In many ways, Melbourne is the most European of all the Australian cities, its highlights making it one of the most unique stops on an MSC Grand Voyages cruise:magnificent landscaped gardens and parks provide green spaces near the centre, while beneath the skyscrapers of the Central Business District (CBD), an understorey of solid, Victorian-era facades ranged along tree-lined boulevards presents the city on a more human scale.

The CBD lies at the heart of the city, a grid bounded by La Trobe, Spring, Flinders and Spencer streets, dotted with fine public buildings and plenty of shops. To the north of the CBD, a wander through lively, century-old Queen Victoria Market will repay both serious shoppers and people-watchers.
In the east, the CBD rubs up against Eastern Hill, home to Parliament House as well as the landscaped Fitzroy Gardens, from where it’s a short walk to the venerable Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG), a must for sports fans. A shore excursion on your MSC Grand Voyages cruise can be the opportunity to visit the riverside’s most innovative development: the new 92-storey Eureka Tower located on the Southgate site and named after a landmark rebellion in Victoria’s gold-rush era (the top levels are clad in gold). Finished in 2006 and towering 300m, it is the tallest building in Melbourne.
Visitors can enjoy amazing views of the city and beyond from the 88th-floor Skydeck, which features the stomach-churning “skywalk”, The Edge, a 3m glass cube that juts out over the city below. Another MSC excursion is the Serendip Sanctuary: a square kilometre of bush, marsh and wetlands where you can observe kangaroos, wallabies and emus, as well as numerous other water birds, in their natural habitat.

Adelaide is a gracious city and an easy place to live, and, despite its population of almost 1.3 million, it never feels crowded; what is more, this port is one of the enchanting destinations of an MSC Grand Voyages cruise.

It’s a pretty place, laid out on either side of the Torrens River, ringed with a green belt of parks and set against the rolling hills of the Mount Lofty Ranges. Adelaide’s city centre is laid out on a strict grid plan surrounded by parkland, and virtually every building, public or domestic, is made of stone.

At the heart of the grid is Victoria Square, and each city quarter is centred on its own smaller square. North Terrace is the cultural precinct, home to the major museums, two universities and the state library. Hindley Street is the liveliest in town while Rundle Mall, its continuation, is the main shopping area. Government House, Adelaide’s oldest public building, was completed in 1855: every governor except the first has lived here.

Although long since merged into the metropolitan area’s suburban sprawl, Perth’s port of Fremantle – “Freo” – retains an altogether different character to the centre of Perth: one that’s just waiting to be discovered on an MSC Grand Voyages excursion.

It’s small enough to keep its energy focused, with a real working harbour and busy yacht marina, and has an eclectic, arty ambience without too many upmarket pretensions. A cruise to Fremantle is a good way to understand how this town attracts people with its famed weekend markets and café-lined “Cappuccino Strip” or South Terrace where funky boutiques are also found. Exploring Fremantle on foot, with plenty of streetside café breaks, is the most agreeable way of visiting the town’s compactly grouped sights.

The cheery Fremantle Markets include a fruit and veg market, and a more tourist-focused section crammed with stalls selling souvenirs, arts and crafts and New Age paraphernalia. The buskers who play here are said to be some of the city’s best. The lively E-Shed markets are located in a historic warehouse building on the waterside and are worth a quick look, especially for their budget food stalls. A shore excursion on your MSC Grand Voyages cruise can also be the opportunity to visit the city itself, Perth, Western Australia’s youthful capital; it has a reputation for endless sunshine and an easy-going lifestyle.

Perth’s closest beaches extend along the Sunset Coast, 30km of near-unbroken sand and coastal suburbs stretching north of the Swan River, bordered by the Indian Ocean and cooled by afternoon sea breezes. Two of the most famous are Cottesloe Beach – 7km north of Fremantle, it’s the most popular city beach, with safe swimming; there are ice-cream vendors, cafés and watercraft-rental outlets aplenty – and Scarborough.

Although long since merged into the metropolitan area’s suburban sprawl, Perth’s port of Fremantle – “Freo” – retains an altogether different character to the centre of Perth: one that’s just waiting to be discovered on an MSC Grand Voyages excursion.

It’s small enough to keep its energy focused, with a real working harbour and busy yacht marina, and has an eclectic, arty ambience without too many upmarket pretensions. A cruise to Fremantle is a good way to understand how this town attracts people with its famed weekend markets and café-lined “Cappuccino Strip” or South Terrace where funky boutiques are also found. Exploring Fremantle on foot, with plenty of streetside café breaks, is the most agreeable way of visiting the town’s compactly grouped sights.

