Add More Culture to Your Cruise with Azamara’s AzAmazing Celebrations
Photos by Garrett Martin
There’s a lot of competition out there for your travel dollars, even just within the world of cruises. No matter where you want to sail there are multiple options available, whether it’s a family-friendly trip to the Caribbean, a trek through Asia, or an intensive journey around Italy and other countries that border the Adriatic and Ionian Seas. Your choice will come down not just to price, itinerary, and amenities, but to the little extras and bonuses that cruise lines offer to their guests. For Azamara Cruises, a boutique cruise line with four ships circling the globe, that includes a program of cultural explorations known as AzAmazing Celebrations.
We recently enjoyed an AzAmazing Day in Siracusa, the Sicilian city founded by Ancient Greeks several hundred years before Christ. With four different cultural experiences located throughout the city, AzAmazing Day was a wonderful supplement to our trip, adding a memorable touch of elegance to our day in Siracusa without distracting from the city’s real-world charms or significant historical sites.
Here’s what you can expect from one of Azamara’s AzAmazing Celebrations. When we disembarked our ship in Siracusa that morning, Azamara handed us a small map of the city, with three dozen notable locations marked on it. Those included the regular major sites you’d likely target if you were a tourist in Siracusa, from the Fountain of Diana in the Piazza Archimede, to the gorgeous and awe-inspiring Duomo di Siracusa. There were also lesser-known locations on the map, like the Museo dei Pupi, a small museum devoted to the city’s long history of puppet shows, and the Museo del Papiro, about the many uses of papyrus throughout Siracusa’s history. Amid all those dots were four set apart in a different color, clustered relatively closely to each other in the heart of the city. Those dots represented the four AzAmazing Day events, and the map included the various showtimes for each of them, making it easy to plan your morning in Siracusa.
The first one we came upon was an opera singer performing alongside the Duomo, in a walkway that led to the plaza in front of the church. She sang an aria with spare musical accompaniment, her octaves-spanning voice echoing between the church and the building next to it. It was a beautiful presentation of one of Italy’s original artforms, in the shadow of a breathtaking building whose origins date back well before the birth of Jesus. It echoed the monumental history of Italy—a Renaissance art in front of an ancient building that had been rebuilt and rededicated and renamed however many times—within the majestic voice of one artist, and although it was arranged specifically for Azamara guests, it was open to and enjoyed by a large public of both tourists and Siracusa residents. Workers in the offices across the street could be seen at their windows, taking photos and film as much as the retirees cruising from America and Canada. This was an ideal introduction to what Azamara aims for with its AzAmazing Celebrations, and an absolute highlight of our 10-day cruise.