Day 12, 13 & 14: Rome

We were scheduled as one of the last groups off the boat so we spent a relaxing morning onboard before disembarking and catching the train from the Civetevecchia port back to Rome (about 45 min on the fast train). From the train station in Rome we were 'greeted' by a taxi driver who did not speak a word of English and was not the friendliest who complained about everything from the traffic to the pedestrians in Italian speaking to no one in particular. We were dropped off a few blocks from our apartment and met at the apartment by Manuel, our apartment Manager, who happen to be an Atlanta Falcons fanatic (pointing out his tattoo of the Falcon he had done just before Michael Vick was arrested).

The apartment was charming with dark wooden ceilings and rafters and big windows that opened to what we discovered later that evening to be the cross-road of a very lively nighttime cafe & entertainment section of Rome, a little 'old city' neighborhood called Trastavere.

After settling into the apartment we took off on a walking journey to sightsee - walking to the Vatican & St. Peters square only about 30 minutes away to just take a look around as we had already planned a tour inside for the next day. After being overwhelmed by the size and beauty outside the Vatican at St. Peters square, we followed the Vatican wall and can now honestly say we have walked around a COUNTRY (since the Vatican is actually it's own country) in 1 1/2 hours.

On the walk home we stopped at the local market for our cheese, fruit and crackers… oh, and of course Prosecco for Lisa and chocolate for Jesse.

Dinner was quaint at a local trattoria. With so many right outside our apartment it was hard to choose just one restaurant - but we ate on the patio (meaning at the tables just outside the door to the restaurant on what was a street during the day with little candles lit on a checkered tablecloth with umbrellas overhead - just as we had pictured a night out in Italy).

The funniest part of the day came as we walked back to our apartment - a little disoriented as we approached as our little, quiet front door entrance had been transformed while we were gone to a full service street-side restaurant with tables and chairs inches from our front door. Had not expected that and don't think it occurred to Manuel to mention this to us earlier in the day.

The locals loved to party… and they did right outside our apartment and on the immediate little roads and alleyways until 2am. Luckily the apartment has the most amazing windows that once shut block out most of the individual noises (laughing, partying, firecrackers - YES firecrackers at midnight) and turn it into white noise - so as tired as we were we were after our long journey that day we were actually able to sleep through it all.

The next morning we ventured out by 8am to again walk back to the Vatican to start our 6 hour walking tour of Vatican, Vatican Museum, Sistine Chapel, St. Peter's Square, then the metro to the Colosseum, the Forum, the Pantheon, and the Fountain of Trevi. Our tour was through a company called 'Enjoy Rome' which we'd highly recommend as it was extremely informative and organized. Every location was impressive on a grand scale and overwhelming with information while processing the timeline of such locations and events.

We had one odd incident where after the tour of the Vatican we decided to go back in to look around again ourselves at some of the things we wanted to explore - and while Jesse was on the floor of the Vatican narthex area with his camera on a very small tripod taking a picture of some sun rays coming through the upper windows he was 'gestured' by what appeared to be a very disgusted guard to get up off the floor. Mind you this was all done without one word being spoken - just the disgusted look on the guards face and hand gesture to 'rise' was enough to make your skin crawl - man, these Italians have this gesture of disgust perfected! Jesse was very proud that he got the picture anyway WITH the blur of the guard coming toward him in the lower right corner of the picture. Victory for Jesse as he now has a story to go with his photo.

At the end of the day after the tour, we were mentally and physically drained we strolled home that evening after the tour toward our apartment through some smaller neighborhoods stopping at an amazing bakery on the way. It was a long day, but it really brought the educational part of our trip together as much of the history of Rome is connected/tied to the locations we toured earlier in Florence, Ephesius and Sicily.

