Day 29 June 3 Malcesine, Italy

Today my cousin Debbie made brownies using just Nutella, eggs and flour.  We are making them because Eleonora’s family is coming tonight from Riva del Garda to have dinner and dessert with us.  Of course, when they were done we had to taste test them. They were great.  We all decided to take a walk.  We walked north and finally got to the place where the para gliders land after jumping off of Monte Baldo.  It was so cool to watch them float down and do spirals and finally land on the grass so gently.  Then we headed back to the apartment to take showers and change for dinner.

We are eating at the Hotel Firenze where we ate with them last year.  This time is our treat.  We arrived first and got our table. Everyone there knows the Casella’s so we got first class treatment.  First, we saw Massimo (Eleonora’s father) with his mother, Nona coming.  We welcomed everyone with double kisses and sat down. Then Eleonora and her mother Anna and her brother Emanuele arrived.  Kisses and talking all around.  I’m not doing too well with my Italian.  I just can’t get the sentences out.  But we were communicating okay I guess and of course there is Eleonora to help out.  We all had Prosecco, then pizza and wine. Then the whole family walked to our apartment for dessert and coffee.  I need to put in here just by way of letting you know how reasonable it is here, that dinner for nine people including the Prosecco, and the wine and pizzas came to $90.  Everyone except Bill and I had whole pizza’s.  It really is incredible.  We had a nice time at the apartment talking and having coffee and brownies.  Then everyone left and off to bed.

Day 25 May 30 Civitavecchia – Train to Verona, Car to Malcesine

We have a 9:30am train reservation from Civitavecchia to Rome Termini and then a transfer to Verona so we opted for the self-walk off at 6:30am.  We got up and ate early then headed to the theater to get in line to get off.  The port in Civitavecchia has a shuttle bus to get you from the ship to the port terminal. So, we got off the ship, got on the shuttle and headed to the port terminal.  Once there, we got a taxi to take us and our heavy luggage to the train station.  Some people were walking and dragging their bags and if ours weren’t so big and heavy we would have done that too.  I think my bag now weighs about a hundred pounds!!!  We go to the station and got out, our bags had to be dragged down stairs and then up to get to our track.  We got there about two hours early.  All of the trains that came through and were headed to Rome Termini were regional trains.  Ours was going to be a high-speed train.  But ours was running late.  I kept checking on it because we had a 45 min layover in Rome Termini and by the time our train got there, it was running 35 minutes late.  Well we had First Class seats and were in train car 1, so we moved as far down the platform as we could so that we would be right in front of our car when it arrived.  So, the train arrives and we man handle the luggage on the train only to find out that the number 1 car is at the other end of the train.  There was no way were lugging these big heavy bags down the isle of six train cars, so we sat in empty seats in Second class.  Nobody ever came and checked our tickets.  We arrived at Rome Termini and we only have seven tracks down to go to our connection.  So, we get to the track and again we have tickets for First Class seats in car number 1 and it as far away as possible.  But we hauled it all down to the car and hoisted the luggage on to the train and found a place to stow it.  So, score!! Now all we had to do was sit down and watch the scenery go by for three hours.  

I had gotten on line and arranged for a car to pick us up at the train station in Verona and drive us to Malcesine so we would have to be lugging the luggage on and off buses. Our guy was there, holding up a “Elwood” sign and we were loaded into a Mercedes van and headed off to Malcesine. Our driver didn’t speak English so I got to use my Italian on him.  It seemed to work pretty well.  He was siting interesting places along the way and I was trying to translate for Bill. The trick when we get to Malcesine is that it is an ancient city too and where we are staying, no cars can get to it. So, he has to let us out by the municipal building and we walk dragging our bags to the apartment.  We walked down to the old port, our apartment is overlooking it.  It was too early to check in so we sat down with all our stuff at the Restaurante Centrale right below our apartment.  I checked on my cousin, Debbie and her husband Bobby.  They are arriving sometime this evening.  They flew into Milan today and took the train to Verona and have a driver bring them to Malcesine.  So, we haven’t eaten since 5:30am so we order a pizza and some wine from the restaurant. Total $11.  At 4pm I go get the key and the guy carries our luggage for me. We get in the apartment, and I can see Bill at our table in the restaurant from our balcony.  The apartment has an elevator – almost unheard of here so that is a big plus for when I can’t make it up the one flight of stairs.  Deb texts me and says they are half way here.  I text Eleonora and she says she is heading over around 7pm.  We finish eating and go up and unpack.  Turns out Elenora and Debbie and Bobby arrive at the same time.  We were up at the car park meeting up with Eleonora when Debbie texted and said they were at the bus station.  So, we walked up and met up with them and we all walked back to the apartment.  So, we had gone shopping and gotten wine, cheese, salami and bread (of course) and I put out some munchies for all of us and we sat and talked for hours.  Then Eleonora got back on her scooter and headed back to Riva and the rest of us went to bed.  Oh, by the way, the apartment sleeps four, it has one bedroom, a pull-out couch and a small kitchen/dining combo.  