The cheery Fremantle Markets include a fruit and veg market, and a more tourist-focused section crammed with stalls selling souvenirs, arts and crafts and New Age paraphernalia. The buskers who play here are said to be some of the city’s best. The lively E-Shed markets are located in a historic warehouse building on the waterside and are worth a quick look, especially for their budget food stalls. A shore excursion on your MSC Grand Voyages cruise can also be the opportunity to visit the city itself, Perth, Western Australia’s youthful capital; it has a reputation for endless sunshine and an easy-going lifestyle.

Perth’s closest beaches extend along the Sunset Coast, 30km of near-unbroken sand and coastal suburbs stretching north of the Swan River, bordered by the Indian Ocean and cooled by afternoon sea breezes. Two of the most famous are Cottesloe Beach – 7km north of Fremantle, it’s the most popular city beach, with safe swimming; there are ice-cream vendors, cafés and watercraft-rental outlets aplenty – and Scarborough.

Malé is the densely populated capital of the Maldives, an island nation in the Indian Ocean. It’s known for its mosques and colorful buildings. The Islamic Centre (Masjid-al-Sultan Muhammad Thakurufaanu Al Auzam) features a mosque, a library and a distinctive gold dome. Near the harbor, a popular fish market offers the day’s catch, and a produce market is stocked with local fruit.

Port of Victoria, is located in Seychelles, an archipelago in the Indian Ocean, northeast of Madagascar. Port-Victoria has no fixed handling equipment. Ships are handled through ship’s gear by the private stevedores.

Nosy Be is an island off Madagascar’s northwestern coast. In the southeast, the forests of Lokobe Reserve shelter chameleons, geckos and frogs. The capital, known as Hell-Ville, has French colonial buildings and a covered market. Lemuria Land is home to a variety of lemurs, plus reptiles. Also in the park is a 19th-century distillery still used to extract essential oils from the native ylang-ylang tree.

At the western end of Algoa (aka Nelson Mandela) Bay, your MSC cruise ship will await your return in Port Elizabeth, normally visited for the Addo Elephant Park. So it may come as a surprise as you sail on your MSC cruise to South Africa that this has long been a popular holiday destination for families – but then the town beachfront, stretching for several kilometres along Humewood Road, has some of the safest and cleanest city beaches in the country.

As a city, Port Elizabeth is pretty functional. Although the town has been ravaged by industrialization and thoughtless modernization, one or two buildings do stand out in an otherwise featureless city centre, and a couple of classically pretty rows of Victorian terraces still remain in the suburb of Central, sliding into a revamped street of trendy cafés and restaurants.
Holidaymakers head for the beachfront suburbs of Humewood and Summerstrand where there are places to stay plus bars and restaurants. There is little to draw you away from the beachfront, but further afield in New Brighton, you’ll find Port Elizabeth’s most important museum, the Red Location Museum of the People’s Struggle, housed in an award-winning building, and there are also some excellent tours around Port Elizabeth and into the townships.
A Big Five reserve, Addo Elephant National Park is just 73km north of Port Elizabeth, and should top your excursions list. Addo is currently undergoing an expansion programme that will see it become one of South Africa’s three largest wildlife reserves. Elephants remain the park’s most obvious draw-card, but with the reintroduction in 2003 of a small number of lions, in two prides, as well as the presence of the rest of the Big Five – buffalo, rhino and leopards – it has become a wildlife reserve to be reckoned with.

When your MSC cruise brings you to Cape Town, it’s easy to see that, more than a scenic backdrop, Table Mountain is the solid core of this port city. It divides the city into distinct zones, with public gardens, wilderness, forests, hiking routes, vineyards and desirable residential areas trailing down its lower slopes.

Standing on the tabletop, you can look north for a giddy view of the city centre, its docks lined with matchbox ships. When you are on holiday in South Africa, to appreciate Cape Town you need to spend time outdoors, as Capetonians do: they hike, picnic or sunbathe, often choose mountain bikes in preference to cars, and turn adventure activities into an obsession.
Cape Town’s rich urban texture is immediately apparent in its diverse architecture: an indigenous Cape Dutch style, rooted in northern Europe, seen at its most diverse in the Constantia wine estates, which were influenced by French refugees in the seventeenth century; Muslim dissidents and slaves, freed in the nineteenth century, added their minarets to the skyline; and the English, who invaded and freed these slaves, introduced Georgian and Victorian buildings.
Strand Street marks the edge of Cape Town’s original beachfront, and all urban development to its north stands on reclaimed land. To its south is the Upper City Centre, containing the remains of the city’s 350-year-old historic core, which has survived the ravages of modernization and apartheid-inspired urban clearance, and emerged with enough charm to make it South Africa’s most pleasing city centre.
The entire area from Strand Street to the southern foot of the mountain is a collage of Georgian, Cape Dutch, Victorian and twentieth-century architecture, as well as being the place where Europe, Asia and Africa meet in markets, alleyways and mosques. Among the draw cards here are Parliament, the Company’s Gardens and many of Cape Town’s major museums.