Our last day in Rome felt really long - we are both ready to go home to see our kids and puppy, and relieve Jesse's parents of their two-week prison sentence! We took an open-top city sightseeing bus tour, which was not as nice as the one in Florence. The buildings in Rome are much taller than in Florence, which makes it hard to see much other than the buildings surrounding you - unlike Florence, which is hillier and has lower buildings, giving you many panoramic views over the city. We jumped off the bus to revisit the Fountain of Trevi and the Spanish Steps, but walking through the designer stores district filled with the big brands - Prada, Armani, Gucci, Fendi, and of course McDonalds / Burger King! The main streets in Rome are not much fun - they're so crowded that you have to walk single-file, there is constant noise and traffic, and you're hemmed in by street vendors with their infamous "splat balls" and other rows of identical junk. We were so relieved to return to Trastavere, the neighborhood surrounding our apartment, with its quiet and pedestrian-friendly cobblestone streets. There are very few if any franchise restaurants or stores there, it's almost all family-run. We picked up pizza from one store (measured by weight, just the way Lisa remembers from her trip 23 years ago), gelato from a second store, pasta from a third restaurant, and then gelato from yet another store for good measure (it is our last night, after all). Oh yes, and Lisa had her American Coffee™ (aka 'espresso with a shot of water'). That's almost all there is to tell except for our ride back to the airport - a car service was supposed to pick us up, but they didn't show up so Jesse went to the main road and flagged down a taxi cab. In the mean time, the car service showed up 30 minutes late, and he was so upset when we started loading our bags into the taxi cab that I think he was almost ready to grab it from us and put it in his own car. Sorry buddy, not everybody is on Italian time! The cab ride was great fun - for the first time on our trip, we got to practice our Italian (remember those classes we took on the cruise? They actually helped!) with Paolo, our driver, and we swapped stories in his broken English and our even worse Italian about his trip to the U.S. and our experiences in Italy.

We're already talking about our next trip to Germany? Las Vegas? Maine? (Mom and Ron, hope you guys are still in one piece when we get home), and where we want to take the kids - D.C., Montana, maybe Puerto Rico again? I (Jesse) think that our next trip won't involve a cruise - it's definitely a better experience to live in a place for a few days than to be herded onto buses with thousands of other tourists for the afternoon. We're now about an hour away from landing - we're just about to fly over Charleston. Looking back on the trip, this is a memory that we will both enjoy for the rest of our lives.

Day 11: Cruising

A day at sea… waking up after a VERY rough night at sea. The boat was a-rockin' after a full night at sea with a storm producing lightning, hail,16 ft. waves and 63 mph winds. WOW! We ordered room service for breakfast (quite impressive to see the waiter balancing our tray of food while staggering side to side in the hallway) and daringly waited out the rough trip in bed until it finally calmed down around Noon. We made it without getting sick - very proud of ourselves. The day was gray and drizzly so we watched a movie in the boat's movie theater and attended a basic Italian class onboard. We quizzed each other - with Jesse picking up on the vocabulary much better than Lisa (hmmm - Lisa's college Italian teacher told her she was 'a disgrace' to her family… things haven't changed).

Day 10: Chanai, Crete

We got into the harbor at Crete early in the morning, and Jesse walked around the deck taking some pictures of the island at sunrise.

Originally we had planned on another tour at this port, but Maria had found a local, famous chef who has a restaurant on the island preparing local, self-sustaining food. He usually only opens for dinner, but had offered to open for us if all 6 of us at our dining table would attend a luncheon. Since we were a little 'toured-out' anyway (Lisa's ear actually hurts from having had an earbud in her ear hooked to the tour guides microphone system for the past 4 tours) we canceled our tour in Crete. Unfortunately, upon arrival to the port in Crete we realized the chef must have thought our ship was coming into a closer port as his restaurant was over 1 1/2 hours away by taxi - not enough time for our short stop in this city. This actually turned out to be a good thing, because we had our first itinerary-free day in port. We hopped on a city bus with our traveling companions (Luis, Maria, Tony and Tania) and went to the old harbor district. This turned out to be the nicest day we've had on our cruise so far - the old harbor is beautiful, as you can see in the pictures. There was an old mosque that had been converted to an art gallery, glass-bottom boats, snorkeling expeditions, and crystal clear water. There is also an old fort that we did not have a chance to explore.

After going up and down the harbor to see the shops, we found steps leading up to an overlook where we had a great view of the entire harbor, with the mouth of the harbor flanked by the fort on one side and the lighthouse on the other.

Of course, with Crete being part of Greece, we needed to have some gyros, and these ones were maybe even better than the ones we had in Athens. The weather was perfectly sunny and breezy but still cool. The only bad thing about the day was that this was our shortest day in port - we needed to be back at the boat by 1:30. As we were heading back to the city bus stop, we noticed what we think were some protest marches - we saw very young (high school maybe?) people carrying banners and talking on a bullhorn, but as they say, it's all Greek to us!