Day 24 May 29, Naples, Sorrento, Pompeii

I’m so excited to be arriving in Naples.  I wish we had more time here.  Because we have an excursion to Sorrento and Pompei we won’t see any of Naples.  We will need to come back and stay in Naples and go to Capri.  But for now, we board the bus for Sorrento.  As usual, the port is very industrial.  We can see bits of the old city of Naples and lots of the new industrial city.  In the distance we can see Vesuvius.  Our first stop is going to be at a Limoncello factory.  Of course, we are on narrow roads in our big bus and there are lots of close calls.  They have carved huge tunnels in the mountains so that we can get to Sorrento much easier.  Our guide explains that the mountains are made of a beautiful white stone that looks like marble.  So, they used that to build their towns and building.  When we get to the Limoncello factory there are about nine other buses of tourists there.  It’s like herding cattle.  We enter, half the crowd heads to the bathroom (because it has been all of 40 minutes since we left the boat) and the rest of us walk through the factory and into the gift shop.  They have everything from Limoncello to designer watches.  We buy nothing!! Then head back to the bus.  Our next stop is a small farm for some refreshments.  It is a very cool little farm.  Our bus can’t make it down the road so we are loaded into smaller vans for the trip.  The driver has his little son with him and it makes us think of our grandson, Miles. We arrive at the farm and we are shown in to the tables.  We are served water, wine, and a plate with bread, cheese, salami and olives.  Turns out they make the cheese at the farm. One of the cheeses was a simple farm cheese and the other was mozzarella.  They made it right there in front of us and gave us the recipe to make it.  Also, they told us that Buffalo Mozzarella is made with the milk from water buffalo.  Since there are no pastures big enough for water buffalo in Sorrento, our mozzarella was cow mozzarella.  After we ate, they took us down to their gift shop!!! Big surprise!  So anyway, I did buy a nice bowl with lemon candies in it and a bottle of Strawberrycello for Bill.  We left the farm and were dropped in Sorrento for shopping, eating and whatever. Sorrento was very nice.  We ate pizza and drank wine and had gelato, of course. We are eating our way through Italy and Greece!!

We got back on the bus and headed to Pompei.  I am super excited about going to Pompei.  I never thought I would get to go here.  By the time we get to Pompei it is getting pretty hot outside.  We park the bus and start our walk to the entrance of Pompei.  Oops, no our first stop is a Cameo jewelry store.  We meet the artisans and they give us a demonstration how the cameos are made.  They also have a bunch of Sicilian coral jewelry, at 20 times what the GiVal jewelry store had it.  So, as I’m leaving the store, my Swell falls out of my back pack and hits the marble floor and makes a huge clanging.  I apologize my way out of the store and it’s time for gelato.  No just kidding. We ate in Sorrento.  We head into Pompeii.  Our guide is really good and he is giving us a great tour.  I just can’t imagine what happened here.  So, when Vesuvius erupted and buried Pompeii, most of the people died of the poisonous gases before they were covered with about 80 feet of volcanic ash.  They weren’t covered with lava, which is what I thought.  It was ash and they were dead from the gases before they were buried. The eruption was documented by a survivor who wrote to his uncle in Rome and the letter was found in Rome.  So, they know exactly the day and time it happened. There were some homes with Frescos still visible on the walls.  The streets were made of great big stones and the streets were used as a sewer system. The original city of Pompeii wasn’t built by the Romans so they didn’t have indoor sewers.  So, at the intersections of the roads, there were bigger taller stones so that people could cross the streets without getting their feet dirty in the poop.  When it go too bad, they would uncork all the city fountains and the water would wash all the poop out of the city and into the fields where they grew their vegetables. Pretty ingenious.  Our final stop in Pompeii was where they have the archived artifacts including the casts of the dead boy, dead dog and the dead man. So when they excavated and realized that there were hollow areas in the petrified volcanic ash, they carefully poured plaster in the openings and made casts of the vaporized people and animals. Unbelievable. I am so glad we went. Then it was back on the bus, off my aching feet and back to the ship.  Shower and dinner then to bed and off the ship in the morning.

Day 23 May 28 Sea Day

Nothing to do today!! Yay! Oh no, they are showing Ant Man today and they have a guest lecturer talking about the Hubble.  So I guess we do have stuff to do.  So we go see Ant Man in the morning and then to the theater to listen to the lecture on the Hubble Telescope.  The lecturer was a woman retired from the USN as a Lt. Commander.  It was a good lecture and the pictures she showed were great.  After the lecture we headed up and packed our bags so we wouldn’t have to do it after our tour in Naples.  The only other thing going on this sea day is my mani/pedi.  We got ready for dinner after my mani/pedi and took the bottle of champagne that we won for being married so long.  We are going to share it with the Aussie’s and the brit’s who have tables next to us.  It was a great dinner and now all that’s left of the cruise is our stop in Naples and the trip to Civitavecchia.