On your MSC South Africa cruise you can admire Walvis Bay, which, thanks to its rich marine life, is one of the places of most outstanding natural beauty in Namibia. Its gourmet delights are not to be missed either.

Before leaving the port you have to eat homegrown Walvis Bay oysters in one of the many restaurants that have sprung up in recent years. Today, maybe it’s harder to see whales in these waters but the highlight of Walvis Bay (aka Whales Bay) is still its natural lagoon with its abundance of seabirds, including flamingos and pelicans, which are joined every year by thousands of migratory birds.
As this is an area of outstanding natural beauty, there are many options for spending your time away from the ship. Due north of Walvis Bay along a coast road, the Atlantic harbour town of Swakopmund is just waiting to be discovered on an MSC South Africa excursion.
Offering a vivid reminder of Namibia’s colonial past, the older architecture is Germanic in style, German is widely spoken and the restaurants delight in serving bratwurst. There’s even an annual Oktoberfest, a jolly knees-up featuring locally brewed lager and Bavarian-style bands in lederhosen. Swakopmund is a safari and backpacker hub with some great shops selling souvenirs including beautiful, locally made jewellery, crafts and curios.
This is also Namibia’s extreme sports capital, with several operators offering quad-biking, dune buggy racing and sandboarding. Swakopmund and Walvis Bay are the southern point of the Skeleton Coast where, on nature trails across the sands and gravel plains, you can observe ancient desert-adapted plant species such as welwitschia (an endemic, trunkless tree which sags raggedly on the ground and can live for over 2500 years), lithops and delicate lichens.

Dakar is the capital of Senegal, in West Africa. It’s an Atlantic port on the Cap-Vert peninsula. Its traditional Médina quarter is home to the Grande Mosquée, marked by a towering minaret. The Musée Théodore Monod displays cultural artifacts including clothing, drums, carvings and tools. The city’s vibrant nightlife is inspired by the local mbalax music.

Puerto del Rosario is a busy port and the capital of Fuerteventura, one of Spain’s Canary Islands. It’s known for its whitewashed houses and open-air artworks, including giant snail sculptures along the harbor promenade. Close to the harbor, Playa Chica is a sheltered beach with clear waters. Playa Blanca, to the south, has strong surf. Shops line León y Castillo and the pedestrianized Primero de Mayo streets.

Discover the culture and colour of Civitavecchia, an MSC Mediterranean Cruises destination. This Italian gem is an enjoyable flight from many European and non-European cities. Celebrated for its 16th-century Michelangelo Fort, ancient Taurine Baths, and marble Vanvitelli fountain, the port is a convenient starting point for visiting Rome, Italy’s regal and romantic capital.

Genoa is marvellously eclectic, vibrant and full of rough-edged style; it’s a great cruise excursion.

Indeed “La Superba” (The Superb), as it was known at the height of its authority as a Mediterranean superpower, boasts more zest and intrigue than all the surrounding coastal resorts put together.
During a holiday to Genoa you can explore its old town: a dense and fascinating warren of medieval alleyways home to large palazzi built in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by Genoa’s wealthy mercantile families and now transformed into museums and art galleries. You should seek out the Cattedrale di San Lorenzo, the Palazzo Ducale, and the Renaissance palaces of Via Garibaldi which contain the cream of Genoa’s art collections, as well as furniture and decor from the grandest days of the city’s past, when its ships sailed to all corners of the Mediterranean Sea.

The Acquario di Genova is the city’s pride and joy, parked like a giant ocean liner on the waterfront, with seventy tanks housing sea creatures from all the world’s major habitats, including the world’s biggest reconstruction of a Caribbean coral reef. It’s a great aquarium by any standards, the second largest in Europe by capacity, and boasts a fashionably ecology-conscious slant and excellent background information in Italian and English.
Just 35 km south of Genoa, there’s no denying the appeal of Portofino, tucked into a protected inlet surrounded by lush cypress- and olive-clad slopes. It’s an A-list resort that has been attracting high-flying bankers, celebs and their hangers-on for years, as evidenced by the flotillas of giant yachts usually anchored just outside. It’s a tiny place that is attractive yet somehow off-putting at the same time, with a quota of fancy shops, bars and restaurants for a place twice its size.