Sea Day photos
position at 8:15am: N35 04.33 latitude W9 00.47 longitude
(480 NE of Madeira, Spain)
temperature: 61F, mostly sunny with a swell coming from the north
distance since FLL: 35,470 miles
Today was a lazy sea day. Debbie slept in as expected though with some interruption. Clay left the closet door open before he left the cabin early and it swung and groaned and slammed until Debbie realized Clay was gone and got up and closed it. Clay skipped walking early and instead walked around 2pm in the afternoon. It was a cool (about 65F), sunny and breezy on deck when he walked. We entered the Atlantic about midnight last night and we all know it. In 9am Vords of Visdom, Captain Dag said we are in typical North Atlantic swells and the ride will just be rough now. He was funny this morning. He described where we are sailing by saying that to the North was England and that if you were looking really hard you could see Antarctica to the south. Clay wanted to attend Roger's port talk on Funchal, Madeira at 9am. He went to breakfast early and only had a short intersect with Debbie's breakfast in LaVeranda. Debbie had to answer lots of questions from our regular waitstaff about this. Lots of questions and comments, too funny. It was very rough motion up and aft in LaVeranda this morning and many people were feeling it and had to be helped out. The same thing happened as Debbie sat in the hall in front of Horizon Lounge waiting to get back in the cabin. People bounced off the walls trying to get back there for the cooking demo. Then later, some had to be helped out. We are in it now. Debbie had a surprise during her breakfast alone. After Clay left, she found herself facing a couple that had ridden jetskis with us in Bora Bora. (The morning Clay sprained his ankle and then dumped himself, Debbie and Bob in the Pacific Ocean and fried the waterproof digital camera by not sealing the waterproof case properly.) She walked over and asked if they remembered. Of course they did. It was a favorite day of theirs. She asked if they had been onboard the whole time. The answer was no, Debbie was relieved because she would have felt terrible if they had been aboard all this time and after that day and lunch together, she had never recognized them again. It turned out that they were aboard early and the husband was very depressed when they had to leave. He said he was always sad to leave a cruise, and that he had really wanted to do the World Cruise and she didn't. He said that the last 3-4 days they were on that he was so depressed about leaving when he knew that we were going on. So, a few weeks ago he called RSSC and got on a waitlist to do this cruise. They left for Rome on a last minute basis. This was a little mysterious at first. We got our Segment 6, World Cruise Passenger Directory and this is the least attended. We have only 469 passengers onboard for this one. Then Debbie remembered Captain Dag talking about how Voyager would go into drydock soon and they would actually start replacing cabin carpets on the Atlantic crossing. So, even though there must be a lot of empty cabins, they probably did not want to sell them for that reason. We suppose. Anyway, Debbie told them about our camera failure and they offered to mail us copies of their pictures one day. They still had their waterproof disposable camera and had not developed the pictures yet. We will keep our fingers crossed to get some good photos of that day. How lucky is this? Also, in the morning Laurens walked by as we were working on posting this from the wifi hotspot in the hallway in front of Horizons and Debbie asked him if it was true that he had loaded NO local beers from Italy or Spain. He tried the, "they have local beers there, I don't think so" routine that had worked so well for the last segment through the Middle East. Debbie busted him on that and Patrick, who was with Laurens, said they could not load every thing local from all over the world. Laurens got out his pad and wrote down the names of the beers Debbie gave him from Italy and said he was making a list. Debbie told him laughingly, first item: enlarge ship's storage areas.
At 11am in the Constellation Theater, there was a "Town Hall Meeting:Lets Talk Ship-Stuff" with Captain Dag Dvergastein and Christian Sauleau, EVP of RSSC Operations, and moderated by Jamie Logan, Cruise Director. Clay went while Debbie finished up posting the journal photos. (We don't know if Voyager has any statistics on the free Internet usage and its impact on bandwidth, but it seems to be getting slower to us. This was a presentation by Christian of the marketing/branding change to Regent followed by questions and answers. The only real news was the changes that are being made to the 2007 World Cruise itinerary. They are not going to Taiwan which was originally scheduled. People commented that they thought Saigon was a better port than DaNang, but the Captain stood by the schedule of doing DaNang so people could see Hue. They also said that there would likely be other adjustments to the 2007 WC as things get closer. The other big new was that as they travel east next year and regularly lose hours instead of gaining them, they will change the time in the middle of the afternoon instead of at 2am as they have done this year. This is apparently to keep people from losing sleep. Capt. Dag also made the point that next time they cross the Atlantic like this, they will take the Southern route, by dropping down to the Canary Islands before going across. He said that is usually a smoother ride. Too bad they didn't decide to give us the smoother ride instead of heading for Bermuda. They are deciding the 2008 WC itinerary now and plan to pass out a questionaire. All the ships are to go into drydock at some point in the future with the Navigator being the next one to do so. Also, the soap bars will get bigger in the future. There was not much else covered that really qualifies as news. The meeting lasted until about 12:15pm. Clay got back to the cabin as an announcement was being made for a Code Blue in the Constellation Theater. No idea what happened in there.
There was another Tex-Mex buffet on the Pool Deck at noon today. As much as Debbie wanted a burrito, she decided it was just too rough and she would be too uncomfortable up there, so we went to Compass Rose and had sandwiches. The ride was really rough and Debbie was not feeling well. We both had headaches and Debbie took some drugs to just knock herself out and spent the afternoon in bed. Clay did his deck walk in the afternoon and followed it with a Beck's Light beer at the Pool Bar. Clay is thinking that he should have had this walking schedule all along. Debbie thinks that would have been a bad idea! Clay says the beer was very low cal-low carb. Whatever.
We went to dinner tonight in Latitudes. They have the new theme of Spanish Bodega now. It was fun. The decorations are great. The food was good and plentiful, except the serving size of Clay's Red Snapper and shrimp. (Picture of the menu posted.) The live entertainment theme was the Kitchen Cabaret has carried over into this segment having live entertainment as well. The entertainment was a set played by 3 members of the Voyager Quintet. There was a drummer, keyboard player and guitarist. They played some songs, then the played a few more songs to accompany the singer Amapola. Then, Frankie Holiday's daughter Judy, who performs as Aisha the belly dancer came on and to recorded music did some Flamenco dances. She came out among the tables and posed for pictures. At one point, she put a hat on Dionne's head and pulled her onto the stage. (Dionne is the WC social hostess and a former dancer.) It was all enjoyable. The big news here was that Tom and Lillian were seated next to us! (Pictures posted for Pam and Bonnie. Enjoy!)
Also in the news, the 3D puzzle is almost complete. Only the roofs of the buildings remain. Evidently, it was not as hard as we thought it would be for the puzzle people, though we suspect that the 2 Spanish boys we saw mostly working on it have done most of the work. Good work. (Picture posted.) And, we received the Passenger Directory for this segment and this is the lowest attended segment of all with only 469 passengers listed Rome to Ft. Lauderdale. To recap the segment passenger counts: full World Cruise is 280, segment 1 was 623, segment 2 was 585, segment 3 was 571, segment 4 was 604, segment 5 was 611 and segment 6 is 469.
So, it really was a slow day at sea with too much rocking to be too active. We hope all the people that have been complaining that they can't even tell they are on a ship are very happy today. Tomorrow is one of our last 2 port days in Funchal, Madeira. We are scheduled to dock at 8am. There will be a complimentary shuttle bus into town here. The WC Special Event, a Farewell Soiree, is to be held at 2pm til sailing time. So, that really only gives us a half day of leisure time there. We have been here before so we plan to take it easy and stroll. We do plan to take the cable car up to the Monte and the wicker toboggan back down. We did not do that last time and since it is the thing to do, we will try it.
Sea Day photos
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
Tuesday, April 18, 2006
Day 110 - Monday April 17
Ronda photos
position at 7:30am: N36 40.27 latitude W4 26.92 longitude
(Malaga, Spain)
temperature: 61F, mostly sunny
distance since FLL: 35,186 miles
Clay overslept and missed walking on deck. He woke up around 5:45am, and since we wanted an early start on the day, he just skipped his walk. Debbie was a slow starter again.
We docked before 8am on the starboard side at pier #1 in the port of Malaga. It was about a mile to the port gate, so Regent provided a shuttle between the ship and the port gate. We ate breakfast in LaVeranda which opened at 7am this morning, 30 minutes earlier than usual. A little after 8am, the ship was cleared and we were waiting for the shuttle bus shortly thereafter. About 8:15am, two shuttles arrived among numerous tour buses. We boarded the first shuttle and waited a few minutes for other passengers. When none came after about 10 minutes, the driver left and just took us to the port gate where we arrived about 8:30am. From there, we walked maybe another mile or so to find the Europcar office close to the train station where we got our rental car. It was a red Mini Cooper. Debbie was thrilled as she wanted one of these cars since she saw the movie, Italian Job. It was a good car. Bigger than the sports car we have at home, if you can believe it, much more roomy with a back seat and it had a lot of pep. It was a 5-speed manual transmission with AC. The rental fee for the day was 80 Euros with 350 km allowed.
It was 9:15am and we had our rental car and were off. Then we hit our first snag. Out of the parking lot was a one way street 'going the wrong way'. Well, after 30 minutes of continuous driving on city streets, we lucked upon the road we wanted. So, about 9:45am, we were on our way. We elected to take the scenic route over country roads (about 1 hour 30 minutes and 58 miles instead of the quicker way of 1 hour 20 minutes and 73 miles). During the drive, we hit our second snag, bad road signage :). Plus the route numbers had apparently been changed because the signs did not match the route numbers on the maps. Plus, road construction, in some places only one lane was open, in other places the road was just like a dirt track. The good news is that we had the roads pretty much to ourselves. We only saw a couple dozen other cars on the "scenic route." Note: for future reference when the Lonely Planet guide calls something a scenic route, it is the terrifying one! It took us 2 full hours to get to Ronda. Once we finally lucked upon Ronda, it took a while to find where we should be. Again, there were detours and roads closed and construction. Plus, everyone was here. It was pretty crowded. So, it was after 12 noon when we parked the car in an underground lot about a block from the bull ring and another block from the Puente Nuevo bridge over the gorge. We first checked out the bull ring building. Ronda is the birth place of modern bull fighting, and this ring dates from 1785. Bull fighting has attracted such notables in this century as Orson Welles and Earnest Hemingway to Ronda.
We then ate lunch in a restaurant across the street from the bull ring named Pedro Romero. The Romero family are pretty much the royalty of Spanish bullfighting. The restaurant is full of bullfighting memorabilia and mounted bull heads. Debbie had Ronda sausage cooked in white wine and served along with some fried potatoes. Clay had pork cheeks served with potatoes and mushrooms (a local specialty). Lunch took about an hour and it was just before 2pm when we started a quick walk over the bridges and through the old town. We bought some manchega cheese at a shop called Queso & Jambon Boutique. They had a wall of hams hanging in the front door with hoofs on them! But, we only bought a little wedge of "strong" manchega vs. "soft" manchega. It was very good and kind of salty tasting. We bought a couple of T-shirts and also got a couple of pastries from a shop above the parking garage for our trip back.
At 3:15pm, we headed back to the car and tried to make our way out of Ronda on a different (quicker, better roads but longer) route back to Malaga. Well, we hit another snag trying to find the proper road. A stop at a service station said we should follow A-397 to San Pedro de Alcantara even though all our instructions printed out in the morning from Mapquest said it should be A-376, and the Europcar map showing the only road there being route 376, and the Ronda brochure said it was 376... We finally just quit looking for 376 and just followed A-397 down to San Pedro and there caught a toll road, AP-7 back to Malaga. We hit traffic as we got close to Malaga. And it also took us a little while to locate the proper road we wanted and to find the rental car return which was close, but not at, the pickup location. Even with all this snags, we had the car back by 5:35pm and caught a cab back to the ship. We were in our cabin shortly after 6pm, well before the 6:30 all-aboard.
The ride both to Ronda and from Ronda was very scenic with villages with all white houses tucked into the mountains and lots of green pastures. The mountains and olive groves and oranges and lemons, the rocky terrain and the patchwork of the different fields down below. The gorge, El Tajo, that runs through it makes Ronda dramatically scenic as well. We are glad we made the trip, even with the snags. It was a good day and nice to just be alone in a car again.
We ate in Laveranda this evening, checking out its new Tuscan menu. Debbie had gnocchi and Clay had tortellini. The dishes were OK, but not home runs. We both left about half the servings behind. We skipped dessert because the roads were so winding that we did not try to eat our pastries in the car. So, we brought them back to the cabin and stowed them inside a cabinet in a plastic bag for later after dinner.
Debbie did laundry this evening because we really needed it and she was going to stay up to try to see Africa on the port side of the ship and Gilbraltar on the starboard side. Captain Dag says this should happen around 10:30pm. We also move the clocks back this evening, so tomorrow can be a sleep-in day for Debbie.
We did get out to Deck 12 to see the Rock of Gibraltar lit up on the Med side as we sailed past. Also, some lights on the end of Africa as we came around. These 2 continents are not too far apart. It was very windy out and chilly. Debbie used her big red parka again. We are keeping our fingers crossed for continued smooth sailing now that we are in the Atlantic and on the final stretch home. Farewell to Europe! In 2 days we will be in Funchal. The Farewell Soiree will be held there on 4/19 at 2pm. We are having cocktails and canapes while enjoying a Madeirean folkloric performance. The location is to be the Quinta Magnolia and we expect local specialites and a variety of local Madeira wine.
Winding up here. So, it is sad to be leaving Europe and begin the long hard haul back across open ocean. But, Debbie used some more of our free phone time today. Today is the first day of subscription ticket sales to the American Dance Festival in Durham, NC. She checked the lineup online and then had to phone to get our regular seats again. (Hey, it took us years to work our way up to those front row seats!) So, while reality does suck some as it begins to set in that we will leave Voyager after all this time. We also have our real lives to look forward to returning too. Another bittersweet moment in our lives. It seems little in our lives is all sweet or all bitter but it is almost all good anyway.
Ronda photos
position at 7:30am: N36 40.27 latitude W4 26.92 longitude
(Malaga, Spain)
temperature: 61F, mostly sunny
distance since FLL: 35,186 miles
Clay overslept and missed walking on deck. He woke up around 5:45am, and since we wanted an early start on the day, he just skipped his walk. Debbie was a slow starter again.
We docked before 8am on the starboard side at pier #1 in the port of Malaga. It was about a mile to the port gate, so Regent provided a shuttle between the ship and the port gate. We ate breakfast in LaVeranda which opened at 7am this morning, 30 minutes earlier than usual. A little after 8am, the ship was cleared and we were waiting for the shuttle bus shortly thereafter. About 8:15am, two shuttles arrived among numerous tour buses. We boarded the first shuttle and waited a few minutes for other passengers. When none came after about 10 minutes, the driver left and just took us to the port gate where we arrived about 8:30am. From there, we walked maybe another mile or so to find the Europcar office close to the train station where we got our rental car. It was a red Mini Cooper. Debbie was thrilled as she wanted one of these cars since she saw the movie, Italian Job. It was a good car. Bigger than the sports car we have at home, if you can believe it, much more roomy with a back seat and it had a lot of pep. It was a 5-speed manual transmission with AC. The rental fee for the day was 80 Euros with 350 km allowed.
It was 9:15am and we had our rental car and were off. Then we hit our first snag. Out of the parking lot was a one way street 'going the wrong way'. Well, after 30 minutes of continuous driving on city streets, we lucked upon the road we wanted. So, about 9:45am, we were on our way. We elected to take the scenic route over country roads (about 1 hour 30 minutes and 58 miles instead of the quicker way of 1 hour 20 minutes and 73 miles). During the drive, we hit our second snag, bad road signage :). Plus the route numbers had apparently been changed because the signs did not match the route numbers on the maps. Plus, road construction, in some places only one lane was open, in other places the road was just like a dirt track. The good news is that we had the roads pretty much to ourselves. We only saw a couple dozen other cars on the "scenic route." Note: for future reference when the Lonely Planet guide calls something a scenic route, it is the terrifying one! It took us 2 full hours to get to Ronda. Once we finally lucked upon Ronda, it took a while to find where we should be. Again, there were detours and roads closed and construction. Plus, everyone was here. It was pretty crowded. So, it was after 12 noon when we parked the car in an underground lot about a block from the bull ring and another block from the Puente Nuevo bridge over the gorge. We first checked out the bull ring building. Ronda is the birth place of modern bull fighting, and this ring dates from 1785. Bull fighting has attracted such notables in this century as Orson Welles and Earnest Hemingway to Ronda.
We then ate lunch in a restaurant across the street from the bull ring named Pedro Romero. The Romero family are pretty much the royalty of Spanish bullfighting. The restaurant is full of bullfighting memorabilia and mounted bull heads. Debbie had Ronda sausage cooked in white wine and served along with some fried potatoes. Clay had pork cheeks served with potatoes and mushrooms (a local specialty). Lunch took about an hour and it was just before 2pm when we started a quick walk over the bridges and through the old town. We bought some manchega cheese at a shop called Queso & Jambon Boutique. They had a wall of hams hanging in the front door with hoofs on them! But, we only bought a little wedge of "strong" manchega vs. "soft" manchega. It was very good and kind of salty tasting. We bought a couple of T-shirts and also got a couple of pastries from a shop above the parking garage for our trip back.
At 3:15pm, we headed back to the car and tried to make our way out of Ronda on a different (quicker, better roads but longer) route back to Malaga. Well, we hit another snag trying to find the proper road. A stop at a service station said we should follow A-397 to San Pedro de Alcantara even though all our instructions printed out in the morning from Mapquest said it should be A-376, and the Europcar map showing the only road there being route 376, and the Ronda brochure said it was 376... We finally just quit looking for 376 and just followed A-397 down to San Pedro and there caught a toll road, AP-7 back to Malaga. We hit traffic as we got close to Malaga. And it also took us a little while to locate the proper road we wanted and to find the rental car return which was close, but not at, the pickup location. Even with all this snags, we had the car back by 5:35pm and caught a cab back to the ship. We were in our cabin shortly after 6pm, well before the 6:30 all-aboard.
The ride both to Ronda and from Ronda was very scenic with villages with all white houses tucked into the mountains and lots of green pastures. The mountains and olive groves and oranges and lemons, the rocky terrain and the patchwork of the different fields down below. The gorge, El Tajo, that runs through it makes Ronda dramatically scenic as well. We are glad we made the trip, even with the snags. It was a good day and nice to just be alone in a car again.
We ate in Laveranda this evening, checking out its new Tuscan menu. Debbie had gnocchi and Clay had tortellini. The dishes were OK, but not home runs. We both left about half the servings behind. We skipped dessert because the roads were so winding that we did not try to eat our pastries in the car. So, we brought them back to the cabin and stowed them inside a cabinet in a plastic bag for later after dinner.
Debbie did laundry this evening because we really needed it and she was going to stay up to try to see Africa on the port side of the ship and Gilbraltar on the starboard side. Captain Dag says this should happen around 10:30pm. We also move the clocks back this evening, so tomorrow can be a sleep-in day for Debbie.
We did get out to Deck 12 to see the Rock of Gibraltar lit up on the Med side as we sailed past. Also, some lights on the end of Africa as we came around. These 2 continents are not too far apart. It was very windy out and chilly. Debbie used her big red parka again. We are keeping our fingers crossed for continued smooth sailing now that we are in the Atlantic and on the final stretch home. Farewell to Europe! In 2 days we will be in Funchal. The Farewell Soiree will be held there on 4/19 at 2pm. We are having cocktails and canapes while enjoying a Madeirean folkloric performance. The location is to be the Quinta Magnolia and we expect local specialites and a variety of local Madeira wine.
Winding up here. So, it is sad to be leaving Europe and begin the long hard haul back across open ocean. But, Debbie used some more of our free phone time today. Today is the first day of subscription ticket sales to the American Dance Festival in Durham, NC. She checked the lineup online and then had to phone to get our regular seats again. (Hey, it took us years to work our way up to those front row seats!) So, while reality does suck some as it begins to set in that we will leave Voyager after all this time. We also have our real lives to look forward to returning too. Another bittersweet moment in our lives. It seems little in our lives is all sweet or all bitter but it is almost all good anyway.
Ronda photos
Sunday, April 16, 2006
Day 109 - Sunday April 16
Easter photos
position at 8:45am: N39 10.38 latitude E0 42.00 longitude
(about 388 miles NE of Malaga, Spain)
temperature: 61F, mostly sunny
distance since FLL: 34,812 miles
HAPPY EASTER!