Day 22 May 27th Chania, Crete, Greece

We arrive in Chania, ancient city in Crete this morning.  We are all dressed for the beach.  Going to a nice resort beach called Cabana Mare Beach Resort.  We boarded the bus and off we went.  Of course because it was a beach day, it was overcast and a little chilly.  We arrived at the resort and walked in to see beautiful lounge chairs around a pool. They had private cabanas and private hotubs.  The cushions on the chairs around the pool looked like they were at least six inches tall. Wow…. Well we headed through the pool area and out to the beach.  The chairs were still nice, just not as nice.  The cushions were only three inches tall there.  The water was really choppy and cold.  We paid for our chairs and took some pics and settled in with our kindles.  We did dunk our toes in the water, but only to say we had been in the Aegean sea.  We had a very short three hours there before we had to get back on the bus.  It took us to the ancient city of Chania.  I have to say that this is by far the dirtiest city we have been to in Greece. The guide dropped us and showed us to the old town and port.  We had an hour and a half.  We saw the old port, it was built by the Venetians and it did resemble Venice.  We walked around, ate some gelato, watched some fish eat peoples feet (fish spa) and then headed back to the bus and back on the boat. Probably our least favorite place in Greece so far.  But we did only see a tiny bit of Crete.

Day 21 May 26th Athens, Greece

We arrived in Athens this morning.  We actually docked in a city called Piraeus the seaside town about 10 miles outside of Athens.  We don’t have a tour scheduled, just a bus transfer into Athens.  We boarded our bus and we had a tour guide on the bus who was friendly and knowledgeable about his country and his town of Athens.  He explained that is was Europeans who call them Greeks, they call themselves Hellas.  On the way into town, he explained that he would be dropping us at Hadrian’s Gate near the Acropolis.  He said that Acropolis means the top of the city, so that is why is all the other Greek towns we have been in, they also had a place called Acropolis.  He pointed out the Acropolis from far off.  You could see it sitting high on hilltop.  It looks impossible to get to without climbing a long way.  So along the way he has the bus stop at a huge marble sports stadium.  The Panathenaic stadium is the only stadium in the world made completely of white marble. It is built on the site where since 6B.C. they have been holding sports contests as a tribute to Athena.  The stadium as it stands today was reconstructed in the mid-1800’s.  It was the site of the first modern Olympic Games in 1896.  From there we drove by universities and government buildings that were incredibly beautiful.  I have included them in the photo site.  We ended up at Hadrian’s Gate it was built in 131 A.D. as part of a wall separating the old city from the new city.  The new National Gardens are built there as well now.  The Temple of Zeus is just a little further at the end of the gardens. A temple was being built on this same site in 515 B.C. but it wasn’t until 129A.D. that the current temple was finished.

We walked with the guide into the Plaka – the old town of Athens and then up toward the new Museum of the Acropolis.  Our guide told us not to fear the climb up the Acropolis to the Parthenon.  He said it was very doable.  So up we started.  He said he would take us to the gate that would be more accessible.  He said the people we saw standing in line for tickets would find out after they bought them that they would have to climb to where we were going.  So we headed up a gradual incline.  We reached a place where he told us it was the mountain of Mars or Mars Hill.  This is one of the places St. Paul preached. It is right at the start of the climb to the Acropolis.  Our guide left us there to go buy our tickets to go up the Acropolis.  The line looked daunting but the guide said no more than 15 minutes.  So we got in line and bought our tickets, and now it was time to climb.  I didn’t know that the Parthenon was at the Acropolis but it is.   The ancient Greeks asked the Gods to favor them with a gift and if they did, they would build a temple.  The god Poseidon gave them a great salt lake.  The Greeks didn’t much care for it.  But Athena gave them olive trees.  They liked that a lot more so they built her a huge Temple on top of the Acropolis – the Parthenon.  They also built a temple to Poseidon up there too but Athena’s temple is bigger.  The walk up is some marble steps and some just rocky ground.  The crowds were big and it was very crowded as you can see by the pictures.  Going up was slow and that was good.  We took lots of pictures up there. They are doing lots of reconstruction to rebuild parts of the monuments that have deteriorated.  The walk down was really difficult because of how slippery the marble steps are.  At one point a lady a ways behind us, slipped and fell down the steps. I am happy to tell you that I did not fall!!

When we got down from the acropolis, we went into the old town – Plaka to eat lunch at a cute little café outside on the square.  We ate traditional Greek appetizers and olive pesto and bread.  And of course wine!!  Then we met the bus and headed back to the ship.

