spain.

Farewelling southern Spain, a final day at sea lies ahead with Barcelona, from where this fortnight odyssey around the western Med began, again beckoning, with a forecast high of 17 degrees.

This low-season cruise designed to beat the climatic excesses of the Mediterranean high season has itself been full of highs, particularly those Maghrebian ports of North Africa.

We manage to beat the heat of the Mediterranean in mid-summer as well as the queues and crowds by cruising in the agreeable off season without ever being subject to a hint of extreme cold.

How cool is that?

Viking’s “quiet season” cruises offer a new way to discover the Mediterranean.Credit: Photo: Anthony Dennis

FIVE THINGS TO DO ABOARD THE SHIP

Mooch with Munch
Viking’s vessels showcase digitised works of Norway’s most acclaimed artist, Edvard Munch, in the form of a nightly onboard “Munch moments” presentation. Taking place in the ship’s deck one Living Room, the paintings are accompanied by the music of Edvard Grieg, another of Norway’s cherished sons.

Hit the decks
Viking’s ships include impressive and extensive collections of Nordic art, including Munch prints. View all the modern and classic artworks deck by deck as part of a detailed app-downloaded self-guided tour. Along the way pause at the small Viking Heritage Museum on deck two, detailing Norwegian’s lengthy and eventful history.

Go for a cakewalk
Head up to the Explorers’ Lounge on deck seven, where at the restaurant Mamsen’s you can order a range of Norwegian specialties, including classic Scandinavian open sandwiches and waffles with Norwegian brown cheese (much better than it sounds) as well as a selection of delectable traditional Scandi cakes.

Let it snow

The LivNordic spa that includes a snow grotto.

Inside Viking Saturn’s so-called Snow Grotto temperatures reach, for those who dare, an Arctic-like minus 10 degrees. It’s a key feature of the ship’s LivNordic Spa, where the art of cooling down and heating up (and cooling down again), is all part of the Nordic concept of wellbeing.

Try some retail therapy
Faithful to its Nordic ethos, the Scandinavian ambience aboard Viking Saturn extends to the onboard boutique. Along with the usual daily essentials, the shop is stocked with quality Nordic designer knick-knacks, including classic Dale of Norway woollen jumpers and clothing.

The details

Cruise
Viking’s 16-day “Malta, Morocco & the Mediterranean” cruise, beginning and ending in Barcelona, from $13,495 a person with departures on November 13, 23 and 28, and December 8 this year, were still available at the time of writing. Companion flies free on voyages between 2025 and 2027 up to $2400 plus $500 shipboard credit if booked before March 31 this year.

Fly
Etihad Airways flies from Australia to Barcelona, the starting point of the featured cruise, via its Abu Dhabi hub. The airline operates seven flights a week between Sydney and Abu Dhabi, with plans to increase services to 10 a week in July. From the end of next month Etihad will increase its services between Melbourne and Abu Dhabi to eight a week. See etihad.com

Stay
A recommended pre- or post-cruise accommodation choice in Barcelona is boutique Hotel Borneta, located in the city’s atmospheric and less-touristed El Born neighbourhood, with rooms from $444 a night. Don’t miss the excellent in-house modern Spanish restaurant. See slh.com

The writer travelled as a guest of Viking Cruises, Small Luxury Hotels and with the assistance of Etihad Airways.