Clay did 35 laps this morning and it was nice about 60 degrees F and not too windy. He and one other walker had the place to themselves. Debbie seriously slept in this morning and we just made it down to Compass Rose at 9:15am before their 9:30am closing. Clay had blueberry pancakes. Debbie had raspberries and chocolate croissant followed by a single order of swedish pancakes. We skipped the offered Sunday-morning-at-sea special, which is Eggs Benedict topped with caviar and champagne. Captain Dag said in his 9am Vords of Visdom that we are going slowly otherwise we would arrive in Malaga about midnight and that there is no point in that. We'd like to get there sooner than later, but as long as we are on time we'll be happy.
Clay told Debbie there was a giant Easter Bunny lying in the Main Atrium. Should she rush to go see him? No, he will probably be there later. So, after breakfast we strolled that direction. Visible from the front door to Compass Rose, there were big brown feet sticking up off a white cloth-covered table and the table was surrounded. What is this? A wake? The Easter Bunny was lying in state! More than one person was reminded of the recent death and lying in state of Pope John Paul II. The feet were the same, one foot drifting off... It was very sad and depressing. We all wanted to see the Easter Bunny at least propped up! There were dyed hard-boiled eggs and loose and wrapped candies all over and around the dead bread Easter Bunny. Debbie wanted some of the chocolate, but they were having an unadvertised Easter Egg hunt in the Main Atrium for the children and she did not know what the bounds were. But, some grown people were standing around the table noshing on the Easter decoration candies. She saw Lars standing off to one side and went over and asked him if we were allowed to take chocolates off the display. He sternly told her NO, she got her candies delivered to her suite last night. Didn't she? Debbie told him, a big dark green hard-boiled egg and a few candies. Lars, told her, well that is what you get then, no more. Debbie looked disappointed and Lars patted her shoulder and told her he was joking and of course she should help herself to the candies. Debbie went overa picked up 5 foil-wrapped chocolates and put them in her sweater pockets. Lars asked her what she thought of it and well, if he can dish it out then she hoped he could take it. She told him it looked like the Easter Bunny was lying there dead and we were holding a wake. The Easter Bunny lies in state. Lars looked over and just bowed and shook his head. Apparently, he had not seen it that way until now. Debbie told him, this is just too sad and depressing, rest in peace Easter Bunny. Lars just cracked up with laughter. He told Debbie that when you bake a 4-foot bread bunny it has to lie down, there is no way for it to stand up unless you give it a skeleton. Debbie told him, there you go, problem solved, next year you should give it a skeleton and stand it up or at least prop it up. So, next year it will be an impressive and happy sight and not a state funeral. He said he would share the information. Let's hope. Debbie walked back over and put Bob on the table and looked up at Clay. Hand motions. Move some candy, move Bob. A voice behind Debbie said, "Debbie, I'm laughing at you." Debbie turned and Peggy (xrvlcruiser) had caught Debbie and Bob in action!
That reminds us. Yesterday Capt. Dag was very excited about a ship docked aft-to-aft with Voyager. The ship was Black Watch and it was smaller than us, but very attractive as Debbie had commented. It turns out that the ship is from the former Royal Viking Line and now owned by Fred Olsen Lines. Capt. Dag said he had gotten an invitation to go over and tour it. He was very enthusiastic about this anticipated ship's tour and was telling us about how special it was and beautifully designed with wonderful artwork and he hoped it would be more or less the same as his fond memories of it. He greeted us later at the Special WC'ers dinner and Debbie asked him how his Black Watch visit went. He was very pleased with it and said that the ship was even better than he remembered it. We'll keep that in mind.
So far Easter, which is Debbie's favorite holiday, was not living up to her expectations and she was really feeling homesick and sad. What is up with this? Some kid won a big chocolate foil-wrapped bunny as a prize for the Easter Egg hunt. His Mom asked him if he had seen the big Easter Bunny, he looked around and she pointed to the lying bread bunny. He went to the table and stood on his tiptops, turned up his nose and asked, "That's an Easter Bunny?"! Unless you were homesick for German Easter candies, you were probably disappointed today. Where are the Peeps?!? Where are the Cadbury Eggs, Reese's Eggs, the PEEPS? Speaking of which, the number of children aboard has probably more than doubled since Rome! (We heard that 290 passengers left in Rome, but have not heard how many new passengers came on for this segment.) But, there might be a bright spot ahead. Compass Rose did not have anything special in its menus for Easter, but the Passages newsletter had this, "Easter Lunch Buffet Please come join us for a special Easter Lunch Buffet in LaVeranda noon to 2pm. OK! We took Bob and the camera and headed up to LaVeranda about 12:30pm. It was the same buffet as always! Therre was a leg of lamb at the carving station, but that is not too special! Big disappoinment. We went down to Compass Rose. Debbie did not want any of the dishes that were being served in CR or LaVeranda (except no leg of lamb at CR) and just wanted a sandwich instead. She got a turkey sandwich and a bowl of chilled cream of fig and mint soup, that she really liked. Clay had the rigatoni in braised oxtail tomato sauce and really liked it. (He said it was very good, but different from the Friia family sauce because it was "not as ethnic," by which he meant there were no bones.) Clay had ice cream for dessert and Debbie had chocolate creme brulee, a bright spot in her day.
We spent most of the day going through Debbie's research for our planned drive tomorrow and visit to the town of Ronda in the rental car we have reserved. Keeping our fingers crossed that all goes well here. It will be a nice day no matter what. Just to get in a car and drive on our own again. Remind us a little of what life is back in the real world!
Tonight we have our dinner invitation with Jamie and Dana. We have seen them a couple of times since we received the invitation and they were reassured that we were coming. Tonight is Informal.
We have had very smooth sailing lately and don't think that we don't appreciate it. We really appreciate it and are thankful! We hope for it to continue past the Straits of Gibralter.
So, dinner with the Cruise Director, Jamie Logan and the Assistant Cruise Director, Jamie's wife, Dana. Also, at our table were our next door neighbors in 750, Rudy and Shirley, and newlyweds, Tom and Lillian. It turns out that we sailed with Tom on our first long cruise in 2001 on Crown Odyssey and we were on opposite ends of the same hallway, then! And, Tom's daughter, Bonnie has been reading this blog from the very first entry (still not sure how she found it!) and had told us to try to find her Dad to put his photo here on the website. Well, guess what Bonnie?!? Check the pictures! We finally, at long last, met your Dad and his charming and beautiful new wife, Lillian. We had a very fun evening. It was very much a small world experience as we tried to explain to Jamie and Dana how we could possibly "know" someone we had never met. It is hard to explain and more than a little strange. But, since this kind of thing just keeps happening, we are getting used to it. Hopefully, we will fade back into anonymity when we return home. If it wasn't out before, our trip journal is definitely "out" to Voyager staff after tonight. So, gosh, the big event tonight was conversation and we'll try to report what we ate. Debbie had an iceberg lettuce salad with sundried tomato viniagrette and tortilla strips, followed by farfalle amatriciana, white wine & basil sherbet and chicken parmagiana. For dessert, she had dulce de leche ice cream with chocolate sauce. Clay sat at the other end of the table, from Debbie and he had the iceberg lettuce salad and the pasta and then thynme-marinated lamb loin. For dessert, he had the ice coupe "Mona Lisa," diet vanilla ice cream with warm blueberries. The pasta amatriciana sauce was very, very spicy tonight. Debbie was happy for the sherbet to cool her palate. (Oh, Dana, after we all had a mental block 'blog' is short for web log.) Rudy & Shirley, it was great to spend more time with you at dinner tonight. Thanks to Dana & Jamie for getting us all together!
When Jamie heard that Debbie doesn't really like cruising and why, he asked her to post it here, so here it is. Jamie thought that other people needed to hear this, it may have been said before, but if not, he goes. Debbie gets seasick. Debbie really likes doing her own laundry and grocery shopping and cooking. She misses doing all those things on a ship and feels like a big slug just eating and eating without ever expending the calories to earn a meal. Thus all the exercise classes and stairs. So, this very long cruise has been particularly painful on this front between Debbie's broken toe and Clay's sprained ankle, and the respiratory illnesses and Debbie's pneumonia. This cruise was always going to be the hardest for us just because of the length of time continuously enclosed in this small space, but both of us being temporarilyimmobilized for stretches at a time has made it really difficult. Clay likes working and Debbie likes her chores and we miss those simple things along with all the freedom of not being passengers on a ship. That is not to say that we have not had an amazing journey, because it has been fantastic and amazing, but it has also been a test of character. There is a small globe that we bought in the Getty Musuem in LA. It comes in its own little round box and is called Traveller's World Globe in a Box. It has been sitting on the shelf above this desk for 109 days now. It has a unattributed quote on the outside that has become more and more meaningful. "A passage is one way travel -- A voyage is a round trip." This has been an amazing journey! It has another quote from Augustine. "The world is a great book of which they who never stir from home read only one page." This has become more and more meaningful as well. What an experience we have had.
In other news, Signatures has a new menu. We never eat there so we can't add anything other than this piece of news from the Daily Passages. Tonight is the first night of the new Spanish Bodega in Latitudes. We have reservations for Tues. night, so we'll add more on that later. Also, in Latitudes for the Spanish Bodega we have heard that they extended Amapola, the singer, through Ft. Lauderdale to perform in there with Frankie Holiday, the guitarist who has been onboard for a while now. And, Frankie's daughter, Aisha, has boarded to perform as a belly dancer. We have had a new puzzle for a few days now and don't know if we mentioned that it is a 3-D. It sat untouched for a few days until the 2 Spanish boys on board found it. Building is a boy thing. They have made a lot of progress on it. It is hard to make the jump from flat puzzles to 3-D but they will have it finished before long.
So, we have an early day tomorrow and we have to move the clocks back an hour tomorrow night, so it will be a very looong day tomorrow. We need to close and see if we can get this posted.
Easter photos
position at 8:45am: N39 10.38 latitude E0 42.00 longitude
(about 388 miles NE of Malaga, Spain)
temperature: 61F, mostly sunny
distance since FLL: 34,812 miles
HAPPY EASTER!
Clay did 35 laps this morning and it was nice about 60 degrees F and not too windy. He and one other walker had the place to themselves. Debbie seriously slept in this morning and we just made it down to Compass Rose at 9:15am before their 9:30am closing. Clay had blueberry pancakes. Debbie had raspberries and chocolate croissant followed by a single order of swedish pancakes. We skipped the offered Sunday-morning-at-sea special, which is Eggs Benedict topped with caviar and champagne. Captain Dag said in his 9am Vords of Visdom that we are going slowly otherwise we would arrive in Malaga about midnight and that there is no point in that. We'd like to get there sooner than later, but as long as we are on time we'll be happy.
Clay told Debbie there was a giant Easter Bunny lying in the Main Atrium. Should she rush to go see him? No, he will probably be there later. So, after breakfast we strolled that direction. Visible from the front door to Compass Rose, there were big brown feet sticking up off a white cloth-covered table and the table was surrounded. What is this? A wake? The Easter Bunny was lying in state! More than one person was reminded of the recent death and lying in state of Pope John Paul II. The feet were the same, one foot drifting off... It was very sad and depressing. We all wanted to see the Easter Bunny at least propped up! There were dyed hard-boiled eggs and loose and wrapped candies all over and around the dead bread Easter Bunny. Debbie wanted some of the chocolate, but they were having an unadvertised Easter Egg hunt in the Main Atrium for the children and she did not know what the bounds were. But, some grown people were standing around the table noshing on the Easter decoration candies. She saw Lars standing off to one side and went over and asked him if we were allowed to take chocolates off the display. He sternly told her NO, she got her candies delivered to her suite last night. Didn't she? Debbie told him, a big dark green hard-boiled egg and a few candies. Lars, told her, well that is what you get then, no more. Debbie looked disappointed and Lars patted her shoulder and told her he was joking and of course she should help herself to the candies. Debbie went overa picked up 5 foil-wrapped chocolates and put them in her sweater pockets. Lars asked her what she thought of it and well, if he can dish it out then she hoped he could take it. She told him it looked like the Easter Bunny was lying there dead and we were holding a wake. The Easter Bunny lies in state. Lars looked over and just bowed and shook his head. Apparently, he had not seen it that way until now. Debbie told him, this is just too sad and depressing, rest in peace Easter Bunny. Lars just cracked up with laughter. He told Debbie that when you bake a 4-foot bread bunny it has to lie down, there is no way for it to stand up unless you give it a skeleton. Debbie told him, there you go, problem solved, next year you should give it a skeleton and stand it up or at least prop it up. So, next year it will be an impressive and happy sight and not a state funeral. He said he would share the information. Let's hope. Debbie walked back over and put Bob on the table and looked up at Clay. Hand motions. Move some candy, move Bob. A voice behind Debbie said, "Debbie, I'm laughing at you." Debbie turned and Peggy (xrvlcruiser) had caught Debbie and Bob in action!
That reminds us. Yesterday Capt. Dag was very excited about a ship docked aft-to-aft with Voyager. The ship was Black Watch and it was smaller than us, but very attractive as Debbie had commented. It turns out that the ship is from the former Royal Viking Line and now owned by Fred Olsen Lines. Capt. Dag said he had gotten an invitation to go over and tour it. He was very enthusiastic about this anticipated ship's tour and was telling us about how special it was and beautifully designed with wonderful artwork and he hoped it would be more or less the same as his fond memories of it. He greeted us later at the Special WC'ers dinner and Debbie asked him how his Black Watch visit went. He was very pleased with it and said that the ship was even better than he remembered it. We'll keep that in mind.
So far Easter, which is Debbie's favorite holiday, was not living up to her expectations and she was really feeling homesick and sad. What is up with this? Some kid won a big chocolate foil-wrapped bunny as a prize for the Easter Egg hunt. His Mom asked him if he had seen the big Easter Bunny, he looked around and she pointed to the lying bread bunny. He went to the table and stood on his tiptops, turned up his nose and asked, "That's an Easter Bunny?"! Unless you were homesick for German Easter candies, you were probably disappointed today. Where are the Peeps?!? Where are the Cadbury Eggs, Reese's Eggs, the PEEPS? Speaking of which, the number of children aboard has probably more than doubled since Rome! (We heard that 290 passengers left in Rome, but have not heard how many new passengers came on for this segment.) But, there might be a bright spot ahead. Compass Rose did not have anything special in its menus for Easter, but the Passages newsletter had this, "Easter Lunch Buffet Please come join us for a special Easter Lunch Buffet in LaVeranda noon to 2pm. OK! We took Bob and the camera and headed up to LaVeranda about 12:30pm. It was the same buffet as always! Therre was a leg of lamb at the carving station, but that is not too special! Big disappoinment. We went down to Compass Rose. Debbie did not want any of the dishes that were being served in CR or LaVeranda (except no leg of lamb at CR) and just wanted a sandwich instead. She got a turkey sandwich and a bowl of chilled cream of fig and mint soup, that she really liked. Clay had the rigatoni in braised oxtail tomato sauce and really liked it. (He said it was very good, but different from the Friia family sauce because it was "not as ethnic," by which he meant there were no bones.) Clay had ice cream for dessert and Debbie had chocolate creme brulee, a bright spot in her day.
We spent most of the day going through Debbie's research for our planned drive tomorrow and visit to the town of Ronda in the rental car we have reserved. Keeping our fingers crossed that all goes well here. It will be a nice day no matter what. Just to get in a car and drive on our own again. Remind us a little of what life is back in the real world!
Tonight we have our dinner invitation with Jamie and Dana. We have seen them a couple of times since we received the invitation and they were reassured that we were coming. Tonight is Informal.
We have had very smooth sailing lately and don't think that we don't appreciate it. We really appreciate it and are thankful! We hope for it to continue past the Straits of Gibralter.
So, dinner with the Cruise Director, Jamie Logan and the Assistant Cruise Director, Jamie's wife, Dana. Also, at our table were our next door neighbors in 750, Rudy and Shirley, and newlyweds, Tom and Lillian. It turns out that we sailed with Tom on our first long cruise in 2001 on Crown Odyssey and we were on opposite ends of the same hallway, then! And, Tom's daughter, Bonnie has been reading this blog from the very first entry (still not sure how she found it!) and had told us to try to find her Dad to put his photo here on the website. Well, guess what Bonnie?!? Check the pictures! We finally, at long last, met your Dad and his charming and beautiful new wife, Lillian. We had a very fun evening. It was very much a small world experience as we tried to explain to Jamie and Dana how we could possibly "know" someone we had never met. It is hard to explain and more than a little strange. But, since this kind of thing just keeps happening, we are getting used to it. Hopefully, we will fade back into anonymity when we return home. If it wasn't out before, our trip journal is definitely "out" to Voyager staff after tonight. So, gosh, the big event tonight was conversation and we'll try to report what we ate. Debbie had an iceberg lettuce salad with sundried tomato viniagrette and tortilla strips, followed by farfalle amatriciana, white wine & basil sherbet and chicken parmagiana. For dessert, she had dulce de leche ice cream with chocolate sauce. Clay sat at the other end of the table, from Debbie and he had the iceberg lettuce salad and the pasta and then thynme-marinated lamb loin. For dessert, he had the ice coupe "Mona Lisa," diet vanilla ice cream with warm blueberries. The pasta amatriciana sauce was very, very spicy tonight. Debbie was happy for the sherbet to cool her palate. (Oh, Dana, after we all had a mental block 'blog' is short for web log.) Rudy & Shirley, it was great to spend more time with you at dinner tonight. Thanks to Dana & Jamie for getting us all together!
When Jamie heard that Debbie doesn't really like cruising and why, he asked her to post it here, so here it is. Jamie thought that other people needed to hear this, it may have been said before, but if not, he goes. Debbie gets seasick. Debbie really likes doing her own laundry and grocery shopping and cooking. She misses doing all those things on a ship and feels like a big slug just eating and eating without ever expending the calories to earn a meal. Thus all the exercise classes and stairs. So, this very long cruise has been particularly painful on this front between Debbie's broken toe and Clay's sprained ankle, and the respiratory illnesses and Debbie's pneumonia. This cruise was always going to be the hardest for us just because of the length of time continuously enclosed in this small space, but both of us being temporarilyimmobilized for stretches at a time has made it really difficult. Clay likes working and Debbie likes her chores and we miss those simple things along with all the freedom of not being passengers on a ship. That is not to say that we have not had an amazing journey, because it has been fantastic and amazing, but it has also been a test of character. There is a small globe that we bought in the Getty Musuem in LA. It comes in its own little round box and is called Traveller's World Globe in a Box. It has been sitting on the shelf above this desk for 109 days now. It has a unattributed quote on the outside that has become more and more meaningful. "A passage is one way travel -- A voyage is a round trip." This has been an amazing journey! It has another quote from Augustine. "The world is a great book of which they who never stir from home read only one page." This has become more and more meaningful as well. What an experience we have had.
In other news, Signatures has a new menu. We never eat there so we can't add anything other than this piece of news from the Daily Passages. Tonight is the first night of the new Spanish Bodega in Latitudes. We have reservations for Tues. night, so we'll add more on that later. Also, in Latitudes for the Spanish Bodega we have heard that they extended Amapola, the singer, through Ft. Lauderdale to perform in there with Frankie Holiday, the guitarist who has been onboard for a while now. And, Frankie's daughter, Aisha, has boarded to perform as a belly dancer. We have had a new puzzle for a few days now and don't know if we mentioned that it is a 3-D. It sat untouched for a few days until the 2 Spanish boys on board found it. Building is a boy thing. They have made a lot of progress on it. It is hard to make the jump from flat puzzles to 3-D but they will have it finished before long.
So, we have an early day tomorrow and we have to move the clocks back an hour tomorrow night, so it will be a very looong day tomorrow. We need to close and see if we can get this posted.
Easter photos
Day 108 - Saturday April 15
Barcelona photos
position at 7:45am: N41 28.38 latitude E2 43.49 longitude
(about 28 miles E of Barcelona, Spain)
temperature: 58F, 100% humidity, cloudy
distance since FLL: 34,613 miles
There was a huge, stunning, full moon late last night. It was just beautiful, but it was too cold out to really pause and enjoy. It was chilly on deck early this morning, about 55F with a slight breeze as Clay did his walk. Since Singapore, there has been another early walker on deck each morning. It turns out he lives only about 40 miles from us. Small world, huh?
So, here it is 8am and we are treading water about 25 miles from Barcelona. While grateful to have the morning off, we think Barcelona is an amazing city and hate to miss the morning there. There is not a lot open in the afternoons here as in most of the Med and that is all the time we will have here. Since we have been here before and only have from noon to 4pm or so available here, we plan to just take the Metro up to Parc Guell which we did not have time for last visit and maybe walk back downhill. We have learned that we will not be docking in the usual cruise ship berths at the foot of La Rambla. We will be docked somewhere out from town and they will offer a shuttle bus every 1/2 hour. The other bad news is that it is expected to rain here today and this evening. 60% chance. So, if it is raining when we arrive, a walk in the park and through town will seem a very bad idea. In that case, we may have to buy Bus Turistic tickets and ride around looking out the windows. Don't know what it will mean for this evening's Special Event plans if there is rain. Since most of it is inside, presumably they will just nix the walk through cobblestoned streets and bus us.