Day 20 - May 25th Santorini

We arrived in Santorini this morning.  We noticed as we looked at the island that it is impossible to imagine scaling these shear cliffs to build those towns at the top of the mountains.  We are parked out in the water inside the crescent hollow.  The island is shaped like a crescent and we are moored right in the center looking up at these incredible shear cliffs with lots of white buildings on the top.  There is a zig zag path that goes up the mountainside to the town of Fira.

Since we weren't docked, that meant that we would need to tender in on boats.  We have an excursion scheduled today to go to the town of Pyrgos, and then on to a wine tasting and then to Fira for walking about.  So we got into our tender and we were taken to a dock at the fr end of the island.  The waves were quite active and it's always amazing how good these boat captains are at their jobs.  We pulled right up and were able to get off very easily.  On the way in we passed an American navy ship.  No name but the number 60 on it.  So Carol, let us know who it was.

After we got on the ground at the dock, it was off to our bus. Here is yet another island with narrow roads and a big bus going up mountains with incredible switchbacks.  Someone is getting run off the road and I'll bet the bus wins.  We headed up the mountain and of course ran a small smart car off the road at about the third switchback.  We headed up to the top of the mountain and when we go there we were very surprised to see the other side of the island was was flat!  We saw the airport over on the flat side.  Don't know why they don't have a dock on that side of the island.  Anyway, we headed up to the very top of the mountain where there was a military installation but our guide said it was the best views.  So the bus stopped and we got out and took pictures.

Then it was back in the bus to go to the beautiful mountain town of Pyrgos.  We got there and it was an amazing little town with white and blue buildings.  We are struck with how clean everything is here.  We climbed up and down the stairs going to churches, restaurants and beautiful little houses.  It seemed everyone had stairs to their roofs and there were tables and chairs on the roof for them to eat their meals and look down at the ocean views.  We walked around there for about an hour.  It was really lovely. Hope you like the pics we took.  After everyone had a chance to get a cup of Greek coffee we got back in our bus to head to our wine tasting.

We quickly arrived at our destination, Phyrgos Restaurant.  It was a beautiful place and we were shown in to the tables by a big bay window.  They brought us water, then they brought decanters of white wine, and then a plate of greek snacks.  A man at our table asked the proprietor what kind of wine it was.  We knew it was a local wine, but we weren't sure if it was a sweet wine, dry or what.  Also we kind of wanted to know the name of the wine.  The proprietor's response was a terse "white wine".  Rude and unhelpful.  The snacks included bread, hummus, spanakopita, sausage and some sort of fried tomato thing.  We were sitting with four people from Maryland and two women from Vegas.  We all had some laughs and ate our food and drank our wine.  We kept expecting that they would come out and tell us about the wine.  Everyone else was sure we would be getting a red wine or a sweet wine with our dessert.  Well we never saw the proprietor again.  No dessert, no red wine.  I can see a bad review coming on this tour from someone in our cabin.

We all loaded back into the bus and headed to Pyrgos.  We were riding along the top of the mountain and Pyrgos is right there on top of the mountain.  We got a couple of instructions from the guide about the local bus and where to catch the cable car down to the tender boats.  Then we were left on our own.  We had about five hours before having to get back to the ship.  So we shopped and ate gelato and took pictures.  The streets here were very clean too.  And with all the buildings painted white, everything just looks clean and fresh.

At this point I need to go back and tell you about you get from the tender boats up to the town of Pyrgos.  We of course took a bus around the island and ended up on top of the mountain, but lots of other people just go straight up the mountain.  The traditional way is on a donkey!!!! I put some pics of the donkeys in the file.  Also some of their poop!! Anyway, we were told on the ship NOT to take a donkey.  To take the cable car up the mountain.  As for getting down the mountain, there is the cable car or the donkeys, or walking 865 steps down the zig zag path to the docks.  The steps are not straight stairs.  They are long strides sometimes two or three steps before you step down again.  And they are not level.  They are made of rocks and cobblestones and are pretty slick.  We would have walked down however if we could have found the way to get on the path.  So we climbed up to the cable car to ride down.  The line wound all around the town.  People were saying it was one and a half hour at least to get to the cable car.  By this time it was hot and the line was in the sun.  But we sucked it up and got in line and just made jokes.  Turns out it moved very fast and we were at the bottom within forty minutes.

So we got back on our tender boat and headed to the ship.  Again we showered and hung out on our balcony watching the shore and the tender boats go back and forth.  At 6pm we headed down to dinner and then to the Centrum to listen to the band.  The show tonight was the Tango group we saw on the first cruise (the crossing) and they weren't good enough to go see again.  We really miss the Burn the Floor performers from NCL.  Oh well, so that  being the case, we headed to our cabin and I wrote this up!!  Tomorrow we land in Athens.  Can't wait to see the sights.