Once back onboard we took our usual siesta (we think they are putting some kind of sleeping powder in our water - how could we possibly be this relaxed and tired on vacation?) we were able to wake in time to take gorgeous pictures of the sunset. Funny enough - we asked a fellow cruiser to take a picture of us with the camera (with the big, heavy lens)… he couldn't find the button to take the picture and could barely hold the camera with the weight… and YET when we took a look at the picture later, we felt it was the best picture of the two of us yet and the best picture of the day. Good going mystery amateur photographer man.

Day 9: Kusadasai, Turkey

This day was a big improvement from Athens and probably our favorite port so far on the cruise.

It was also Jesse's BIRTHDAY!

We went on a tour to Epheseus, which is an ancient town about 20 minutes away from the port. It was estimated to be a town of 250,000 people - enormous for the time it existed, about 70 B.C. It has been almost completely buried by dirt and silt over the centuries, and they are gradually excavating it. The portion we saw seemed really big, but that's only 10% of the entire city! We saw one person working on excavating a section of a wall while we were walking.

There was a lot to see and learn, and it was also very humbling to realize how much "modern" technology they had 2,000 years ago - running water and plumbing, central heat, flushing toilets, indoor kitchens. No internet though, although they had a brothel so they really didn't need it. There was also a secret tunnel between the brothel and the library - draw your own conclusions. Our tour group got to go inside a separate excavation section where they have revealed and reconstructed several homes belonging to wealthy citizens. These were really impressive, and didn't feel at all like primitive caves - they had private courtyards, reflecting pools, hot water, and indoor toilets. We also had one of the archaeologists who is working on the site talk to our group about their latest find - skeletal remains from gladiators showing various combat wounds.

The library was a truly impressive building - they've painstakingly reassembled the facade, which was three stories high, from the stones found scattered around the area underground.

Next to the library was the theater, which is immense and holds 25,000 people. They still do modern performances here - Sting played here a few years ago, as did Diana Ross. However, they've discovered that the sound from the shows is actually starting to crack and damage some of the structures, so there is currently a moratorium until they can come up with a solution. After we saw the theater, we saw a fun skit in period costumes with some dancers and a gladiatorial combat - the kids would have loved this!

As we left Ephesus we saw the house of where the Virgin Mary is believed to have lived out her last years in hiding and under protection of locals. Our tour returned to the port area where we visited a Turkish rug company with a great demonstration of rug making which is now subsidized by the Turkish government in order to preserve this fading art. We would have loved to have bought a rug - but two kids and a dog may take the beauty of the all natural color and artwork out faster than than this long-time art is fading.

Before we left we enjoyed some apple tea and cheese bread - local favorites and extremely good!

After the tour we ventured out to the shopping district very close to the port area. Turkish vendors are a little more persistent than Italy and Greece, however they are also entertaining and friendly. Initially we chose to walk through the untraveled areas taking small backstreets and alleys to see children just coming home from school, riding their bicycles and playing. Lisa found a quaint store vendor selling gauze outfits with added crochet accents - so after trying on an outfit in the little back room of the store we bought an outfit for 'all white night' which was the theme of dinner that evening. Jesse followed suit with a very Mediterranean look (WOW - big step for Jesse!) and he was very proud that evening when we finally attended dinner in the dining room in the appropriate theme (note, we skipped 70s night a few evening before).

We ate lunch at an outdoor family run cafe where every Turkish waiter was inviting you in from the street with a huge smile and a persistent welcome. We enjoyed iskanda (beef w/ yogurt and spicy tomato sauce) and heya (garlic & dill yogurt w/ naan bread). Lisa had to have a picture with the cute waiter.

The evening ended with a cake for Jesse's 39th birthday in the dining room - with Happy Birthday sung by our waiters and friends at the table Tony, Tania, Luis and Maria. We were proud of Luis for singing for the first time ever in public - even though he broke out in a sweat after singing (according to his wife Maria who has told us they have a karaoke machine with over 2,000 songs at home that their kids play on - but Luis has never partaken in the activity himself).