So, it is off for a late weekend breakfast in Compass Rose. Clay finally tried the Bircher Muesli. Not as expected. We had seen people get big, heaping bowls of some very hardy-looking fruits, nuts, grains, etc. But, Clay got a little appetizer-sized bowl. Good thing he also ordered toast. Then he ate some cookies. Debbie had her usual Swedish pancakes double order, but raspberries are back and she had those too. We attended a very weak enrichment lecture at 10:30am til arrival on the Art & Architecture of Antoni Gaudi. We should have just put on raincoats for the sail in.
We received an invitation to dinner tomorrow evening, Easter Sunday, from Jamie & Dana Logan. More later.
We are docked on the starboardside at Moll Adossat at Terminal Building A. It is not as bad as the Capt. had described it. We are in the usual cruise ship docking areas. We can see the World Trade Center and the Columbus Statue from here, but of course it is farther than you can walk. Like the Casino yesterday in Monaco, it looked like you could throw a stone and hit it but it would take you a half-hour or more to get from one place to the other. You can't get there from here. It is still under 60 degrees. There is some light drizzle and low clouds. But, we will still try for plan A and see how far we get with it. It is just after 11:30am and Jamie has announced that the ship is cleared. We better get going then.
It was 12:15pm before we walked out of the cabin. The sun was just starting to peek out, so we left the heavy coats on the ship. By the time we got off the shuttle bus we were stripping out of windbreakers and getting out sunglasses. It topped out at about 70 degrees F today, a little warmer than the 66 predicted. It was a beautiful day. All the Europeans that were not in Herculaneum or Rome were here today! The shuttle bus did not take us to the Columbus Monument as Roger had announced or the Maritime Museum as the Shuttle Bus sign said, but instead at the foot of the Moll Barcelona directly in front of the World Trade Center or at the foot of Placa de les Drassanes. This was a block or 2 from the places previously stated so we just hit the bricks and went up La Rambla a block or 2 to the Drassanes Metro stop. We took it to Lesseps and walked the well-signed 1300 uphill walk to the Parc Guell entrance. We could not have gotten lost, we only needed to follow the throngs. The Metro cost 1.20 Euro pp each way. We stopped on our way to the park at a couple of little tiendas and put together a picnic for lunch. Sandwiches, weird cheetos/bugles type things and a Coke for Debbie and a Barcelona brewed San Miguel for Bob, or Clay. In the tienda closest to the park entrance they had an amazing automatic bread cutter for making the sandwiches. That thing shot those little loaves out an about 40mph. Debbie was standing next to a box picking our chips whena loaf fired out and slammed into a towel hanging on the side to cushion it and she just about jumped out of her skin. The she just stood there laughing in amazement as the woman fed the loaves in one side and the fired out the other. They were richochetingout of the plastic bin and into a door and under the coolers, etc. It wasagas. How many sandwiches would you be making a day to need this kind of slicing throughput? The sandwiches we bought here were excellent, much better than the ones down the block and the people working here were much friendly too. If anyone reading this is thinking of doing this, wait until you are in front of the Guell moziac on the park wall before going into the closest tienda on your left facing uphill! Excellent place and be sure to hang around to see them cut bread!
We spent about an hour fighting the crowds for space in the Parc Guell before giving it up. It was crazy. This was clearly one of the only places that was open on the Saturday afternoon before Easter Sunday. It was packed with people. We walked back down to the Metro and went into a patisseria and bought a big hazelnut meringue thing. They had a huge pile in the window when we went up, but we were afraid it would not travel well. So, we stopped and the shop was still open on the way back down. They had only a few left but we got one to eat later for Easter. We added it to the bag Debbie was carrying by this time with our jackets, and the book and T-shirts we had purchased and our water bottle. We walked into the Metro station just as the train arrived. Perfect. We only rode a few stops this time and got off at Catalunya to stroll La Rambla. Hah! It was even more packed than Parc Guell. But, we fought our way down and it has been done for future reference. We also made a quick pass down a couple of the aisles in the Mercat Boqueria. That was great. Debbie got another rose gelato cone there. Clay got none! Along La Rambla, there were lots of flowers for sale and sadly, lots of baby bunnies. We made our way to the place where the bus dropped us earlier at about 4:35pm. A bus was sitting there but the light was against us and we could not cross. The bus pulled away. We started to walk to the benches in the center of the placa when Debbie realized the bus had been caught at the stoplight on the other side. We humped it over there and Debbie ran across the street while we had the light to make sure he would let us board here. He did open the door and told her "rapido." The man in the front seat told her she must be living right. She is glad that someone noticed. Debbie wheezed and gasped and coughed through the 5 minute ride to the ship. (So, much for her plans with the new gym schedule!) We got back to the cabin about 5pm so had plenty of time to shower and dress up for the Informal Voyagers of the World Special Event tonight. It is actually time to go now. More later.
We were on bus 5 to the Special Event. We had a tour guide with us and he talked quite a bit as we drove to the Casa Llotja de Mar, which is a former Accademy of Fine Arts. According to the guide, Picasso, Miro, Dali and Gaudi had all studied here at one time. Now, the building is the Chamber of Commerce. It still has some statues in the courtyard that were done by students when it was a school. The building was of architectural interest because it had a neo-classical side and the architect had just added it to the big Gothic hall that previously existed on the site. The guide said this was because it had been a monastery and was therefore sacred, but he may have been joking. Anyway, it was a beautiful and very impressive large, high-ceilinged room with a beautiful ceiling. The tables were set for us in groups of 10. Our bus was assigned tables 13, 14 and 15. The guide told us to find our tables and be seated. We were greeted at the entrance with glasses of cava. This is the Catalunyan version of champagne and when it is good, we like it better than champagne. This was very good. They had some buffet tables set up with cold and hot appetizers, a skewer buffet and a Tapas buffet. They brought these around to serve at the table as well. The main meal was served at the table. Soup was impressively done. They brought everyone a bowl containing tiny croutons and truffle paste topped with a poached egg, then they came around with a big pitcher and poured in hot potato and truffle soup. It was a fancy touch. The entree was farm chicken stuffed with apple and sweet onions. The final course was fruit salad with peach mousse. The menus were big sheets of paper cut out to be the shape of an artist's palette. It was complete with the thumb hole and blotches of color. Then, it was rolled and tied with a ribbon with a used paintbrush. Very arty to reflect the former use of the hall we were in. (Anyway, the short story is that the paper is far to large to scan and post. Sorry.) They served water, red and white wine and more cava. (This was a beautiful setting and it was well decorated and handled, but the food was not really very good.) Then it was time to walk. We walked a few blocks through narrow, winding alleys to the church of Santa Maria del Mar. Everyone had raved that this was the most beautiful church in Barcelona and it may have been. It was open to the public and each bus group went in together staggered to separate us. The guide spoke some about it outside and then walked through from front to back. We exited out a door behind the altar. It was a really lovely church and very open and airy. A couple more blocks and we arrived at the Picasso Museum just as it was starting to get dark. Again, we were led in in small groups. We used the restrooms there and then waited our turn to go through. This was really the highlight of the evening. The Picasso Museum has recently expanded from 2 palazzos to 3 palazzos and it really makes a difference. Our guide took us through about 8-10 rooms and spoke in each about the art we were viewing and the artist's progression from child artist to adult to superstar to old man making ceramics. It was very interesting. In rooms 15/16, there was a group of paintings that Picasso did experimenting with deconstructing and reviewing an old masterpiece named Las Minenas. This was absolutely the most amazing collection in the museum. It was fascinating to see what he was trying to do over and over again. It was fantastic. This room alone was worth the trip to Barcelona. Congratulations to the Museu Picasso! Then it was time to visit the Museum Gift Shop and go have our desserts. We did buy 2 clearance priced T-shirts at 5 Euros each. Dessert was down the hall in the last building of the three connecting palazzos. We entered to offered trays of mimosas, bellinis and orange juice. This was followed by offered trays of mandarin oranges covered in chocolate on a wafer, chocolate balls and what they called brownies and weren't, but the menu described as plum cake of orange and chocolate with plum jam. Then, a coffee bar. There was another bar at the end of the room. We each went there to have a glass of water. Too much wine and cava in too short a time! The menu advertised that we would be served banana ice cream with crumbles and toffee sauce, cones of maracuya mousse and raspberry mousse. These never made an appearance and we scoured the room and the offerings pretty well because Clay was desperate for his daily ice cream fix by now. No ice cream! We were outside walking back to the bus by 9:50pm and just in time. As the bus doors were opening to us, the skies which had been flashing with lightening opened up and poured. The last people to board were wet. Don't know how they handled the people leaving in later buses. It was not raining on the side of the terminal building where they let us out. But,when we walked out the other side there were Voyager staff waiting with umbrellas and a good thing. It was just blasting gale force winds and sideways pouring rain. Debbie just about got carried away by the wind in her umbrella and Clay's and many other's umbrellas just collapsed or turned inside out!
We got back to our cabin to find a surprise. A tiny, duck-shaped wicker basket. It had 4 chocolate eggs and 1 marzipan egg and one dark green dyed hard boiled real egg. The candies were all from the basket provider which had a big sticker on the botton of the basket. It was Schluckwerder and the label was in German and said it was made in Deutschland. We assume the real green-dyed egg was not an original part of the basket but that it was added here on the ship. Also, we had 2 pink placemats on the bed. They are our invitation to an "International Food Court" that is to be served by the crew representing 30 nations and will be held on crew deck 3 including a tour of the back of the house. This event is to be held on Sunday, April 23rd at 6:45pm. The other surprise was that Clay had eaten his half of the giant meringue we picked up at the patisseria before we left for the evening and had rewrapped the store's paper around Debbie's half and put it on the bedside table for her. She did not want to ruin her appetite before dinner, but wanted to have it to eat in case she was still hungry after dinner. She was still hungry after dinner. Surprise! The wrapped meringue was gone from the night table and from the cabin. We even checked the refrigerator. Gone! We suppose that Mishiel threw it away, or she ate it, but in any event it was gone. Anyway, Debbie missed her Easter treat. The ship left on time right at 11pm. So, evidently everyone got back on time today. Jamie is still joking about being late in Monaco and holding up the ship. He was also joking about it on the next Voyager Today on TV. There was a day with a black screen on Voyager Today's channel 4. Jamie joked with the people he interviewed that he had stood them up because he was caught in traffic in Monaco. We were in it on the bus back that day and can confirm that it was pretty much creeping gridlock. Anyway, now Jamie has stories to tell. He was the last to board the bus and stood in the rear door stairwell. Someone told him that he could come up and have a seat. He replied that the Captain said he had to stay in the hole! This should be good for Jamie-stories for years to come.
Sorry this is so late, but Debbie was too depressed about that dark green, hard-boiled egg and missing meringue to write last night!
Barcelona photos
position at 7:45am: N41 28.38 latitude E2 43.49 longitude
(about 28 miles E of Barcelona, Spain)
temperature: 58F, 100% humidity, cloudy
distance since FLL: 34,613 miles
There was a huge, stunning, full moon late last night. It was just beautiful, but it was too cold out to really pause and enjoy. It was chilly on deck early this morning, about 55F with a slight breeze as Clay did his walk. Since Singapore, there has been another early walker on deck each morning. It turns out he lives only about 40 miles from us. Small world, huh?
So, here it is 8am and we are treading water about 25 miles from Barcelona. While grateful to have the morning off, we think Barcelona is an amazing city and hate to miss the morning there. There is not a lot open in the afternoons here as in most of the Med and that is all the time we will have here. Since we have been here before and only have from noon to 4pm or so available here, we plan to just take the Metro up to Parc Guell which we did not have time for last visit and maybe walk back downhill. We have learned that we will not be docking in the usual cruise ship berths at the foot of La Rambla. We will be docked somewhere out from town and they will offer a shuttle bus every 1/2 hour. The other bad news is that it is expected to rain here today and this evening. 60% chance. So, if it is raining when we arrive, a walk in the park and through town will seem a very bad idea. In that case, we may have to buy Bus Turistic tickets and ride around looking out the windows. Don't know what it will mean for this evening's Special Event plans if there is rain. Since most of it is inside, presumably they will just nix the walk through cobblestoned streets and bus us.
So, it is off for a late weekend breakfast in Compass Rose. Clay finally tried the Bircher Muesli. Not as expected. We had seen people get big, heaping bowls of some very hardy-looking fruits, nuts, grains, etc. But, Clay got a little appetizer-sized bowl. Good thing he also ordered toast. Then he ate some cookies. Debbie had her usual Swedish pancakes double order, but raspberries are back and she had those too. We attended a very weak enrichment lecture at 10:30am til arrival on the Art & Architecture of Antoni Gaudi. We should have just put on raincoats for the sail in.
We received an invitation to dinner tomorrow evening, Easter Sunday, from Jamie & Dana Logan. More later.
We are docked on the starboardside at Moll Adossat at Terminal Building A. It is not as bad as the Capt. had described it. We are in the usual cruise ship docking areas. We can see the World Trade Center and the Columbus Statue from here, but of course it is farther than you can walk. Like the Casino yesterday in Monaco, it looked like you could throw a stone and hit it but it would take you a half-hour or more to get from one place to the other. You can't get there from here. It is still under 60 degrees. There is some light drizzle and low clouds. But, we will still try for plan A and see how far we get with it. It is just after 11:30am and Jamie has announced that the ship is cleared. We better get going then.
It was 12:15pm before we walked out of the cabin. The sun was just starting to peek out, so we left the heavy coats on the ship. By the time we got off the shuttle bus we were stripping out of windbreakers and getting out sunglasses. It topped out at about 70 degrees F today, a little warmer than the 66 predicted. It was a beautiful day. All the Europeans that were not in Herculaneum or Rome were here today! The shuttle bus did not take us to the Columbus Monument as Roger had announced or the Maritime Museum as the Shuttle Bus sign said, but instead at the foot of the Moll Barcelona directly in front of the World Trade Center or at the foot of Placa de les Drassanes. This was a block or 2 from the places previously stated so we just hit the bricks and went up La Rambla a block or 2 to the Drassanes Metro stop. We took it to Lesseps and walked the well-signed 1300 uphill walk to the Parc Guell entrance. We could not have gotten lost, we only needed to follow the throngs. The Metro cost 1.20 Euro pp each way. We stopped on our way to the park at a couple of little tiendas and put together a picnic for lunch. Sandwiches, weird cheetos/bugles type things and a Coke for Debbie and a Barcelona brewed San Miguel for Bob, or Clay. In the tienda closest to the park entrance they had an amazing automatic bread cutter for making the sandwiches. That thing shot those little loaves out an about 40mph. Debbie was standing next to a box picking our chips whena loaf fired out and slammed into a towel hanging on the side to cushion it and she just about jumped out of her skin. The she just stood there laughing in amazement as the woman fed the loaves in one side and the fired out the other. They were richochetingout of the plastic bin and into a door and under the coolers, etc. It wasagas. How many sandwiches would you be making a day to need this kind of slicing throughput? The sandwiches we bought here were excellent, much better than the ones down the block and the people working here were much friendly too. If anyone reading this is thinking of doing this, wait until you are in front of the Guell moziac on the park wall before going into the closest tienda on your left facing uphill! Excellent place and be sure to hang around to see them cut bread!
We spent about an hour fighting the crowds for space in the Parc Guell before giving it up. It was crazy. This was clearly one of the only places that was open on the Saturday afternoon before Easter Sunday. It was packed with people. We walked back down to the Metro and went into a patisseria and bought a big hazelnut meringue thing. They had a huge pile in the window when we went up, but we were afraid it would not travel well. So, we stopped and the shop was still open on the way back down. They had only a few left but we got one to eat later for Easter. We added it to the bag Debbie was carrying by this time with our jackets, and the book and T-shirts we had purchased and our water bottle. We walked into the Metro station just as the train arrived. Perfect. We only rode a few stops this time and got off at Catalunya to stroll La Rambla. Hah! It was even more packed than Parc Guell. But, we fought our way down and it has been done for future reference. We also made a quick pass down a couple of the aisles in the Mercat Boqueria. That was great. Debbie got another rose gelato cone there. Clay got none! Along La Rambla, there were lots of flowers for sale and sadly, lots of baby bunnies. We made our way to the place where the bus dropped us earlier at about 4:35pm. A bus was sitting there but the light was against us and we could not cross. The bus pulled away. We started to walk to the benches in the center of the placa when Debbie realized the bus had been caught at the stoplight on the other side. We humped it over there and Debbie ran across the street while we had the light to make sure he would let us board here. He did open the door and told her "rapido." The man in the front seat told her she must be living right. She is glad that someone noticed. Debbie wheezed and gasped and coughed through the 5 minute ride to the ship. (So, much for her plans with the new gym schedule!) We got back to the cabin about 5pm so had plenty of time to shower and dress up for the Informal Voyagers of the World Special Event tonight. It is actually time to go now. More later.
We were on bus 5 to the Special Event. We had a tour guide with us and he talked quite a bit as we drove to the Casa Llotja de Mar, which is a former Accademy of Fine Arts. According to the guide, Picasso, Miro, Dali and Gaudi had all studied here at one time. Now, the building is the Chamber of Commerce. It still has some statues in the courtyard that were done by students when it was a school. The building was of architectural interest because it had a neo-classical side and the architect had just added it to the big Gothic hall that previously existed on the site. The guide said this was because it had been a monastery and was therefore sacred, but he may have been joking. Anyway, it was a beautiful and very impressive large, high-ceilinged room with a beautiful ceiling. The tables were set for us in groups of 10. Our bus was assigned tables 13, 14 and 15. The guide told us to find our tables and be seated. We were greeted at the entrance with glasses of cava. This is the Catalunyan version of champagne and when it is good, we like it better than champagne. This was very good. They had some buffet tables set up with cold and hot appetizers, a skewer buffet and a Tapas buffet. They brought these around to serve at the table as well. The main meal was served at the table. Soup was impressively done. They brought everyone a bowl containing tiny croutons and truffle paste topped with a poached egg, then they came around with a big pitcher and poured in hot potato and truffle soup. It was a fancy touch. The entree was farm chicken stuffed with apple and sweet onions. The final course was fruit salad with peach mousse. The menus were big sheets of paper cut out to be the shape of an artist's palette. It was complete with the thumb hole and blotches of color. Then, it was rolled and tied with a ribbon with a used paintbrush. Very arty to reflect the former use of the hall we were in. (Anyway, the short story is that the paper is far to large to scan and post. Sorry.) They served water, red and white wine and more cava. (This was a beautiful setting and it was well decorated and handled, but the food was not really very good.) Then it was time to walk. We walked a few blocks through narrow, winding alleys to the church of Santa Maria del Mar. Everyone had raved that this was the most beautiful church in Barcelona and it may have been. It was open to the public and each bus group went in together staggered to separate us. The guide spoke some about it outside and then walked through from front to back. We exited out a door behind the altar. It was a really lovely church and very open and airy. A couple more blocks and we arrived at the Picasso Museum just as it was starting to get dark. Again, we were led in in small groups. We used the restrooms there and then waited our turn to go through. This was really the highlight of the evening. The Picasso Museum has recently expanded from 2 palazzos to 3 palazzos and it really makes a difference. Our guide took us through about 8-10 rooms and spoke in each about the art we were viewing and the artist's progression from child artist to adult to superstar to old man making ceramics. It was very interesting. In rooms 15/16, there was a group of paintings that Picasso did experimenting with deconstructing and reviewing an old masterpiece named Las Minenas. This was absolutely the most amazing collection in the museum. It was fascinating to see what he was trying to do over and over again. It was fantastic. This room alone was worth the trip to Barcelona. Congratulations to the Museu Picasso! Then it was time to visit the Museum Gift Shop and go have our desserts. We did buy 2 clearance priced T-shirts at 5 Euros each. Dessert was down the hall in the last building of the three connecting palazzos. We entered to offered trays of mimosas, bellinis and orange juice. This was followed by offered trays of mandarin oranges covered in chocolate on a wafer, chocolate balls and what they called brownies and weren't, but the menu described as plum cake of orange and chocolate with plum jam. Then, a coffee bar. There was another bar at the end of the room. We each went there to have a glass of water. Too much wine and cava in too short a time! The menu advertised that we would be served banana ice cream with crumbles and toffee sauce, cones of maracuya mousse and raspberry mousse. These never made an appearance and we scoured the room and the offerings pretty well because Clay was desperate for his daily ice cream fix by now. No ice cream! We were outside walking back to the bus by 9:50pm and just in time. As the bus doors were opening to us, the skies which had been flashing with lightening opened up and poured. The last people to board were wet. Don't know how they handled the people leaving in later buses. It was not raining on the side of the terminal building where they let us out. But,when we walked out the other side there were Voyager staff waiting with umbrellas and a good thing. It was just blasting gale force winds and sideways pouring rain. Debbie just about got carried away by the wind in her umbrella and Clay's and many other's umbrellas just collapsed or turned inside out!
We got back to our cabin to find a surprise. A tiny, duck-shaped wicker basket. It had 4 chocolate eggs and 1 marzipan egg and one dark green dyed hard boiled real egg. The candies were all from the basket provider which had a big sticker on the botton of the basket. It was Schluckwerder and the label was in German and said it was made in Deutschland. We assume the real green-dyed egg was not an original part of the basket but that it was added here on the ship. Also, we had 2 pink placemats on the bed. They are our invitation to an "International Food Court" that is to be served by the crew representing 30 nations and will be held on crew deck 3 including a tour of the back of the house. This event is to be held on Sunday, April 23rd at 6:45pm. The other surprise was that Clay had eaten his half of the giant meringue we picked up at the patisseria before we left for the evening and had rewrapped the store's paper around Debbie's half and put it on the bedside table for her. She did not want to ruin her appetite before dinner, but wanted to have it to eat in case she was still hungry after dinner. She was still hungry after dinner. Surprise! The wrapped meringue was gone from the night table and from the cabin. We even checked the refrigerator. Gone! We suppose that Mishiel threw it away, or she ate it, but in any event it was gone. Anyway, Debbie missed her Easter treat. The ship left on time right at 11pm. So, evidently everyone got back on time today. Jamie is still joking about being late in Monaco and holding up the ship. He was also joking about it on the next Voyager Today on TV. There was a day with a black screen on Voyager Today's channel 4. Jamie joked with the people he interviewed that he had stood them up because he was caught in traffic in Monaco. We were in it on the bus back that day and can confirm that it was pretty much creeping gridlock. Anyway, now Jamie has stories to tell. He was the last to board the bus and stood in the rear door stairwell. Someone told him that he could come up and have a seat. He replied that the Captain said he had to stay in the hole! This should be good for Jamie-stories for years to come.
Sorry this is so late, but Debbie was too depressed about that dark green, hard-boiled egg and missing meringue to write last night!
Barcelona photos
Saturday, April 15, 2006
Day 107 - Friday April 14
Monaco photos
position at 8:00 am: N43 44.38 latitude E7 25.49 longitude
(Monaco)
temperature: 58F, 88% humidity, clear
distance since FLL: 34,318 miles
Clay again had an abbreviated walk on deck since we were docking at 8am in Monaco. It was cool on deck but not too windy. The deck crew must have changed in Rome as there were all new faces on the crew washing down the deck this morning. They were also running about 15-20 minutes later than the previous crew. We arrived here early and were docking by 6:40am and completely tied up by 7am. Our docking time was originally 8am. No announcements were made that we heard, so we don't know if the ship cleared early as well. We docked on the port side today. Capt. Dag had to pull nose in this morning, so no quick drive off this evening for him. Unfortunately, this gave us a view straight down of the pier and straight ahead of nothing but ocean. The people on the starboard side today had the million dollar view of Monte-Carlo, but we had the view of the gangway. Debbie did not want to get out of bed this morning and was slow starting. We had breakfast in LaVeranda about 7:50am. Debbie had cereal and peanut butter toast. Clay had his usual eggs.
Then we went back to the cabin to get our maps and materials in order to decide what to do this morning. Of course, we did not even follow the plan, so there is no point in sharing it. Any one reading this who might be docking here, when you go through the passenger terminal be sure and stop to pick up a little booklet/folder named "Your cruise welcome kit." This little packet contains postcards, a map and a bus map other information and most importantly, discount coupons! We wound up first at the Musee Oceanographic Aquarium because the Azur Express trains were not yet running when we got there. The sign said they would not open for 45 minutes, so we crossed the street and spent that 45 minutes in the Aquarium. It was very impressive, we did not do the museum part on the upper floors, just the aquarium. There was a coupon for 2 Euros off the regular 11 Euro price. There was also a coupon for the Azur Express Monaco Tours trains. It was for 1 Euro off the regular 7 Euro price. Also, the ticket stub becomes a postcard for those interested in postcards. Very clever. This is a little fake tractor-type train engine pulling 3 cars. It makes a loop of Monaco-Ville and over to Monte-Carlo to see the Casino andthen back through Monaco-Ville to the start point again in front of the Aquarium. The ride lasts 30 minutes and there is no getting off and on. It has a headset at every seat and plays a recorded narration describing where you are driving and what you are seeing. You can choose on of about 6 languages for the narration. The last coupon we used was for 1.50 Euros off the 3 Euros regular admission to the Musee de la chapelle de la visitation housing the Baroque Masters religious art collection of Barbara Piasecka Johnson. It was a beautiful little baroque chapel housing 20 paintings and a tapestry. It was really marvelous. The barque artwork hanging in a tiny baroque chapel. Wonderful. There were a bunch of other coupons we did not use; Naval Museum 2.50 off, Zoo 3 off, classic cars 3 off, stamp & coin museum 2.50 off, Louis II Stadium 2 off, panoramic helicopter flight (2 different companies, 2 coupons) 5 off, Exotic Garden 1.60 off, Aquavision 2 off, Prince's Palace 2 off, Napoleonic Memorabilia 1 off, Wax Museum 1.30 off, National Museum 2 off, Sun Casino and Casino of Cafe de Paris 1 complementary drink each for gamers at slots or tables and lastly Monaco the Film 1.50 off. So that covers discount coupons.
We began this morning with the long and not well signed for pedestrians walk out of the port. We wound up walking through a street tunnel dodging traffic, the other option would have been some completely hidden stone stairs that we did not find until we returned to the port. The map we had picked up last night at the Tour Desk had lots of public elevators and escalators shown and did not make much sense on a flat map. We began to suspect then that this was a mostly vertical city. But, it looked compact and we planned to make a tour of the elevators and escalators. We had much enjoyed our Hong Kong walk with escalators so we figured it would be scenic here as well and fun. We walked along with a couple of other groups from the ship, one we followed in the traffic route and the other appeared as we exited our tunnel and had taken the stone stairs we guess. One of the women asked a local which way to go to the Palace and he led us towards a ramp, he said, by leading us on a walking path that skirted the very sea edge of Monaco-Ville (and avoided the next traffic tunnel). We don't know if there was a ramp. We got sidetracked by a little set of stairs leading down to a little rocky beach! Down we went, rocks, ocean, waves, flowers, rocks...Just beautiful! Back up the stairs and the group was gone, of course. Not that we were with them, but we don't know which way they went to the Palace. We did not go to the Palace. We rounded the corner of this cliffside path around a public parking garage and there was the beautiful Musee Oceanographic. This was Jacques Costeau's office for about 32 years. For those interested, there are some wonderful free public WCs in the parking garage on the ground floor. The women's room had dozens of stalls with seats and toilet paper and it was very clean. Thumbs up. There are a plethora of public WCs in Monaco, more than we have seen in other countries were we covered more ground and that is a good thing, but they were not all equal. Some had no seats. Some had no toilet paper. And, many had the woman holding you up for coins after you had already paid to be in the building, though these women were also at some public toilets. Just an observation for those who might have an interest. So, we were headed for the Azur Express Train to start but it was closed so we went to the Aquarium first. That meant that we missed the changing of the guards at 11:55am in front of the Prince's Palace, but there was a crowd building there when the train passed it 30 minutes early so we weren't really sure we wanted to do this after seeing the crowds anyway. We forgot about the Cathedral, but later heard it was closed until after 4:30pm because of Good Friday. Don't know if it would have been open for us this morning, but we just forgot and got diverted again. We went to the Baroque Chapel with the art, into a Chocolatier and wandered scenic little streets uphill in Monaco-Ville. We were vaguely looking for a place for lunch. We got to the Palace and the crowds were still there, so we were glad to have missed the big event for the day there. We saw a sign and followed the Rampe Major downhill to the port area. We were heading to the pedestrian street of Rue Princesse Caroline where Rick Steve's says there are lots of places for lunch. There are. We walked up and down. Sat at one and did not like the menu they finally brought, which was much altered from the one posted outside and left. We went back up to the next choice that had a seafood special that Clay wanted. We waited to be seated because the place was packed inside the smoky dining rooms and outside on the sidewalk seating. We were seated outside in the sun. Got a little sunburned even though we both applied sunscreen this morning before heading out. It was really chilly this morning and stayed comfortably cool all day today. But, the sun was really hot if you lingered and we lingered for about an hour. We ate at Huit & Demi. It was very nice and the food was good and most of it was reasonably priced. We ordered the fish special for Clay and a beer, they had Grolsch draft. Debbie ordered the King pizza which had mozzarella, tomato, basil, chorizo and olives. It was very tasty. The little black olives were delicious but had pits, so had to be careful. Debbie also ordered a glass of white wine. The waiter returned with a carafe of water, a bucket-sized wine glass over half full of white wine and a large beer that turned out to cost 6.50 Euros. Debbie's wine, which was excellent, cost a fraction of that beer and it wasn't even a local beer! While Clay was in the restroom, the headwaiter came back and told Debbie, the fish is finished, out. He tried to get Debbie to substitute mussels on Clay's behalf but she declined. He left the 2 menus on the table. Clay was pretty exasperated by this development. If we had stopped here in first place, he might have gotten his fish special for 13 Euros. The only other fish on the menu that Clay was interested in cost 28 Euros for a mixed fried plate. He figured he got his in Siracusa for 13 Euro and he was done. He ordered another 12 Euro pizza with tomatoes and basil. Both pizzas had crust that was too limp. It took a long time to get them. When they arrived, we realized we had ordered way too much pizza! Oh, well. Debbie's was much better than Clay's and since we couldn't finish both anyway, we mostly Debbie's. Debbie got drunk and didn't care about anything for a couple of hours. (She was sober when she tripped and fell! That was much later in the afternoon.)
So, now refueled we would start our elevators/escalators climb of Monaco. So, we followed the map and found the first one. We continued on to find the longest escalator section on the map at first it appeared to have been, at least temporarily, lost to construction. Monaco has about 3 or 4 places that are called Gare or Station Access. The underground of a huge area of Monaco appears to be taken up by trains and train tunnels and pedestrian tunnels to get to the trains. It was amazing, a whole other, underground country for trains. There weren't that many people under there either, surprisingly. So, anyway, the whole front of the lower entrance to the longest mechanized section was missing. A man saw us studying the map and while he didn't speak any English asked to help. Debbie pointed to the map. He pointed us to the construction entrance and assured us that was it. We went in and travel over a 3 part moving sidewalk for a long way. Then we took an escalator, we popped out above ground for a photo opportunity and then went back in the train station complex for the long elevator. It too was followed by an escalator. We popped out just inside the border with France, so pretty far up the mountain. The views were not as stunning as we had hoped for. The angle was just wrong. We should have chosen the other side and gone up the side closer to Monaco-Ville maybe instead of this one. Oh, well here we sat. We had about 2 hours to get back to the ship from up here. We waited for a bus for about 15 minutes, they are supposed to be on a 10-12 minute interval schedule and decided to start walking downhill. We walked down the Monte-Carlo side. We wanted to get pictures of the enormous tulips we say from the tourist train this morning in front of the Casino. It was a really beautiful garden area. We had never seen such huge tulips. So, we walked down hill and the across on what turned out to be a major designer shopping street. At the corner where you would turn downhill toward the Casino there is a raised tan marble "dais" as part of the public sidewalk that turns out to be part of the corner-facing entrance to Cartier. There is a small step from the uphill side and a couple steps from the downhill side. She probably wouldn't have missed the uphill stairs, but Debbie did not notice the small step turning the corner to form this Cartier raised entrance on their corner. She tripped and landed on her hands and knees. Clay was sure she was hurt as was a man approaching from the downhill side. He was annoyed by the "dais" and waved his arms around pointing it out. Oh. Debbie had hopped up on her own and brushed her hands off and showed everyone she was fine. Here is the thing. It is embarrassing to trip and fall. But, that wasn't the thing. The thing was that the gold bracelet that Debbie finally found just a few days ago in Kusadasi, Turkey for her 20th wedding anniversary and for this trip is probably a little too large and it hangs down some onto her hand. The bracelet was across the fleshy pad of her palm when she landed. She still wasn't hurt. The bracelet made a very temporary imprint that went with the dirt she wiped off on her jeans.The thing was that some of the tiny links were crushed! Debbie's new gold bracelet got a boo-boo in front of Cartier's in Monte-Carlo! What are the odds? Truth is stranger than fiction. We couldn't even make this stuff up! And even if we could, why would we bother when our real experiences are amazing enough? So, that is the thing.
We got some pictures in front of the casino and then headed on across the street. Debbie pointed out the gelateria at the Cafe de Paris across the street from the Hotel de Paris and that is where we headed. Clay got a cone of Praline gelato and Debbie got a cone of Framboise sorbet. (That is raspberry for you non-French speakers.) We went up and took some pictures of the tulips. It was time to start back to the ship in earnest. We walked over a block and waited for a bus. The first bus was too full, the 2nd bus was out of service. The third bus was nearly empty, we got on. 1.50 Euros pp for a single journey. You also can buy (on the bus) an unlimited travel day pass for 3.50 Euros.
We took a slow bus ride because of a motorcyclist, a young woman, had turned her bike over and fallen off in the street on the Monte-Carlo side of the harborfront and she was laying in the road. We guess they did not want to move her, but they had moved her motorcycle and taken her helmut off. She was intact but obviously shaken. Eventually, before the ambulance came, our bus got past. We got off the bus at the edge of the dock area and walked down the pier side to the ship with a few glitches. They are building the fences and grandstands already for the Grand Prix in May. The narration of the tour train said it takes 6 weeks to build all of the fences and grandstands and 2 more weeks to take them all back down. We guess, but what a mess for the people who live here during that 8 weeks. Anyway, we were back on the ship by 4:30pm, a full hour before all aboard.
We came back early because of 2 things. One, today is Margie's (Debbie's Mom) birthday. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MARGIE!!! again. The other was that we had gotten a letter from Gudrun, the onboard Cruise Consultant on the 13th describing our new benefits for being SSS Gold Members. One benefit was 2 free hours of telephone usage. Clay went down and quizzed her about this and she told him to just pick up the phone and follow the instructions in the cabin for making phone calls and that 2 hours worth would not be billed. Anything over 2 hours would be billed at the normal rate $6.50 per minute. Easy enough and we will assume that if billing messes up that we have Gudrun's letter. So rather than use Clay's Blackberry for this we used the phone in our cabin. Margie's present was an hour long conversation with Debbie today.
By 5:40pm or so, they were making announcements for missing passengers. We did not put up the gangway until after our 6pm scheduled sailing time. At 6:07pm, Debbie was standing outside on the balcony as we were wondering how long the Captain would delay sailing for these late people. Debbie stuck her head in to tell Clay that 6 people were running up. The first 2 were Jamie and Dana, the cruise directors. The next 2 were the onboard ballroom dance instructors. We did not recognize the last 2 passengers. But, the couple behind them all Debbie recognized from a couple of earlier segments. This man and woman had been regulars in aerobics classes and had been listed in the Guest Directory as living in Cannes. This couple had apparently invited these people from the ship to their home while here. They thought they had left in time to drive back but were stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic and just got back late.
Tonight was Formal. We dressed up and went to Compass Rose. Clay had soft shelled crabs and spaghetti with meatballs. Debbie had a spaghetti appetizer and a filet mignon. We both had ice cream for dessert and then off to bed after another hard driving day. We hope to sleep in tomorrow since we are not scheduled to arrive in Barcelona until noon. The original schedule was deceptive in that it had us in Barcelona until 1am on Sunday, that was 1 hour after midnight on Saturday or 25 hours after arrival. Now we are scheduled to be all aboard at 10:30pm and sail at 11pm. The dress tomorrow night onboard is Country Club Casual, but we have a World Cruiser's Special Event in Barcelona tomorrow night and it is coat and tie required. It warns of cobblestone street walking, so Debbie will have to figure out how to dress Informal in walking shoes! This Special Event was originally described as cocktails at the Picasso Museum, but it seems to have grown. The letter received a few days ago says that we will meet on the pier at 6pm for a short motorcoach transfer to the beautiful Casa Llotja de Mar for cocktails and dinner. After dinner, at 8pm we will walk the cobblestone streets of the Gothic Quarter to Santa Maria del Mar, one of Barcelona's finest Gothic churches, ablaze in light especially for our visit. At8:45pm, we arrive at the Picasso Musem where we will receive an exclusive guided visit. At 10pm we will enjoy dessert and conversation in the museum. At 11pm we return to Voyager. (They may have to hold the ship again tomorrow!) We'll report back tomorrow.
Monaco photos
position at 8:00 am: N43 44.38 latitude E7 25.49 longitude
(Monaco)
temperature: 58F, 88% humidity, clear
distance since FLL: 34,318 miles
Clay again had an abbreviated walk on deck since we were docking at 8am in Monaco. It was cool on deck but not too windy. The deck crew must have changed in Rome as there were all new faces on the crew washing down the deck this morning. They were also running about 15-20 minutes later than the previous crew. We arrived here early and were docking by 6:40am and completely tied up by 7am. Our docking time was originally 8am. No announcements were made that we heard, so we don't know if the ship cleared early as well. We docked on the port side today. Capt. Dag had to pull nose in this morning, so no quick drive off this evening for him. Unfortunately, this gave us a view straight down of the pier and straight ahead of nothing but ocean. The people on the starboard side today had the million dollar view of Monte-Carlo, but we had the view of the gangway. Debbie did not want to get out of bed this morning and was slow starting. We had breakfast in LaVeranda about 7:50am. Debbie had cereal and peanut butter toast. Clay had his usual eggs.
Then we went back to the cabin to get our maps and materials in order to decide what to do this morning. Of course, we did not even follow the plan, so there is no point in sharing it. Any one reading this who might be docking here, when you go through the passenger terminal be sure and stop to pick up a little booklet/folder named "Your cruise welcome kit." This little packet contains postcards, a map and a bus map other information and most importantly, discount coupons! We wound up first at the Musee Oceanographic Aquarium because the Azur Express trains were not yet running when we got there. The sign said they would not open for 45 minutes, so we crossed the street and spent that 45 minutes in the Aquarium. It was very impressive, we did not do the museum part on the upper floors, just the aquarium. There was a coupon for 2 Euros off the regular 11 Euro price. There was also a coupon for the Azur Express Monaco Tours trains. It was for 1 Euro off the regular 7 Euro price. Also, the ticket stub becomes a postcard for those interested in postcards. Very clever. This is a little fake tractor-type train engine pulling 3 cars. It makes a loop of Monaco-Ville and over to Monte-Carlo to see the Casino andthen back through Monaco-Ville to the start point again in front of the Aquarium. The ride lasts 30 minutes and there is no getting off and on. It has a headset at every seat and plays a recorded narration describing where you are driving and what you are seeing. You can choose on of about 6 languages for the narration. The last coupon we used was for 1.50 Euros off the 3 Euros regular admission to the Musee de la chapelle de la visitation housing the Baroque Masters religious art collection of Barbara Piasecka Johnson. It was a beautiful little baroque chapel housing 20 paintings and a tapestry. It was really marvelous. The barque artwork hanging in a tiny baroque chapel. Wonderful. There were a bunch of other coupons we did not use; Naval Museum 2.50 off, Zoo 3 off, classic cars 3 off, stamp & coin museum 2.50 off, Louis II Stadium 2 off, panoramic helicopter flight (2 different companies, 2 coupons) 5 off, Exotic Garden 1.60 off, Aquavision 2 off, Prince's Palace 2 off, Napoleonic Memorabilia 1 off, Wax Museum 1.30 off, National Museum 2 off, Sun Casino and Casino of Cafe de Paris 1 complementary drink each for gamers at slots or tables and lastly Monaco the Film 1.50 off. So that covers discount coupons.
We began this morning with the long and not well signed for pedestrians walk out of the port. We wound up walking through a street tunnel dodging traffic, the other option would have been some completely hidden stone stairs that we did not find until we returned to the port. The map we had picked up last night at the Tour Desk had lots of public elevators and escalators shown and did not make much sense on a flat map. We began to suspect then that this was a mostly vertical city. But, it looked compact and we planned to make a tour of the elevators and escalators. We had much enjoyed our Hong Kong walk with escalators so we figured it would be scenic here as well and fun. We walked along with a couple of other groups from the ship, one we followed in the traffic route and the other appeared as we exited our tunnel and had taken the stone stairs we guess. One of the women asked a local which way to go to the Palace and he led us towards a ramp, he said, by leading us on a walking path that skirted the very sea edge of Monaco-Ville (and avoided the next traffic tunnel). We don't know if there was a ramp. We got sidetracked by a little set of stairs leading down to a little rocky beach! Down we went, rocks, ocean, waves, flowers, rocks...Just beautiful! Back up the stairs and the group was gone, of course. Not that we were with them, but we don't know which way they went to the Palace. We did not go to the Palace. We rounded the corner of this cliffside path around a public parking garage and there was the beautiful Musee Oceanographic. This was Jacques Costeau's office for about 32 years. For those interested, there are some wonderful free public WCs in the parking garage on the ground floor. The women's room had dozens of stalls with seats and toilet paper and it was very clean. Thumbs up. There are a plethora of public WCs in Monaco, more than we have seen in other countries were we covered more ground and that is a good thing, but they were not all equal. Some had no seats. Some had no toilet paper. And, many had the woman holding you up for coins after you had already paid to be in the building, though these women were also at some public toilets. Just an observation for those who might have an interest. So, we were headed for the Azur Express Train to start but it was closed so we went to the Aquarium first. That meant that we missed the changing of the guards at 11:55am in front of the Prince's Palace, but there was a crowd building there when the train passed it 30 minutes early so we weren't really sure we wanted to do this after seeing the crowds anyway. We forgot about the Cathedral, but later heard it was closed until after 4:30pm because of Good Friday. Don't know if it would have been open for us this morning, but we just forgot and got diverted again. We went to the Baroque Chapel with the art, into a Chocolatier and wandered scenic little streets uphill in Monaco-Ville. We were vaguely looking for a place for lunch. We got to the Palace and the crowds were still there, so we were glad to have missed the big event for the day there. We saw a sign and followed the Rampe Major downhill to the port area. We were heading to the pedestrian street of Rue Princesse Caroline where Rick Steve's says there are lots of places for lunch. There are. We walked up and down. Sat at one and did not like the menu they finally brought, which was much altered from the one posted outside and left. We went back up to the next choice that had a seafood special that Clay wanted. We waited to be seated because the place was packed inside the smoky dining rooms and outside on the sidewalk seating. We were seated outside in the sun. Got a little sunburned even though we both applied sunscreen this morning before heading out. It was really chilly this morning and stayed comfortably cool all day today. But, the sun was really hot if you lingered and we lingered for about an hour. We ate at Huit & Demi. It was very nice and the food was good and most of it was reasonably priced. We ordered the fish special for Clay and a beer, they had Grolsch draft. Debbie ordered the King pizza which had mozzarella, tomato, basil, chorizo and olives. It was very tasty. The little black olives were delicious but had pits, so had to be careful. Debbie also ordered a glass of white wine. The waiter returned with a carafe of water, a bucket-sized wine glass over half full of white wine and a large beer that turned out to cost 6.50 Euros. Debbie's wine, which was excellent, cost a fraction of that beer and it wasn't even a local beer! While Clay was in the restroom, the headwaiter came back and told Debbie, the fish is finished, out. He tried to get Debbie to substitute mussels on Clay's behalf but she declined. He left the 2 menus on the table. Clay was pretty exasperated by this development. If we had stopped here in first place, he might have gotten his fish special for 13 Euros. The only other fish on the menu that Clay was interested in cost 28 Euros for a mixed fried plate. He figured he got his in Siracusa for 13 Euro and he was done. He ordered another 12 Euro pizza with tomatoes and basil. Both pizzas had crust that was too limp. It took a long time to get them. When they arrived, we realized we had ordered way too much pizza! Oh, well. Debbie's was much better than Clay's and since we couldn't finish both anyway, we mostly Debbie's. Debbie got drunk and didn't care about anything for a couple of hours. (She was sober when she tripped and fell! That was much later in the afternoon.)
So, now refueled we would start our elevators/escalators climb of Monaco. So, we followed the map and found the first one. We continued on to find the longest escalator section on the map at first it appeared to have been, at least temporarily, lost to construction. Monaco has about 3 or 4 places that are called Gare or Station Access. The underground of a huge area of Monaco appears to be taken up by trains and train tunnels and pedestrian tunnels to get to the trains. It was amazing, a whole other, underground country for trains. There weren't that many people under there either, surprisingly. So, anyway, the whole front of the lower entrance to the longest mechanized section was missing. A man saw us studying the map and while he didn't speak any English asked to help. Debbie pointed to the map. He pointed us to the construction entrance and assured us that was it. We went in and travel over a 3 part moving sidewalk for a long way. Then we took an escalator, we popped out above ground for a photo opportunity and then went back in the train station complex for the long elevator. It too was followed by an escalator. We popped out just inside the border with France, so pretty far up the mountain. The views were not as stunning as we had hoped for. The angle was just wrong. We should have chosen the other side and gone up the side closer to Monaco-Ville maybe instead of this one. Oh, well here we sat. We had about 2 hours to get back to the ship from up here. We waited for a bus for about 15 minutes, they are supposed to be on a 10-12 minute interval schedule and decided to start walking downhill. We walked down the Monte-Carlo side. We wanted to get pictures of the enormous tulips we say from the tourist train this morning in front of the Casino. It was a really beautiful garden area. We had never seen such huge tulips. So, we walked down hill and the across on what turned out to be a major designer shopping street. At the corner where you would turn downhill toward the Casino there is a raised tan marble "dais" as part of the public sidewalk that turns out to be part of the corner-facing entrance to Cartier. There is a small step from the uphill side and a couple steps from the downhill side. She probably wouldn't have missed the uphill stairs, but Debbie did not notice the small step turning the corner to form this Cartier raised entrance on their corner. She tripped and landed on her hands and knees. Clay was sure she was hurt as was a man approaching from the downhill side. He was annoyed by the "dais" and waved his arms around pointing it out. Oh. Debbie had hopped up on her own and brushed her hands off and showed everyone she was fine. Here is the thing. It is embarrassing to trip and fall. But, that wasn't the thing. The thing was that the gold bracelet that Debbie finally found just a few days ago in Kusadasi, Turkey for her 20th wedding anniversary and for this trip is probably a little too large and it hangs down some onto her hand. The bracelet was across the fleshy pad of her palm when she landed. She still wasn't hurt. The bracelet made a very temporary imprint that went with the dirt she wiped off on her jeans.The thing was that some of the tiny links were crushed! Debbie's new gold bracelet got a boo-boo in front of Cartier's in Monte-Carlo! What are the odds? Truth is stranger than fiction. We couldn't even make this stuff up! And even if we could, why would we bother when our real experiences are amazing enough? So, that is the thing.
We got some pictures in front of the casino and then headed on across the street. Debbie pointed out the gelateria at the Cafe de Paris across the street from the Hotel de Paris and that is where we headed. Clay got a cone of Praline gelato and Debbie got a cone of Framboise sorbet. (That is raspberry for you non-French speakers.) We went up and took some pictures of the tulips. It was time to start back to the ship in earnest. We walked over a block and waited for a bus. The first bus was too full, the 2nd bus was out of service. The third bus was nearly empty, we got on. 1.50 Euros pp for a single journey. You also can buy (on the bus) an unlimited travel day pass for 3.50 Euros.
We took a slow bus ride because of a motorcyclist, a young woman, had turned her bike over and fallen off in the street on the Monte-Carlo side of the harborfront and she was laying in the road. We guess they did not want to move her, but they had moved her motorcycle and taken her helmut off. She was intact but obviously shaken. Eventually, before the ambulance came, our bus got past. We got off the bus at the edge of the dock area and walked down the pier side to the ship with a few glitches. They are building the fences and grandstands already for the Grand Prix in May. The narration of the tour train said it takes 6 weeks to build all of the fences and grandstands and 2 more weeks to take them all back down. We guess, but what a mess for the people who live here during that 8 weeks. Anyway, we were back on the ship by 4:30pm, a full hour before all aboard.
We came back early because of 2 things. One, today is Margie's (Debbie's Mom) birthday. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MARGIE!!! again. The other was that we had gotten a letter from Gudrun, the onboard Cruise Consultant on the 13th describing our new benefits for being SSS Gold Members. One benefit was 2 free hours of telephone usage. Clay went down and quizzed her about this and she told him to just pick up the phone and follow the instructions in the cabin for making phone calls and that 2 hours worth would not be billed. Anything over 2 hours would be billed at the normal rate $6.50 per minute. Easy enough and we will assume that if billing messes up that we have Gudrun's letter. So rather than use Clay's Blackberry for this we used the phone in our cabin. Margie's present was an hour long conversation with Debbie today.
By 5:40pm or so, they were making announcements for missing passengers. We did not put up the gangway until after our 6pm scheduled sailing time. At 6:07pm, Debbie was standing outside on the balcony as we were wondering how long the Captain would delay sailing for these late people. Debbie stuck her head in to tell Clay that 6 people were running up. The first 2 were Jamie and Dana, the cruise directors. The next 2 were the onboard ballroom dance instructors. We did not recognize the last 2 passengers. But, the couple behind them all Debbie recognized from a couple of earlier segments. This man and woman had been regulars in aerobics classes and had been listed in the Guest Directory as living in Cannes. This couple had apparently invited these people from the ship to their home while here. They thought they had left in time to drive back but were stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic and just got back late.
Tonight was Formal. We dressed up and went to Compass Rose. Clay had soft shelled crabs and spaghetti with meatballs. Debbie had a spaghetti appetizer and a filet mignon. We both had ice cream for dessert and then off to bed after another hard driving day. We hope to sleep in tomorrow since we are not scheduled to arrive in Barcelona until noon. The original schedule was deceptive in that it had us in Barcelona until 1am on Sunday, that was 1 hour after midnight on Saturday or 25 hours after arrival. Now we are scheduled to be all aboard at 10:30pm and sail at 11pm. The dress tomorrow night onboard is Country Club Casual, but we have a World Cruiser's Special Event in Barcelona tomorrow night and it is coat and tie required. It warns of cobblestone street walking, so Debbie will have to figure out how to dress Informal in walking shoes! This Special Event was originally described as cocktails at the Picasso Museum, but it seems to have grown. The letter received a few days ago says that we will meet on the pier at 6pm for a short motorcoach transfer to the beautiful Casa Llotja de Mar for cocktails and dinner. After dinner, at 8pm we will walk the cobblestone streets of the Gothic Quarter to Santa Maria del Mar, one of Barcelona's finest Gothic churches, ablaze in light especially for our visit. At8:45pm, we arrive at the Picasso Musem where we will receive an exclusive guided visit. At 10pm we will enjoy dessert and conversation in the museum. At 11pm we return to Voyager. (They may have to hold the ship again tomorrow!) We'll report back tomorrow.
Monaco photos
Thursday, April 13, 2006
Day 106 - Thursday April 13
Rome photos
position at 6:30am: N42 05.38 latitude E11 46.49 longitude
(Civitavecchia, Italy - port for Rome)
temperature: 48F, 85% humidity, clear
distance since FLL: 34,069 miles
Clay had an abbreviated walk on deck so he could be back in the room by 6am to make sure Debbie didn't ignore the alarm. The sun came up after 6am this morning and the moon was still almost full. The full moon and clear skies made for a river of moonlight on sea as we came into port. The pilot came aboard just before 6am and we were docked starboard side by 6:30am. We had a quick breakfast in LaVeranda which opened at 6:30am because of the 290 some people disembarking here today. Clay had his usual eggs and Debbie had a ham and cheese omelet with an English Muffin. Fuel for a hard day!
We are in Rome today and are taking a private train into Rome (about an hour away) set up by Regent. The reason for taking this sort of costly train ride is to avoid any surprise Italian train strikes or other transportation snafus on this Easter week Thursday. If there is some kind of problem, it will be the ship's problem, not ours. Here is the description of this 'tour offering'.
========================================
Rome Express - Exclusive Train Transfer
Duration: 9 Hours.
Seated, Wheelchair.
This tour transfer will allow you to explore the fascination of Rome on your own by taking a private train transfer to downtown Rome. Let your instinct guide you and decide which one of Rome's beautiful monuments you would like to visit. An escort will meet you pier side and transfer you to the train departure point. You will reach Rome from Civitavecchia Port by train the exclusive "Rome Express". An escort will help you on board the train and will provide city maps.
The train will stop at St. Peter's Station, near the town center and Basilica so that it will be easy for you to reach the main monuments. Please remember where you are dropped off because the train will leave for Civitavecchia port from the same station.
Please note: If you decide to visit St. Peter's Basilica (or the Vatican Museum) long pants for men are required; no shorts, miniskirts, sleeveless tops or other revealing clothes for ladies are allowed. The train portion of this transfer is 60 minutes.
price: $69 pp
==========================================
Let us start by saying that the description above does not do justice to the product provided. This was definitely a value-added offering. We thought they meant a private car on one of the many trains that goes back and forth from Civitavecchia and Rome. NO! They mean a private train from the port! This was a single car with a driving compartment at either end. How did it run? No idea. It could have been electric. It was beautifully furnished with sections of 4 seats, 2 abreast, facing each other on opposite sides of a central aisle. The seats were red leather and very comfortable. A little more leg room would have been desirable, but this was very nice. Only 25 people had signed up for this. Only 23 made it and we held the bus an extra 10 minutes for the last 2 to make it. We have had some hard days recently and some people just couldn't get started this morning. The guide said they usually have multiple cars but for us they only had the one. We boarded in the center and they shunted us all to the back half. The front half was closed. There was a small lavatory in the center section. The big surprise was as the guide was touting restaurants and taxis that she asked if we wanted breakfast. Well, everyone had just eaten. So, the answer was a unanimous no. In came 2 of the wait staff from Voyager with glasses of orange juice and coffee and a tray of pastries from the ship. This was a very nice touch. If RSSC had put this information in the tour description they likely would have had many more takers because you could have had your breakfast during the hour of travel time and slept later. Plus, it was not what we had understood it to be. We thought it was just a bus ride to the train station at Civitavecchia and a private train car on a regularly scheduled train with a guide on board the train. This was pampering. The only misstep that we perceived was that the guide told everyone that they could not walk anywhere from St. Peter's train station or get to public transit. Well, buses stopped right in front and the Metro map that was on the map she provided us showed a pedestrian tunnel between this FS station and the Metro station. We could not find a sign for the Metro stop nor could we find a street sign that matched any on her map and she refused to tell us which direction to walk and instead insisted that we all wait for the cabs to arrive that she had called. No thanks. We could see St. Peter's so we just started walking. Alex, a former distinguised gent, and present sports director onboard had heard us tell the guide that we planned to go to the Colosseum and that was what he wanted to do as well. He asked to share a cab with us. We told him were planning to take the subway and showed him on the map how we planned to walk back through the Forum, visit the Pantheon, Piazza Navona and then depending on the time we would either walk on, take a cab, return to the subway, etc. He had never been to Rome and said that sounded good to him and he asked if he could tag along with us today and we let him. We had not planned to walk through the Vatican City though. We had hoped to stay clear because of crowds related to Easter weekend starting tomorrow. But, since we got off to a loose ends start, we gave Alex a free visit to an extra country. He would have liked to go inside the Basilica but he was wearing shorts and while we walked through the big TV screens were broadcasting the Pope's service inside. He got a lot of pictures though and so did we. This was fun because we could take pictures of each other for each other. We probably have more pictures of the 2 of us together here than anywhere else we have been. (It should also be said the tour description was not accurate when it stated that you would be dropped near the center of town. Only the Vatican is on this side of the river and all the other main monuments are on the other side and not near by.) The regular price for the public train is 9 Euros, so maybe the added value was not 60 Euros per person, but we are happy with our choice here and would recommend it to others.
We had a good time in Rome. This was a short day here with the hour or so to travel to and from. We were on the Metro at 9:56am which was about 2 hours after we boarded the bus at the pier. We did spend about 20 minutes walking to the Ottaviano Metro station though. The Metro ride to Colosseo stop was only about 10 minutes. Cost was 1 Euro each, a sustantial savings over a taxi! We saw the long line at the Colosseum and heard the wait to enter was about 45 minutes and we all agreed to try to get in quicker by paying a guide. We did not have to try hard to find one. They wanted 9 Euros more than the price of admission per person. OK, fair enough. They would have also guided us through Palatine Hill for this same price but we did not have time to do that and anything else so we all decided not to do it. The guide was good and did add value to the visit. We waited long enough for the tour to begin though that we all got worried that we had perhaps been hustled. It was still quicker than waiting in the line for single tickets to enter. The walk was good. The morning started out with the temperature in the 40s and the predicted high for the day was only 60 degrees F. It was also windy so it felt much colder in the morning. By the time we left the Colosseum, it was early afternoon. The sun was bright and the wind had died down. By the time we crossed the Roman Forum, we were all stripping off jackets. We walked behind the Vittorio Emanuelle II monument through a beautiful square containing the Capitolini Museum. We walked on to the Pantheon and passed through a square filled with ruins and cats, called Largo di Torre Argentina. On the way we stopped and got gelati. Alex had never had it and wasn't sure but he bought the biggest one of all of us! Clay had bacio and Debbie had Rosa (flavored with roses! yum). Alex got a big mixed one with chocolate and something else. He really liked it. Then we were in the Piazza del Rotunda in front of the Pantheon. We wandered the square finishing our gelati to enter and Alex visited with some people from the ship who were dining al fresco. The Pantheon was just beautiful and amazing. Vittorio Emmanuelle is entombed in there. Didn't know that before. Then we walked on to Piazza Navona. It really is the most beautiful plaza. Then we walked towards the river and crossed it on the Ponte Umberto I bridge. There was a lovely tree-lined walk to the Castel San Angelo and then straight ahead to St. Peter's Basilica. We walked through the St. Peter's Plaza again and back down to the train station. Again, we got a little lost because the streets around where it is marked on the map are not on the map! We found it and were there at 3:05pm, 25 minutes early for our appointed rendezvous with the guide. Clay went looking for a takeout restaurant and walked to a supermarket and brought back a good white chocolate candy bar. Debbie pointed out that when the bus pulled away there was a bar and grill across the street from where we were gathered and he went over and bought us a ham and cheese panini at the train station. We ate it while waiting for the guide to show up. She appeared as we were finishing it. We reboarded our private train and were met with the 2 Voyager waitstaff with trays of champagne. (We really could have used some of those wet towels!) Then they came back after the train left the station and offered soft drinks or juice. The guide came around and handed out pre-moistened towelletes and amaretti cookies. Most people fell asleep pretty quickly and the guide did not speak. She did pass out comment forms for her company, Sea Train, and the Roma Express private train service. We passed the Civatitavecchia train station again and entered the port area. This time they dropped us much closer to the ship and a complimentary port shuttle bus returned us to the ship. We were back aboard by 5:15pm, just before the 5:30pm all aboard. We sailed right on schedule at 6pm.
Tonight is Country Club Casual. We will probably go to Compass Rose. We did. We only had a main course and left. We are running out of eating steam! Clay had a sirloin steak. There was no Filet Mignon offered tonight, but Debbie did go for one of the offered main courses on the inside of the menu. She had chicken breast wrapped around prosciutto and mozzarella with risotto. Delicious. We were happy to see Ricardo, the wine steward, back in Compass Rose. We had grown fond of Oner though and don't know if he transferred to another restaurant now or if he is still in CR working a different area. We'll have to wait and find out.
Debbie only had one or two bad coughing fits today so she picked up the gym schedule after dinner and is dreaming of returning to the gym. We'll see.
Rome photos
position at 6:30am: N42 05.38 latitude E11 46.49 longitude
(Civitavecchia, Italy - port for Rome)
temperature: 48F, 85% humidity, clear
distance since FLL: 34,069 miles
Clay had an abbreviated walk on deck so he could be back in the room by 6am to make sure Debbie didn't ignore the alarm. The sun came up after 6am this morning and the moon was still almost full. The full moon and clear skies made for a river of moonlight on sea as we came into port. The pilot came aboard just before 6am and we were docked starboard side by 6:30am. We had a quick breakfast in LaVeranda which opened at 6:30am because of the 290 some people disembarking here today. Clay had his usual eggs and Debbie had a ham and cheese omelet with an English Muffin. Fuel for a hard day!
We are in Rome today and are taking a private train into Rome (about an hour away) set up by Regent. The reason for taking this sort of costly train ride is to avoid any surprise Italian train strikes or other transportation snafus on this Easter week Thursday. If there is some kind of problem, it will be the ship's problem, not ours. Here is the description of this 'tour offering'.
========================================
Rome Express - Exclusive Train Transfer
Duration: 9 Hours.
Seated, Wheelchair.
This tour transfer will allow you to explore the fascination of Rome on your own by taking a private train transfer to downtown Rome. Let your instinct guide you and decide which one of Rome's beautiful monuments you would like to visit. An escort will meet you pier side and transfer you to the train departure point. You will reach Rome from Civitavecchia Port by train the exclusive "Rome Express". An escort will help you on board the train and will provide city maps.
The train will stop at St. Peter's Station, near the town center and Basilica so that it will be easy for you to reach the main monuments. Please remember where you are dropped off because the train will leave for Civitavecchia port from the same station.
Please note: If you decide to visit St. Peter's Basilica (or the Vatican Museum) long pants for men are required; no shorts, miniskirts, sleeveless tops or other revealing clothes for ladies are allowed. The train portion of this transfer is 60 minutes.
price: $69 pp
==========================================
Let us start by saying that the description above does not do justice to the product provided. This was definitely a value-added offering. We thought they meant a private car on one of the many trains that goes back and forth from Civitavecchia and Rome. NO! They mean a private train from the port! This was a single car with a driving compartment at either end. How did it run? No idea. It could have been electric. It was beautifully furnished with sections of 4 seats, 2 abreast, facing each other on opposite sides of a central aisle. The seats were red leather and very comfortable. A little more leg room would have been desirable, but this was very nice. Only 25 people had signed up for this. Only 23 made it and we held the bus an extra 10 minutes for the last 2 to make it. We have had some hard days recently and some people just couldn't get started this morning. The guide said they usually have multiple cars but for us they only had the one. We boarded in the center and they shunted us all to the back half. The front half was closed. There was a small lavatory in the center section. The big surprise was as the guide was touting restaurants and taxis that she asked if we wanted breakfast. Well, everyone had just eaten. So, the answer was a unanimous no. In came 2 of the wait staff from Voyager with glasses of orange juice and coffee and a tray of pastries from the ship. This was a very nice touch. If RSSC had put this information in the tour description they likely would have had many more takers because you could have had your breakfast during the hour of travel time and slept later. Plus, it was not what we had understood it to be. We thought it was just a bus ride to the train station at Civitavecchia and a private train car on a regularly scheduled train with a guide on board the train. This was pampering. The only misstep that we perceived was that the guide told everyone that they could not walk anywhere from St. Peter's train station or get to public transit. Well, buses stopped right in front and the Metro map that was on the map she provided us showed a pedestrian tunnel between this FS station and the Metro station. We could not find a sign for the Metro stop nor could we find a street sign that matched any on her map and she refused to tell us which direction to walk and instead insisted that we all wait for the cabs to arrive that she had called. No thanks. We could see St. Peter's so we just started walking. Alex, a former distinguised gent, and present sports director onboard had heard us tell the guide that we planned to go to the Colosseum and that was what he wanted to do as well. He asked to share a cab with us. We told him were planning to take the subway and showed him on the map how we planned to walk back through the Forum, visit the Pantheon, Piazza Navona and then depending on the time we would either walk on, take a cab, return to the subway, etc. He had never been to Rome and said that sounded good to him and he asked if he could tag along with us today and we let him. We had not planned to walk through the Vatican City though. We had hoped to stay clear because of crowds related to Easter weekend starting tomorrow. But, since we got off to a loose ends start, we gave Alex a free visit to an extra country. He would have liked to go inside the Basilica but he was wearing shorts and while we walked through the big TV screens were broadcasting the Pope's service inside. He got a lot of pictures though and so did we. This was fun because we could take pictures of each other for each other. We probably have more pictures of the 2 of us together here than anywhere else we have been. (It should also be said the tour description was not accurate when it stated that you would be dropped near the center of town. Only the Vatican is on this side of the river and all the other main monuments are on the other side and not near by.) The regular price for the public train is 9 Euros, so maybe the added value was not 60 Euros per person, but we are happy with our choice here and would recommend it to others.
We had a good time in Rome. This was a short day here with the hour or so to travel to and from. We were on the Metro at 9:56am which was about 2 hours after we boarded the bus at the pier. We did spend about 20 minutes walking to the Ottaviano Metro station though. The Metro ride to Colosseo stop was only about 10 minutes. Cost was 1 Euro each, a sustantial savings over a taxi! We saw the long line at the Colosseum and heard the wait to enter was about 45 minutes and we all agreed to try to get in quicker by paying a guide. We did not have to try hard to find one. They wanted 9 Euros more than the price of admission per person. OK, fair enough. They would have also guided us through Palatine Hill for this same price but we did not have time to do that and anything else so we all decided not to do it. The guide was good and did add value to the visit. We waited long enough for the tour to begin though that we all got worried that we had perhaps been hustled. It was still quicker than waiting in the line for single tickets to enter. The walk was good. The morning started out with the temperature in the 40s and the predicted high for the day was only 60 degrees F. It was also windy so it felt much colder in the morning. By the time we left the Colosseum, it was early afternoon. The sun was bright and the wind had died down. By the time we crossed the Roman Forum, we were all stripping off jackets. We walked behind the Vittorio Emanuelle II monument through a beautiful square containing the Capitolini Museum. We walked on to the Pantheon and passed through a square filled with ruins and cats, called Largo di Torre Argentina. On the way we stopped and got gelati. Alex had never had it and wasn't sure but he bought the biggest one of all of us! Clay had bacio and Debbie had Rosa (flavored with roses! yum). Alex got a big mixed one with chocolate and something else. He really liked it. Then we were in the Piazza del Rotunda in front of the Pantheon. We wandered the square finishing our gelati to enter and Alex visited with some people from the ship who were dining al fresco. The Pantheon was just beautiful and amazing. Vittorio Emmanuelle is entombed in there. Didn't know that before. Then we walked on to Piazza Navona. It really is the most beautiful plaza. Then we walked towards the river and crossed it on the Ponte Umberto I bridge. There was a lovely tree-lined walk to the Castel San Angelo and then straight ahead to St. Peter's Basilica. We walked through the St. Peter's Plaza again and back down to the train station. Again, we got a little lost because the streets around where it is marked on the map are not on the map! We found it and were there at 3:05pm, 25 minutes early for our appointed rendezvous with the guide. Clay went looking for a takeout restaurant and walked to a supermarket and brought back a good white chocolate candy bar. Debbie pointed out that when the bus pulled away there was a bar and grill across the street from where we were gathered and he went over and bought us a ham and cheese panini at the train station. We ate it while waiting for the guide to show up. She appeared as we were finishing it. We reboarded our private train and were met with the 2 Voyager waitstaff with trays of champagne. (We really could have used some of those wet towels!) Then they came back after the train left the station and offered soft drinks or juice. The guide came around and handed out pre-moistened towelletes and amaretti cookies. Most people fell asleep pretty quickly and the guide did not speak. She did pass out comment forms for her company, Sea Train, and the Roma Express private train service. We passed the Civatitavecchia train station again and entered the port area. This time they dropped us much closer to the ship and a complimentary port shuttle bus returned us to the ship. We were back aboard by 5:15pm, just before the 5:30pm all aboard. We sailed right on schedule at 6pm.
Tonight is Country Club Casual. We will probably go to Compass Rose. We did. We only had a main course and left. We are running out of eating steam! Clay had a sirloin steak. There was no Filet Mignon offered tonight, but Debbie did go for one of the offered main courses on the inside of the menu. She had chicken breast wrapped around prosciutto and mozzarella with risotto. Delicious. We were happy to see Ricardo, the wine steward, back in Compass Rose. We had grown fond of Oner though and don't know if he transferred to another restaurant now or if he is still in CR working a different area. We'll have to wait and find out.
Debbie only had one or two bad coughing fits today so she picked up the gym schedule after dinner and is dreaming of returning to the gym. We'll see.
Rome photos
Wednesday, April 12, 2006
Day 105 - Wednesday April 12
Naples/Herculaneum photos
position at 7:30am: N37 05.55 latitude E15 45.15 longitude
(Sorrento, Italy)
position at 9am: N40 50.13 latitude E14 15.36 longitude
(Naples, Italy)
temperature: 53F, 66% humidity, partly cloudy with some breeze
distance since FLL: 33,868 miles
Clay skipped walking this morning. But it was windy and bouncing all night long.You could hear the thuds of heavy things falling in other cabins. Bob fell off his shelf in our cabin, but that was all. Clay woke about 2:30am thinking that Debbie was somewhere in the cabin crying. Debbie woke at the same time and thought that Clay needs to recover from the sunburned nose he got in the Suez Canal so he can resume his nightly use of BreatheRight strips to stop his snoring. Debbie got up and went to the bathroom and the weird crooning/wailing noise was as loud in there as in the bed. What the heck? The noise was actually kind of spooky and it seemed to be coming from everywhere. Debbie asked Clay what it was. It turned out that that it was the wind coming through the cracks around the balcony door. Clay fiddled with the door until the noise was minimized and we got back to sleep. We got to Sorrento around 7am. There were swells and the Captain had a tender down checking out whether we would be able to tender ashore at Sorrento. About 7:30am the decision was made to scrap Sorrento and dock across the harbor in Naples. Capt. Dag announced that if anyone had their hearts set on Sorrento to get out and deck and get your photos because we were leaving. Clay was up early and Capt. Dag did take Voyager between Capri and the Sorrento peninsula early this morning on the way to the harbor at Sorrento. We did not get to have our much advertised close encounter with the Blue Grotto of Capri with Voyager though. Too bad because it sounded amazing. It is 8:15am now and we have not docked yet. Roger was just on the loudspeakers giving out new tour departure times. The earliest were 9am now. In a surprisingly generous gesture, Roger announced that people who really wanted to spend time in Sorrento on their own could get there and back by jetfoil ferry. He announced the time and place for them to gather one-time only for a RSSC rep to meet them and walk them to the jetfoil dock and provide them with tickets to go to Sorrento. Since we aren't doing this we did not understand if they would get complimentary transport on the return. Clay was in the Main Atrium a little later and heard people at the Tour Desk complaining that people had to pay their own way to get to Sorrento and back and RSSC was just providing a guide to show them where to go and help with the language barrier of purchasing tickets. So, at this point we are sure what exactly was being provided to people inconvenienced by the change in ports. For our part, we had been to Sorrento before and had not purchased a tour and planned loosely to take the train to Herculaneum. This puts us closer to it. Debbie had tracked on Cruise Critic last spring and early summer and found that fewer than half the ships planning to use Sorrento as a port were able to do so. That being the case with rough swells in the Bay of Naples this time of year, she had brought a lot of extra research and we had many backup plans here. Coming into Naples, if we were really delayed, we would look forward to finally visiting the archaeological museum in Naples. Since it is 8:30am and we still are not docked, we still don't know what we will do here today. Fortunately, we still have 2 good backup plans and both should be practical in whatever time we get here. Yesterday, the extended our departure because of the delayed arrival but they did not announce it shipwide. We did not find out until we got to the gangway. If the same thing happens here then we will have still left the ship with a shorter term plan in effect. So, we will have to wait and see what happens. Either way, we will see something new here. We also got a free early morning look at Capri for those up in time and some shots of Sorrento and Vesuvius from the bay.
Breakfast was served 30 minutes early today in LaVeranda. Debbie got 2 chocolate croissants and some strawberries from her berry man! Clay ate a bacon and tomato sandwich with some melon slices. It is only in the low 50s this morning with a stiff breeze. The forecast high for the day in Sorrento was 61 degrees Fahrenheit. So, it was nippy out on Deck 12 but we spent the morning running from place to place to see what we could see. Capt. Dag is right now doing his signature spin so he can dock for a quick getaway nose out, so we must be close to docking now. It looks like we should be docked by 9am and hopefully clearance will not take long and all the tour people will be able to get going. We will probably just cool our jets and let them have at it and leave after the crush.
In other bad news overnight, our evil eye was stolen. We had purchased a couple of small glass evil eye magnets in Kusadasi and gave one to Mishiel, our cabin stewardess, and put the other one on our door over our name plate. After we went to bed after viewing Stromboli late last night someone took it from the door. That is just too sad. One can only hope that the evil eye does its juju to whoever the evil spirit was that would remove it from its protective post. We have a lot of theft in our neighborhood back at home and a lot of street crime and we are very security conscious, but we have had evil eyes hanging over both the front and back doors outside our home since 1999 and they have never been touched.
Jamie is making loudspeaker announcements into the cabin right now that people should be "streetwise" here in Naples and leave all their jewelry onboard. Keep anything onboard locked in your cabin as well! It is quarter to nine and he says that we have not been cleared yet. Since they are still tying the ropes up, that is not too surprising. We'll keep you posted. We are docked on the port side, with a nice view of Vesuvius to the right and a view of some castles to the left and view of the 2nd story of the terminal building directly in front of our balcony.
At 9am the Captain announced that we were cleared and the stay had been extended one hour to sail at 6pm and all aboard at 5:30pm. It is too bad that no one had prepped everyone aboard that Sorrento was always only a slim possibility. Expectations are just everything. we are not at all upset and would have been pleasantly surprised if we tendered to Sorrento. But, there is a lobby full of PO passengers this morning instead because they are shocked and surprised. Too bad. Jamie is still making announcements about street crime here and to leave anything of value onboard. Also, that the elevators in the terminal building are not working so they are having trouble with the tours departing yet. We will probably go ahead and go down and see what we can find regarding the easiest way, bus or train, to Ercolano and get going. Ciao!
So, we walked right off the ship and into the Stazione Maritima building. There was a tourist information desk right in front of us, so we got in line. They had several free maps that were better than what we had brought or gotten on the ship so we took a couple. When our turn came we asked which was closest bus or train to Ercolano. Bus 157 and we could buy tickets right across the street from the port entrance. Easy enough. We crossed the street and the kiosk on the corner in front of the cross walk had signs in English that they sold bus and train tickets and spoke English. OK. We walked up and asked the man for 2 tickets return for Ercolano. He handed us 2 all day passes for trains, metro and buses at 3.50 Euros each. We asked him where to catch the bus. He pointed to the median in the center of the street. There were 2 so we were confused and he pointed that we needed the 2nd median from him going to his left. OK. We got out on the median and walked to the left facing the water until we reached the 157 bus sign. The bus came within 15 minutes or so. We were riding the bus at 10:10am. Traffic was heavy and we also got caught behind an Italian funeral procession like you see in the movies with the widow clinging to the back of the hearse. Very sad, but very scenic and it probably delayed the bus by 30 minutes. Debbie got concerned at some point because we thought the bus ride to Ercolano Scavi should have taken only about 30 minutes and with the delay we weren't sure how much further. She asked a woman standing near her if she spoke English, she did not but offered to help. Debbie asked her how far to Ercolano. She pointed ahead. She stayed on the bus until she told us to get off and then walked with us until we could see the arched entry that had Herculaneum written across it. How nice! Part of our concern also was that there were Aviso signs regarding bus 157 and some part of Ercolano being closed. It did turn out that the street that runs directly in front of the Herculaneum gate was shut down. So, the bus was rerouted and the woman had gotten us off at the closest point. We hope that she did not go too far out of our way for us! We walked about 2.5 blocks downhill and got in the ticket line. (The bus 157 drove past the Circumvesuviana train station twice while we were on it. The bus stop where we got off turned out to be about 2.5 blocks past where the Circumvesuviana train station was. (But, the closest Circumvesuviana train station to the Stazione Maritima was about a mile and a half! So, we had figured that even though the train is faster than the bus, the walk would equal out the total travel time. We were not counting on the funeral!) Anyway, we got in line for tickets at about 11:30am. There must have been 200 people in line. At a couple of points the gates would swing shut and we did not know if they would reopen. Now, a reason for choosing Herculaneum is that everyone says it is so much better preserved than Pompei, more compact and easier to tour and that you have the place to yourself unlike the teeming hoards at Pompei. Um, maybe except for Easter week. There must have been 5 busloads and 4 trainloads of school-age kids there! They kept closing the gates until people came out and mostly only large groups came out. We did see a few families traveling with children come out but not any solo adults like we were. It was family time and they all had bag lunches! We decided we would stay on line until noon and if we did not get in we would turn around and catch the bus back. We got in before noon. Tickets were 10 Euros each. It was crowded inside. One can only assume though that Pompei would have been worse. We did really enjoy Herculaneum and maybe more than Pompei just because of the small scale and better preservation. We thought we needed to leave the site by 2:30pm or so to be sure to get back to the ship on time. So, we ate 2 packs of Debbie's Nabs as we toured. We drank a bottle of water and had a couple of hard candies each. No leisurely lunch today for us! Glad we got it yesterday and that it was so delicious. We headed back up the street and stood at the bus stop across the street from where we had alighted. No buses passed us going that way. We walked across to the other side, understanding that we were near the end of the route before the bus looped back to Napoli. The next bus to arrive was ours, 157, we climbed on and flashed our day passes and Clay asked the driver to confirm that he went to Napoli. He waved us off the bus and told us to wait across the street. Debbie was annoyed because our passes were good for the fare and he was probably going to drive back by us in 15 minutes that we did not need to be standing. After we got off and stood back on the other side, Debbie again pointed out that because of the street closure/rerouting we did not know if the bus would come by here. She was watching up the hill when an orange bus came out of the next side street up the block. She walked up there and the bus stop sign up there did not list our bus, but 2 other buses that were not listed on our stop's sign. There were no temporary Aviso signs there, so she just came back. As she stood there and Clay went down the hill to check the next side street that bus 157 had gone down after we alighted, bus 157 came out of the side street up the hill! That SOB that made us get off and crossthe street! He knew he wasn't coming by there. We had stood there for 30 minutes and not a single bus had come by in our direction, while they all went past the other side and then turned at the next corner because of the main street at the bottom of the hill being closed. (That side street was one-way which was why Debbie was watching the next street up the hill, one-way in the other direction.) So, we started walking to the train station. It was only another couple of blocks uphill and as soon as we arrived on Binario 1 to Napoli, the train arrived. It took only 15 minutes to reach the terminus stop in Napoli, which is the closest one to the waterfront and the Satzione Maritima, still pretty far. We exited the train station onto Corso Garibaldin and walked downhill to the waterfront. We meant to follow the waterfront, but geez, the traffic and cars and motorbikes parked on the sidewalks. We wound up a stree further away at some point. We were in Napoli by 4:15pm and had time to find T-shirts and a pizza if any were nearby. So, we walked on. We did find a couple of pizzerias near the port entrance and went in the one with the most people inside. The name was Sofi. They had a wood-burning oven and had small, half pizzas for 6 Euros. We split one with ricotta, mozzarella, salami, basil and tomato sauce. Clay got a Peroni draft beer and since they only had white wine by the 1/2 bottle as the smallest, Debbie got a Coke. It was really fast from the time the put it in the oven. It must have been very hot. You could see into the kitchen from the tables and from the door by the stairs to the toilets. Debbie sent Clay to get a picture of the tile covered oven and the woodpile. The cook saw his camera and called his buddy over and posed for Clay to take their picture. Clay got embarrassed and came back to the table without photographing the wood oven or the wood pile. Debbie got up with the camera and headed back to the kitchen door. A man in a sports coat walked in front of her first flash photo and directed her into the kitchen, physically! There had been one other pizza order after we entered and the cooks were in there just getting ready for dinner time. They immediately took the camera from Debbie and took a picture of each of themselves with her and then let her take more pictures while they were writing their names and addresses for her to mail them pictures. During this Clay brought in Bob so he would not be left out of the photo frenzy in the Napolipizza kitchen! The brochure they gave Debbie had a website, so she asked if they had email. No! A mime of airmail from America by Debbie's new best friend, Franco Lebro. How about from Roma? OK? No. How about from Monte Carlo? What? How about from Barcelona? They had to find the one English-speaking waiter. They were disappointed that Debbie did not want to mail from the USA. But, would take pictures anyway they could get them. They made Debbie promise 3 times and she did. Clay asked her if she was crazy later. She said it was really hot in the kitchen and she was being hugged by young Italian men! Debbie told Clay that she planned to make them postcards like we have been sending home. He pointed out that the pictures are not great quality and then they are exposed during mailing. Debbie replied that if Grandma's Taj Mahal postcard of us was good enough for Grandma to carry to her aphasia support group for show and tell then it was good enough for a Neapolitan pizza chef. Clay conceded, probably they would still be thrilled to have them. Debbie plans to mail them along the way until all are used. Hopefully, that will make their day as they made our with their goofy friendliness after the terrible bus driver experience. We walked away after lots of farewells and repeated promises and got ourselves each a big gelato cone. As we ate them, we walked away from the port gate looking for T-shirts. We saw a place after a couple of blocks that had flags and shirts hanging out front. Debbie thought it looked like a soccer fan place, but it was the only place we had seen in a couple of miles of walking that looked like it had anything like souvenir shirts. (The gift shop in the terminal building must not have been open when we walked by the first time this morning or we would have just gone there, but we did not know about it. There were no T-shirts for sale in Ercolano either, except in kids' sizes.) So, the guy selling soccer jerseys was very disappointed that we would not buy from him and followed Debbie outside where he melted her heart again and we bought 3, 20-Euro each, polyester soccer jerseys for the Naples soccer team. Mars, number 10 Maradona, these should be collector's items! Oh, also Clay bought a big, pink foil-wrapped chocolate Easter egg for Debbie. We have been seeing these giant eggs since Sicily and lots of people carrying them on the streets and bus. We bought a fairly small and inexpensive one. Some were about a foot tall with painted scenes onthem and cost over 100 Euros!
We were back onboard Voyager about 35 minutes before the all aboard. We sailed on time at 6pm. It was a good day. We made our own way around despite some missteps and other than the outrageous soccer jerseys purchase we had a cheap and successful day. Before we sailed, the doorbell rang. Debbie answered it and there was a waiter there with gift wrapped parcels. It was our replacement bakery cookies from last night's dinner with Captain Dag. Patrick had promised to personally go out shopping today for these and we don't know if he did it personally or not, but someone found a place called Gambrinus on via Chiaia and brought us back giftwrapped cookies from there. Thanks Capt. Dag and Patrick!
We can highly recommend a visit to Herculaneum, or Ercolano Scavi. It is just amazing. There are still such detailed murals and mosiacs and marble work and the really amazing thing is the surviving charred woodwork. Truly amazing. We really could have used more than the 2 1/2 hours we had there. If we had stood in a line of student groups for almost an hour we probably would have been just fine. Something to keep in mind for anyone else thinking about this. Also, the train probably would have been a time saver even with the distance from the pier. The distance from the Herculaneum site itself was insignifacant compared to the distance to the bus for us today, anyway.
Captain Dag just came on the loudspeakers and said that he had promised us a sail by the Blue Grotto on Capri last night and that he had some time in the pocket so he intended to keep his promise and we should see Capri on the port side about 7pm. We may just stay in tonight for the views and have a light meal delivered by room service since we had pizza and gelato after 4pm. More later. Well, true to his word Capt. Dag just about scraped the sheer cliffside of Capri with Voyager. He blew the horn several times beside the cliff face. It was pretty spectacular and special. Just as it was getting dark, we turned and sailed north for Civitavecchia. We have another long, hard day off the ship tomorrow. Since it is Easter week, Debbie booked us on the tour Rome Express - Train Transfer for $69pp. Now you can take the train for a fraction of that price, but Italy being Italy, Debbie figured better safe than sorry. Our tickets tell us to be on the pier at 8:05am and the ship sails tomorrow at 6pm. We have been to Rome before and got an overview and most of the highlights. So, the train is supposed to drop us at St. Peter's Station. We may stay there and get a really good look at the Vatican Museums which we buzzed through last time. Or, we may decide to go out into town and maybe tour inside the Colosseum that we only saw from the outside last time. Time will tell. We did not get a weather forecast for Rome in the Passages which might have helped sway our decision.
Tonight was Country Club Casual but we did not go out to eat. We stayed in for the sailby of Capri. Plus we had just eaten pizza and gelato a few hours earlier. The plan was to eat a light dinner by Room Service, but Clay fell asleep. Well, we have a early morning and a long day tomorrow, followed by a repeat the next day, so better close now.
Tonight is the last night of the Dubai to Rome segment and 290 people are leaving tomorrow. Not sure how many new people are coming aboard for the last segment.
We forgot to mention the full moon over Stromboli last night! Even when there were no exploding flames shooting out the top there was this big, bright moon and its light reflected from Stromboli to Voyager in a river. Beautiful! Of course, we got zero photos. Too bad. Only our memories.
On April 16, Latitudes is starting its Spanish Bodega theme. It will feature international singer Amapola, the guitar music of Frankie Holiday combined with the Flaminco dancing of Aisha.
Naples/Herculaneum photos
position at 7:30am: N37 05.55 latitude E15 45.15 longitude
(Sorrento, Italy)
position at 9am: N40 50.13 latitude E14 15.36 longitude
(Naples, Italy)
temperature: 53F, 66% humidity, partly cloudy with some breeze
distance since FLL: 33,868 miles
Clay skipped walking this morning. But it was windy and bouncing all night long.You could hear the thuds of heavy things falling in other cabins. Bob fell off his shelf in our cabin, but that was all. Clay woke about 2:30am thinking that Debbie was somewhere in the cabin crying. Debbie woke at the same time and thought that Clay needs to recover from the sunburned nose he got in the Suez Canal so he can resume his nightly use of BreatheRight strips to stop his snoring. Debbie got up and went to the bathroom and the weird crooning/wailing noise was as loud in there as in the bed. What the heck? The noise was actually kind of spooky and it seemed to be coming from everywhere. Debbie asked Clay what it was. It turned out that that it was the wind coming through the cracks around the balcony door. Clay fiddled with the door until the noise was minimized and we got back to sleep. We got to Sorrento around 7am. There were swells and the Captain had a tender down checking out whether we would be able to tender ashore at Sorrento. About 7:30am the decision was made to scrap Sorrento and dock across the harbor in Naples. Capt. Dag announced that if anyone had their hearts set on Sorrento to get out and deck and get your photos because we were leaving. Clay was up early and Capt. Dag did take Voyager between Capri and the Sorrento peninsula early this morning on the way to the harbor at Sorrento. We did not get to have our much advertised close encounter with the Blue Grotto of Capri with Voyager though. Too bad because it sounded amazing. It is 8:15am now and we have not docked yet. Roger was just on the loudspeakers giving out new tour departure times. The earliest were 9am now. In a surprisingly generous gesture, Roger announced that people who really wanted to spend time in Sorrento on their own could get there and back by jetfoil ferry. He announced the time and place for them to gather one-time only for a RSSC rep to meet them and walk them to the jetfoil dock and provide them with tickets to go to Sorrento. Since we aren't doing this we did not understand if they would get complimentary transport on the return. Clay was in the Main Atrium a little later and heard people at the Tour Desk complaining that people had to pay their own way to get to Sorrento and back and RSSC was just providing a guide to show them where to go and help with the language barrier of purchasing tickets. So, at this point we are sure what exactly was being provided to people inconvenienced by the change in ports. For our part, we had been to Sorrento before and had not purchased a tour and planned loosely to take the train to Herculaneum. This puts us closer to it. Debbie had tracked on Cruise Critic last spring and early summer and found that fewer than half the ships planning to use Sorrento as a port were able to do so. That being the case with rough swells in the Bay of Naples this time of year, she had brought a lot of extra research and we had many backup plans here. Coming into Naples, if we were really delayed, we would look forward to finally visiting the archaeological museum in Naples. Since it is 8:30am and we still are not docked, we still don't know what we will do here today. Fortunately, we still have 2 good backup plans and both should be practical in whatever time we get here. Yesterday, the extended our departure because of the delayed arrival but they did not announce it shipwide. We did not find out until we got to the gangway. If the same thing happens here then we will have still left the ship with a shorter term plan in effect. So, we will have to wait and see what happens. Either way, we will see something new here. We also got a free early morning look at Capri for those up in time and some shots of Sorrento and Vesuvius from the bay.
Breakfast was served 30 minutes early today in LaVeranda. Debbie got 2 chocolate croissants and some strawberries from her berry man! Clay ate a bacon and tomato sandwich with some melon slices. It is only in the low 50s this morning with a stiff breeze. The forecast high for the day in Sorrento was 61 degrees Fahrenheit. So, it was nippy out on Deck 12 but we spent the morning running from place to place to see what we could see. Capt. Dag is right now doing his signature spin so he can dock for a quick getaway nose out, so we must be close to docking now. It looks like we should be docked by 9am and hopefully clearance will not take long and all the tour people will be able to get going. We will probably just cool our jets and let them have at it and leave after the crush.
In other bad news overnight, our evil eye was stolen. We had purchased a couple of small glass evil eye magnets in Kusadasi and gave one to Mishiel, our cabin stewardess, and put the other one on our door over our name plate. After we went to bed after viewing Stromboli late last night someone took it from the door. That is just too sad. One can only hope that the evil eye does its juju to whoever the evil spirit was that would remove it from its protective post. We have a lot of theft in our neighborhood back at home and a lot of street crime and we are very security conscious, but we have had evil eyes hanging over both the front and back doors outside our home since 1999 and they have never been touched.
Jamie is making loudspeaker announcements into the cabin right now that people should be "streetwise" here in Naples and leave all their jewelry onboard. Keep anything onboard locked in your cabin as well! It is quarter to nine and he says that we have not been cleared yet. Since they are still tying the ropes up, that is not too surprising. We'll keep you posted. We are docked on the port side, with a nice view of Vesuvius to the right and a view of some castles to the left and view of the 2nd story of the terminal building directly in front of our balcony.
At 9am the Captain announced that we were cleared and the stay had been extended one hour to sail at 6pm and all aboard at 5:30pm. It is too bad that no one had prepped everyone aboard that Sorrento was always only a slim possibility. Expectations are just everything. we are not at all upset and would have been pleasantly surprised if we tendered to Sorrento. But, there is a lobby full of PO passengers this morning instead because they are shocked and surprised. Too bad. Jamie is still making announcements about street crime here and to leave anything of value onboard. Also, that the elevators in the terminal building are not working so they are having trouble with the tours departing yet. We will probably go ahead and go down and see what we can find regarding the easiest way, bus or train, to Ercolano and get going. Ciao!
So, we walked right off the ship and into the Stazione Maritima building. There was a tourist information desk right in front of us, so we got in line. They had several free maps that were better than what we had brought or gotten on the ship so we took a couple. When our turn came we asked which was closest bus or train to Ercolano. Bus 157 and we could buy tickets right across the street from the port entrance. Easy enough. We crossed the street and the kiosk on the corner in front of the cross walk had signs in English that they sold bus and train tickets and spoke English. OK. We walked up and asked the man for 2 tickets return for Ercolano. He handed us 2 all day passes for trains, metro and buses at 3.50 Euros each. We asked him where to catch the bus. He pointed to the median in the center of the street. There were 2 so we were confused and he pointed that we needed the 2nd median from him going to his left. OK. We got out on the median and walked to the left facing the water until we reached the 157 bus sign. The bus came within 15 minutes or so. We were riding the bus at 10:10am. Traffic was heavy and we also got caught behind an Italian funeral procession like you see in the movies with the widow clinging to the back of the hearse. Very sad, but very scenic and it probably delayed the bus by 30 minutes. Debbie got concerned at some point because we thought the bus ride to Ercolano Scavi should have taken only about 30 minutes and with the delay we weren't sure how much further. She asked a woman standing near her if she spoke English, she did not but offered to help. Debbie asked her how far to Ercolano. She pointed ahead. She stayed on the bus until she told us to get off and then walked with us until we could see the arched entry that had Herculaneum written across it. How nice! Part of our concern also was that there were Aviso signs regarding bus 157 and some part of Ercolano being closed. It did turn out that the street that runs directly in front of the Herculaneum gate was shut down. So, the bus was rerouted and the woman had gotten us off at the closest point. We hope that she did not go too far out of our way for us! We walked about 2.5 blocks downhill and got in the ticket line. (The bus 157 drove past the Circumvesuviana train station twice while we were on it. The bus stop where we got off turned out to be about 2.5 blocks past where the Circumvesuviana train station was. (But, the closest Circumvesuviana train station to the Stazione Maritima was about a mile and a half! So, we had figured that even though the train is faster than the bus, the walk would equal out the total travel time. We were not counting on the funeral!) Anyway, we got in line for tickets at about 11:30am. There must have been 200 people in line. At a couple of points the gates would swing shut and we did not know if they would reopen. Now, a reason for choosing Herculaneum is that everyone says it is so much better preserved than Pompei, more compact and easier to tour and that you have the place to yourself unlike the teeming hoards at Pompei. Um, maybe except for Easter week. There must have been 5 busloads and 4 trainloads of school-age kids there! They kept closing the gates until people came out and mostly only large groups came out. We did see a few families traveling with children come out but not any solo adults like we were. It was family time and they all had bag lunches! We decided we would stay on line until noon and if we did not get in we would turn around and catch the bus back. We got in before noon. Tickets were 10 Euros each. It was crowded inside. One can only assume though that Pompei would have been worse. We did really enjoy Herculaneum and maybe more than Pompei just because of the small scale and better preservation. We thought we needed to leave the site by 2:30pm or so to be sure to get back to the ship on time. So, we ate 2 packs of Debbie's Nabs as we toured. We drank a bottle of water and had a couple of hard candies each. No leisurely lunch today for us! Glad we got it yesterday and that it was so delicious. We headed back up the street and stood at the bus stop across the street from where we had alighted. No buses passed us going that way. We walked across to the other side, understanding that we were near the end of the route before the bus looped back to Napoli. The next bus to arrive was ours, 157, we climbed on and flashed our day passes and Clay asked the driver to confirm that he went to Napoli. He waved us off the bus and told us to wait across the street. Debbie was annoyed because our passes were good for the fare and he was probably going to drive back by us in 15 minutes that we did not need to be standing. After we got off and stood back on the other side, Debbie again pointed out that because of the street closure/rerouting we did not know if the bus would come by here. She was watching up the hill when an orange bus came out of the next side street up the block. She walked up there and the bus stop sign up there did not list our bus, but 2 other buses that were not listed on our stop's sign. There were no temporary Aviso signs there, so she just came back. As she stood there and Clay went down the hill to check the next side street that bus 157 had gone down after we alighted, bus 157 came out of the side street up the hill! That SOB that made us get off and crossthe street! He knew he wasn't coming by there. We had stood there for 30 minutes and not a single bus had come by in our direction, while they all went past the other side and then turned at the next corner because of the main street at the bottom of the hill being closed. (That side street was one-way which was why Debbie was watching the next street up the hill, one-way in the other direction.) So, we started walking to the train station. It was only another couple of blocks uphill and as soon as we arrived on Binario 1 to Napoli, the train arrived. It took only 15 minutes to reach the terminus stop in Napoli, which is the closest one to the waterfront and the Satzione Maritima, still pretty far. We exited the train station onto Corso Garibaldin and walked downhill to the waterfront. We meant to follow the waterfront, but geez, the traffic and cars and motorbikes parked on the sidewalks. We wound up a stree further away at some point. We were in Napoli by 4:15pm and had time to find T-shirts and a pizza if any were nearby. So, we walked on. We did find a couple of pizzerias near the port entrance and went in the one with the most people inside. The name was Sofi. They had a wood-burning oven and had small, half pizzas for 6 Euros. We split one with ricotta, mozzarella, salami, basil and tomato sauce. Clay got a Peroni draft beer and since they only had white wine by the 1/2 bottle as the smallest, Debbie got a Coke. It was really fast from the time the put it in the oven. It must have been very hot. You could see into the kitchen from the tables and from the door by the stairs to the toilets. Debbie sent Clay to get a picture of the tile covered oven and the woodpile. The cook saw his camera and called his buddy over and posed for Clay to take their picture. Clay got embarrassed and came back to the table without photographing the wood oven or the wood pile. Debbie got up with the camera and headed back to the kitchen door. A man in a sports coat walked in front of her first flash photo and directed her into the kitchen, physically! There had been one other pizza order after we entered and the cooks were in there just getting ready for dinner time. They immediately took the camera from Debbie and took a picture of each of themselves with her and then let her take more pictures while they were writing their names and addresses for her to mail them pictures. During this Clay brought in Bob so he would not be left out of the photo frenzy in the Napolipizza kitchen! The brochure they gave Debbie had a website, so she asked if they had email. No! A mime of airmail from America by Debbie's new best friend, Franco Lebro. How about from Roma? OK? No. How about from Monte Carlo? What? How about from Barcelona? They had to find the one English-speaking waiter. They were disappointed that Debbie did not want to mail from the USA. But, would take pictures anyway they could get them. They made Debbie promise 3 times and she did. Clay asked her if she was crazy later. She said it was really hot in the kitchen and she was being hugged by young Italian men! Debbie told Clay that she planned to make them postcards like we have been sending home. He pointed out that the pictures are not great quality and then they are exposed during mailing. Debbie replied that if Grandma's Taj Mahal postcard of us was good enough for Grandma to carry to her aphasia support group for show and tell then it was good enough for a Neapolitan pizza chef. Clay conceded, probably they would still be thrilled to have them. Debbie plans to mail them along the way until all are used. Hopefully, that will make their day as they made our with their goofy friendliness after the terrible bus driver experience. We walked away after lots of farewells and repeated promises and got ourselves each a big gelato cone. As we ate them, we walked away from the port gate looking for T-shirts. We saw a place after a couple of blocks that had flags and shirts hanging out front. Debbie thought it looked like a soccer fan place, but it was the only place we had seen in a couple of miles of walking that looked like it had anything like souvenir shirts. (The gift shop in the terminal building must not have been open when we walked by the first time this morning or we would have just gone there, but we did not know about it. There were no T-shirts for sale in Ercolano either, except in kids' sizes.) So, the guy selling soccer jerseys was very disappointed that we would not buy from him and followed Debbie outside where he melted her heart again and we bought 3, 20-Euro each, polyester soccer jerseys for the Naples soccer team. Mars, number 10 Maradona, these should be collector's items! Oh, also Clay bought a big, pink foil-wrapped chocolate Easter egg for Debbie. We have been seeing these giant eggs since Sicily and lots of people carrying them on the streets and bus. We bought a fairly small and inexpensive one. Some were about a foot tall with painted scenes onthem and cost over 100 Euros!
We were back onboard Voyager about 35 minutes before the all aboard. We sailed on time at 6pm. It was a good day. We made our own way around despite some missteps and other than the outrageous soccer jerseys purchase we had a cheap and successful day. Before we sailed, the doorbell rang. Debbie answered it and there was a waiter there with gift wrapped parcels. It was our replacement bakery cookies from last night's dinner with Captain Dag. Patrick had promised to personally go out shopping today for these and we don't know if he did it personally or not, but someone found a place called Gambrinus on via Chiaia and brought us back giftwrapped cookies from there. Thanks Capt. Dag and Patrick!
We can highly recommend a visit to Herculaneum, or Ercolano Scavi. It is just amazing. There are still such detailed murals and mosiacs and marble work and the really amazing thing is the surviving charred woodwork. Truly amazing. We really could have used more than the 2 1/2 hours we had there. If we had stood in a line of student groups for almost an hour we probably would have been just fine. Something to keep in mind for anyone else thinking about this. Also, the train probably would have been a time saver even with the distance from the pier. The distance from the Herculaneum site itself was insignifacant compared to the distance to the bus for us today, anyway.
Captain Dag just came on the loudspeakers and said that he had promised us a sail by the Blue Grotto on Capri last night and that he had some time in the pocket so he intended to keep his promise and we should see Capri on the port side about 7pm. We may just stay in tonight for the views and have a light meal delivered by room service since we had pizza and gelato after 4pm. More later. Well, true to his word Capt. Dag just about scraped the sheer cliffside of Capri with Voyager. He blew the horn several times beside the cliff face. It was pretty spectacular and special. Just as it was getting dark, we turned and sailed north for Civitavecchia. We have another long, hard day off the ship tomorrow. Since it is Easter week, Debbie booked us on the tour Rome Express - Train Transfer for $69pp. Now you can take the train for a fraction of that price, but Italy being Italy, Debbie figured better safe than sorry. Our tickets tell us to be on the pier at 8:05am and the ship sails tomorrow at 6pm. We have been to Rome before and got an overview and most of the highlights. So, the train is supposed to drop us at St. Peter's Station. We may stay there and get a really good look at the Vatican Museums which we buzzed through last time. Or, we may decide to go out into town and maybe tour inside the Colosseum that we only saw from the outside last time. Time will tell. We did not get a weather forecast for Rome in the Passages which might have helped sway our decision.
Tonight was Country Club Casual but we did not go out to eat. We stayed in for the sailby of Capri. Plus we had just eaten pizza and gelato a few hours earlier. The plan was to eat a light dinner by Room Service, but Clay fell asleep. Well, we have a early morning and a long day tomorrow, followed by a repeat the next day, so better close now.
Tonight is the last night of the Dubai to Rome segment and 290 people are leaving tomorrow. Not sure how many new people are coming aboard for the last segment.
We forgot to mention the full moon over Stromboli last night! Even when there were no exploding flames shooting out the top there was this big, bright moon and its light reflected from Stromboli to Voyager in a river. Beautiful! Of course, we got zero photos. Too bad. Only our memories.
On April 16, Latitudes is starting its Spanish Bodega theme. It will feature international singer Amapola, the guitar music of Frankie Holiday combined with the Flaminco dancing of Aisha.
Naples/Herculaneum photos
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
Day 104 - Tuesday April 11
Ortygia photos
position at 7:30am: N37 05.55 latitude E15 45.15 longitude
(about 25 miles E of Siracusa, Sicily)
temperature: 66F, 67% humidity, cloudy and windy (85km/h for NW)
distance since FLL: 33,570 miles
It was cool and windy again this morning for Clay's deck walk. Debbie slept in and was glad for the extra hour. We went to a late breakfast again in Compass Rose since we are still not in sight of land. Debbie had a double order of Swedish Pancakes and Clay had blueberry pancakes. Land was visible by the time we finished eating and we headed up to Deck 12 for the sail in to Siracusa's harbor. It is pretty scenic. The old fortified island of Ortygia is right next to us and that is where we have been told that we will tender into, Ortygia. We were at our anchorage by 8:30am. By 9am the Captain came on and his Vords of Visdom were not so philosophical or poetic today. He said he got a call at 11pm last night that the local port authority would not allow Voyager to use our own tenders. Capt. Dag said that by the time he went to bed he had arranged that to allow the local tender's union to make its money they would pay them and still be allowed to use our own tenders in addition to the local ones. By the time we arrived here this morning, it was back to only local tenders could be used. The first local tender arrived at about 9am. Capt. Dag announced that the capacity was 40 people and he did not know how we could get even all the tour-booked people ashore. He said he would continue negoatiating with the locals and handed off to Jamie. Jamie said that he would start handing out tender tickets in front of the Voyager Lounge and that once you came and got a ticket you should be prepared to stay there until you were called, that he would not make shipwide announcements. He apologized for the inconvenience. At 9:30am, Jamie announced that we had finally convinced the locals that they could not provide adequate tendering capacity and they had consented to let us drop our own 2 tenders into the water. Jamie said that we had not yet received permission to start loading any tenders yet and that there about 350 people booked on tours who had to be offloaded before they would begin tendering individuals going ashore independently. They started loading tenders just a few minutes after Jamie's announcement. We are flexible here since we spent a day here before and just planned to wander Ortygia and review the old sights. Clay has almost no memories of the day we spent here in 2000, so it will all be new to him anyway.
The last tender back to the ship is at 1:30pm. We are expected to sail at 2pm. It will be a short day here in any event. We are due to sail past Stromboli volcanoe around 11pm tonight so we are looking forward to that and hope it does something for us. This should also mean that we sail through the Straits of Messina but there have been no announcements about that. Anyway, it should be a nice sail for the rest of day after we depart Siracusa.
We received our interim bill today and they only charged us $140 each for the tour to Petra in Jordan. This is a reduction of $49 each, or $9 less than what we would have paid to just take the plain Petra tour vs. the Concierge Choice tour there. We never received any kind of response regarding that tour after we submitted our written complaint. We assume that this price reduction is the response and not some accounting error.
We got a letter this morning informing us that the Kitchen Cabaret concept has been extended in Latitudes through 4/14. Latitudes will be closed on 4/15 and will reopen on the 16th as a Spanish Bodega. We have a 7pm reservation for Tuesday, the 18th so we will report back on this. We are still skipping the Kitchen Cabaret. We have heard mixed reviews about the entertainment there and not many raves for the menu. Many who have been on the whole time stated they thought it was the weakest offering in Latitudes to date. In any event, we are skipping it so cannot make any first hand reports.
We went down to the Main Atrium after all the tender ticketing had stopped and tenders were just being freely loaded. We wound up on a Voyager tender and were ashore by 10:30am. We docked just across the bridge from the island of Ortygia. The island is only about 1 mile long and a 1/2 mile wide so it is easy walking. The whole island is paved. We looked and did not see any dirt or grass. It is paved with marble and brick and other pavers but the whole thing is covered. It was fairly cool and partly cloudy which made for a pleasant day. We were here before in late summer with glaring sunshine and every surface reflected and it was stunning but not comfortable. Sadly, the Duomo was covered with scaffolding on the front, so we have no pictures. Also, the Palazzo Bellomo museum of art was covered with scaffolding and was closed. We ended up having a nice leisurely strolland then a long leisurely and delicious Sicilian lunch. Clay had misto frito (mixed fried seafood plate) with a Moretti beer and Debbie had pasta alla Norma (tomato sauce with eggplants) and a Sicilian white wine that was not bad.
The good news was that they delayed our departure until 3:30pm or 3pm. The last tender is now scheduled for 2:30pm instead of 1:30pm. One assumes this is because we were delayed by the politics of getting permission to be here at all at the last minute. Sadly, a few greedy Sicilians may have messed up this port in the future for RSSC and Voyager. When we arrived to the tender dock to return there was a long line and people were balking at riding in the local tenders. Apparently, after the ship got unloaded the locals told RSSC that they had to stop running their own tenders. Those people back on the dock were taking a moral and safety stance but they may have had a long wait. We rode in the last 2 seats on the next local tender on the outside benches and it was fine. It was not as safe or convenient as the Voyager tenders but we were not in fear for our lives or anything. We saw Voyager's tenders being loaded back on as we arrived, so those people making a stand ashore may have a disappointing wait.
The ship was docked directly in front of the Fonte Arethusa which is a fresh water spring that made the island so desirable in ancient times. We had a view of it from our balcony. It was a very scenic anchorage. Later after we were on the ship, we saw one of the ship's tenders return to the tender dock ashore, so it was not a pleasant day for the ship's personnel dealing with the locals today. That is too bad if it costs Siracusa future cruise stops. It is a lovely place to spend a half day. The most amazing thing here aside from a whole island of Baroque architecture is the Duomo. It was built over the ruins of the 5th century BC temple of Minerva and incorporates 26 of the original Doric columns. You can see these columns from the outside as well as from the inside of the cathedral. The facade was destroyed along with most of the buildings on the island in an earthquake in 1693 and was rebuilt, again like most of the buildings on the island, in the Baroque style.
The phone rang just before 3pm as Debbie was inside typing this and Clay was pondering our sail away up the coast of Sicily. It was one of the social hostesses, Lisa, requesting our presence at the Captain's table tonight. It is Formal tonight. Debbie consented without consulting Clay. Now Clay is not happy. Debbie plans to miss much of the sail up the coast by napping, now Clay says he will have to too. Oh, well such are the rigors of life on a World Cruise.
The weather turned on us later in the afternoon. The seas were choppy and the visibility was low with misting rain and strong winds. So, the naps turned out to be a better use of our time anyway. You could barely make out the mountains around Taormina. We entered the Straits of Messina around 7pm. It was still a little light out and even with the rain and wind you could see both Messina on Sicily and Reggio di Calabria on Italy on either side of the ship. There was a lot of ferry traffic.
We got dressed up and went to the Constellation Theater for the Captain's Farewell. He was still pretty steamed about the behavior of the port/harbor people today. He said he came very close to getting so angry that he would just bypass the port. He said it would be a very long time before he will return to Siracusa if ever. It did seem to be beyond greed and into the area of stupidity to be so shortsighted in their treatment of Voyager today. Too bad for them.
Dinner was at the Captain's table. We were seated with a couple from Texas that we had met previously and 2 women from Florida that we have had a few meals with one of the women. The other couple from San Francisco we had not met before. It was a good dinner. Debbie was seated at the Captain's right and if he was scrutinizing her picky eating he was polite and did not comment. They both had pasta and beef. Capt. Dag did not order any dessert but he was staring at Debbie's white chocolate cheesecake which was melt-in-your-mouth delicious. She finally asked him if he wanted a bite. He said no he couldn't. She rolled her eyes and handed him the spoon she was not using. Well, he said, maybe one bite. Is it really good? She told him, it will melt in your mouth. He took a big bite and held it with his eyes closed. When he opened them, she asked him, well. He said, yes, it did melt in my mouth, delicious, thank you. The really funny thing this evening involved bakery goods from Siracusa. Apparently, when the Captain went to the Harbor Master's office today to lodge his official complaints about our handling here today, the Harbor Master gave him a big box of finest pastries that Siracusa has to offer. Capt. Dag said he tried some and it was really good, so he saved it to share with the table this evening. Capt. Dag said he gave the box to Patrick to take to the kitchen to be served with petit fours. Capt. Dag asked the waiter serving petit fours to get the cookies from Patrick. The waiter did not return. Mike came out to ask how our meals were and Capt. Dag asked him where are the cookies I sent down to you with Patrick. Mike shrugged, he did not know about any box of pastries. The waiter finally appeared with Patrick, and Patrick told the Captain that the cookies were gone. The Captain could not believe it, Patrick assured him the cookies are gone. No cookies. Debbie asked Patrick, Patrick did you eat all those cookies? Patrick pulled out his jacket and looked down at his stomach in surprise. We all laughed but then Capt. Dag and Mike and Patrick huddled and the Captain was pretty upset that his cookies were gone. He told us about them and how unhappy he was about the "miscommunication." We all told that the desserts off the menu plus petit fours was going to be fine for us all. Patrick came back and promised that he personally was going to go shopping in Sorrento tomorrow and deliver special pastries to everyones' cabins. Mike reminded him that it was Easter week and that it might be a problem. Patrick assured us then that Monte Carlo would be his backup port. OK. It is OK. No one would have even missed them if Captain Dag had not raved about them. He described what Debbie thought was marzipan and cassata cake and we don't love either of those anyway. We visited several bakeries today and while we looked we did not buy, so we are sure that no matter how Capt. Dag was raving about his lost box of pastries that it could not have been as good as that white chocolate cheesecake. Capt. Dag had some cufflinks with nautical signal flags on them. Debbie asked him what the flags spelled. He was embarrassed to tell her that they were a gift from old friends and former passengers years ago and that he wore them for a year before he got out a book and looked up what they spelled...TIFFANY! Very funny. We had a good evening, but it was not over yet!
At 10pm we were to sail past Stromboli. The Capt. called the bridge from the table and they said it had stopped raining and visibility was 8 miles and they could see the eruptions ahead. We went to the cabin and changed to go up to Deck 12. It was 55 degrees F with 80 km/h winds, so it was pretty uncomfortable. Debbie made good use of that big red parka again. Stromboli sent up a plume of flame andsparks just as we came out on Deck 12. It did it again about every 5 to 6 minutes. We had arrived earlier than expected but no one inside the ship knew. We stayed until we had to watch from the back of the ship. We saw one really enormous blast with flaming rocks falling far down the slope as we were sailing away. Stromboli had saved the best for last. It was raining again by the time we got back inside. Tomorrow morning we are expected to anchor off Sorrento at 7am and that will be an early morning now.
Ortygia photos
position at 7:30am: N37 05.55 latitude E15 45.15 longitude
(about 25 miles E of Siracusa, Sicily)
temperature: 66F, 67% humidity, cloudy and windy (85km/h for NW)
distance since FLL: 33,570 miles
It was cool and windy again this morning for Clay's deck walk. Debbie slept in and was glad for the extra hour. We went to a late breakfast again in Compass Rose since we are still not in sight of land. Debbie had a double order of Swedish Pancakes and Clay had blueberry pancakes. Land was visible by the time we finished eating and we headed up to Deck 12 for the sail in to Siracusa's harbor. It is pretty scenic. The old fortified island of Ortygia is right next to us and that is where we have been told that we will tender into, Ortygia. We were at our anchorage by 8:30am. By 9am the Captain came on and his Vords of Visdom were not so philosophical or poetic today. He said he got a call at 11pm last night that the local port authority would not allow Voyager to use our own tenders. Capt. Dag said that by the time he went to bed he had arranged that to allow the local tender's union to make its money they would pay them and still be allowed to use our own tenders in addition to the local ones. By the time we arrived here this morning, it was back to only local tenders could be used. The first local tender arrived at about 9am. Capt. Dag announced that the capacity was 40 people and he did not know how we could get even all the tour-booked people ashore. He said he would continue negoatiating with the locals and handed off to Jamie. Jamie said that he would start handing out tender tickets in front of the Voyager Lounge and that once you came and got a ticket you should be prepared to stay there until you were called, that he would not make shipwide announcements. He apologized for the inconvenience. At 9:30am, Jamie announced that we had finally convinced the locals that they could not provide adequate tendering capacity and they had consented to let us drop our own 2 tenders into the water. Jamie said that we had not yet received permission to start loading any tenders yet and that there about 350 people booked on tours who had to be offloaded before they would begin tendering individuals going ashore independently. They started loading tenders just a few minutes after Jamie's announcement. We are flexible here since we spent a day here before and just planned to wander Ortygia and review the old sights. Clay has almost no memories of the day we spent here in 2000, so it will all be new to him anyway.
The last tender back to the ship is at 1:30pm. We are expected to sail at 2pm. It will be a short day here in any event. We are due to sail past Stromboli volcanoe around 11pm tonight so we are looking forward to that and hope it does something for us. This should also mean that we sail through the Straits of Messina but there have been no announcements about that. Anyway, it should be a nice sail for the rest of day after we depart Siracusa.
We received our interim bill today and they only charged us $140 each for the tour to Petra in Jordan. This is a reduction of $49 each, or $9 less than what we would have paid to just take the plain Petra tour vs. the Concierge Choice tour there. We never received any kind of response regarding that tour after we submitted our written complaint. We assume that this price reduction is the response and not some accounting error.
We got a letter this morning informing us that the Kitchen Cabaret concept has been extended in Latitudes through 4/14. Latitudes will be closed on 4/15 and will reopen on the 16th as a Spanish Bodega. We have a 7pm reservation for Tuesday, the 18th so we will report back on this. We are still skipping the Kitchen Cabaret. We have heard mixed reviews about the entertainment there and not many raves for the menu. Many who have been on the whole time stated they thought it was the weakest offering in Latitudes to date. In any event, we are skipping it so cannot make any first hand reports.
We went down to the Main Atrium after all the tender ticketing had stopped and tenders were just being freely loaded. We wound up on a Voyager tender and were ashore by 10:30am. We docked just across the bridge from the island of Ortygia. The island is only about 1 mile long and a 1/2 mile wide so it is easy walking. The whole island is paved. We looked and did not see any dirt or grass. It is paved with marble and brick and other pavers but the whole thing is covered. It was fairly cool and partly cloudy which made for a pleasant day. We were here before in late summer with glaring sunshine and every surface reflected and it was stunning but not comfortable. Sadly, the Duomo was covered with scaffolding on the front, so we have no pictures. Also, the Palazzo Bellomo museum of art was covered with scaffolding and was closed. We ended up having a nice leisurely strolland then a long leisurely and delicious Sicilian lunch. Clay had misto frito (mixed fried seafood plate) with a Moretti beer and Debbie had pasta alla Norma (tomato sauce with eggplants) and a Sicilian white wine that was not bad.
The good news was that they delayed our departure until 3:30pm or 3pm. The last tender is now scheduled for 2:30pm instead of 1:30pm. One assumes this is because we were delayed by the politics of getting permission to be here at all at the last minute. Sadly, a few greedy Sicilians may have messed up this port in the future for RSSC and Voyager. When we arrived to the tender dock to return there was a long line and people were balking at riding in the local tenders. Apparently, after the ship got unloaded the locals told RSSC that they had to stop running their own tenders. Those people back on the dock were taking a moral and safety stance but they may have had a long wait. We rode in the last 2 seats on the next local tender on the outside benches and it was fine. It was not as safe or convenient as the Voyager tenders but we were not in fear for our lives or anything. We saw Voyager's tenders being loaded back on as we arrived, so those people making a stand ashore may have a disappointing wait.
The ship was docked directly in front of the Fonte Arethusa which is a fresh water spring that made the island so desirable in ancient times. We had a view of it from our balcony. It was a very scenic anchorage. Later after we were on the ship, we saw one of the ship's tenders return to the tender dock ashore, so it was not a pleasant day for the ship's personnel dealing with the locals today. That is too bad if it costs Siracusa future cruise stops. It is a lovely place to spend a half day. The most amazing thing here aside from a whole island of Baroque architecture is the Duomo. It was built over the ruins of the 5th century BC temple of Minerva and incorporates 26 of the original Doric columns. You can see these columns from the outside as well as from the inside of the cathedral. The facade was destroyed along with most of the buildings on the island in an earthquake in 1693 and was rebuilt, again like most of the buildings on the island, in the Baroque style.
The phone rang just before 3pm as Debbie was inside typing this and Clay was pondering our sail away up the coast of Sicily. It was one of the social hostesses, Lisa, requesting our presence at the Captain's table tonight. It is Formal tonight. Debbie consented without consulting Clay. Now Clay is not happy. Debbie plans to miss much of the sail up the coast by napping, now Clay says he will have to too. Oh, well such are the rigors of life on a World Cruise.
The weather turned on us later in the afternoon. The seas were choppy and the visibility was low with misting rain and strong winds. So, the naps turned out to be a better use of our time anyway. You could barely make out the mountains around Taormina. We entered the Straits of Messina around 7pm. It was still a little light out and even with the rain and wind you could see both Messina on Sicily and Reggio di Calabria on Italy on either side of the ship. There was a lot of ferry traffic.
We got dressed up and went to the Constellation Theater for the Captain's Farewell. He was still pretty steamed about the behavior of the port/harbor people today. He said he came very close to getting so angry that he would just bypass the port. He said it would be a very long time before he will return to Siracusa if ever. It did seem to be beyond greed and into the area of stupidity to be so shortsighted in their treatment of Voyager today. Too bad for them.
Dinner was at the Captain's table. We were seated with a couple from Texas that we had met previously and 2 women from Florida that we have had a few meals with one of the women. The other couple from San Francisco we had not met before. It was a good dinner. Debbie was seated at the Captain's right and if he was scrutinizing her picky eating he was polite and did not comment. They both had pasta and beef. Capt. Dag did not order any dessert but he was staring at Debbie's white chocolate cheesecake which was melt-in-your-mouth delicious. She finally asked him if he wanted a bite. He said no he couldn't. She rolled her eyes and handed him the spoon she was not using. Well, he said, maybe one bite. Is it really good? She told him, it will melt in your mouth. He took a big bite and held it with his eyes closed. When he opened them, she asked him, well. He said, yes, it did melt in my mouth, delicious, thank you. The really funny thing this evening involved bakery goods from Siracusa. Apparently, when the Captain went to the Harbor Master's office today to lodge his official complaints about our handling here today, the Harbor Master gave him a big box of finest pastries that Siracusa has to offer. Capt. Dag said he tried some and it was really good, so he saved it to share with the table this evening. Capt. Dag said he gave the box to Patrick to take to the kitchen to be served with petit fours. Capt. Dag asked the waiter serving petit fours to get the cookies from Patrick. The waiter did not return. Mike came out to ask how our meals were and Capt. Dag asked him where are the cookies I sent down to you with Patrick. Mike shrugged, he did not know about any box of pastries. The waiter finally appeared with Patrick, and Patrick told the Captain that the cookies were gone. The Captain could not believe it, Patrick assured him the cookies are gone. No cookies. Debbie asked Patrick, Patrick did you eat all those cookies? Patrick pulled out his jacket and looked down at his stomach in surprise. We all laughed but then Capt. Dag and Mike and Patrick huddled and the Captain was pretty upset that his cookies were gone. He told us about them and how unhappy he was about the "miscommunication." We all told that the desserts off the menu plus petit fours was going to be fine for us all. Patrick came back and promised that he personally was going to go shopping in Sorrento tomorrow and deliver special pastries to everyones' cabins. Mike reminded him that it was Easter week and that it might be a problem. Patrick assured us then that Monte Carlo would be his backup port. OK. It is OK. No one would have even missed them if Captain Dag had not raved about them. He described what Debbie thought was marzipan and cassata cake and we don't love either of those anyway. We visited several bakeries today and while we looked we did not buy, so we are sure that no matter how Capt. Dag was raving about his lost box of pastries that it could not have been as good as that white chocolate cheesecake. Capt. Dag had some cufflinks with nautical signal flags on them. Debbie asked him what the flags spelled. He was embarrassed to tell her that they were a gift from old friends and former passengers years ago and that he wore them for a year before he got out a book and looked up what they spelled...TIFFANY! Very funny. We had a good evening, but it was not over yet!
At 10pm we were to sail past Stromboli. The Capt. called the bridge from the table and they said it had stopped raining and visibility was 8 miles and they could see the eruptions ahead. We went to the cabin and changed to go up to Deck 12. It was 55 degrees F with 80 km/h winds, so it was pretty uncomfortable. Debbie made good use of that big red parka again. Stromboli sent up a plume of flame andsparks just as we came out on Deck 12. It did it again about every 5 to 6 minutes. We had arrived earlier than expected but no one inside the ship knew. We stayed until we had to watch from the back of the ship. We saw one really enormous blast with flaming rocks falling far down the slope as we were sailing away. Stromboli had saved the best for last. It was raining again by the time we got back inside. Tomorrow morning we are expected to anchor off Sorrento at 7am and that will be an early morning now.
Ortygia photos
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