October 12, 2009 We awoke a little late in the morning of our only full day in Rome. Our plan for the day was not well thought out but the first stop was the Roman Forum. We have been before but without a guide and we didn follow all the ruins. Our hotel was perhaps a 15 minute walk away and we covered the ground quickly. The lines were long at the Colosseum but we passed them by to get to the Forum entrance. The audio guides we used had excellent stories and narration but really poor directions and at times [View Full Entry]

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October 11, 2009 Our travel plans to Rome got thrown for a loop as there was a train strike planned for today. Luckily, I was able to secure a last minute seat on the Princess bus to the city center for Judy and me. We said good bye to all our new friends and boarded our bus for the 100 minute ride into town. Traffic was very light probably due to it being Sunday and we got to the train station in no time at all. After a short taxi ride, we were at the Hotel Raffaello. Our good luck continued [View Full Entry]

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October 10, 2009 After two days of not having to wake up at a specific time, it was difficult for Judy and I to make it down to the tender at 715 to head to Sorrento. The ship used their own lifeboats this time and they can surprisingly get 103 passengers in just one of them. We were over to the mainland in no time and met up with our guide Antonio. This is the one and only shore excursion we purchased through the ship. We only did it because we did not want to get stranded over on Capri because [View Full Entry]

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October 8-9, 2009 We needed these next two days at sea to recover from Egypt. Our only goal was to get some laundry done but we learned our lesson from trying to do it ourselves last week. The ship was offering a laundry special for $20 all you can stuff into their paper laundry bag. Sure it is pricey but all our dirty clothes fit in there and we didn't need to spend 2 hours in the launderette and hang all clothes all over our cabin to dry them out. On the second day at sea, we went to alert red. [View Full Entry]

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October 7, 2009 Breakfast in Egypt was a little more mainstream with pancakes and eggs. Dalia and Kamel met us as agreed at 8 a.m. for the short ride to Giza and the pyramids. There are three main pyramids here and six smaller ones for the wives. We arrived early enough to beat most of the tour buses and get the overlook mostly to ourselves for the classic pyramid pictures. Dalia posed us in several ways and shot a bunch of pictures. She then lead us to one of the camel owners and negotiated a ride for us and more pictures. [View Full Entry]

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October 6, 2009 We arrived in the early morning in Port Said at the entrance to the Suez Canal. Judy and I fought our way through the street vendors in the port to find our tour guide, Dalia, holding our name on a sign. She was a young women in her early 30s who spoke very good English and was quite knowledgeable about her country and its history. She lead us over to our van where we met our driver Kamel. He spoke no English and took directions from Dalia, which it didn't appeared to us he enjoyed. Women in Egypt [View Full Entry]

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October 5, 2009 Everyone was up and ready to go from breakfast at the appointed time. Breakfast can be a little strange in foreign lands and Israel did not disappoint. They offered some strange breads with packaged spreads with Hebrew labels that we had no idea what they were. They had some strange fruits as well and when we asked were told told they were melons. Not much help there. Anyway, we filled up on anything familiar and loaded up in the van for our trip into the desert. It only took us about 5 to 10 minutes to leave the [View Full Entry]

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October 4, 2009 We gained an extra hour of sleep last night as either Israel does not observe daylight savings or they set their clocks back last night. Either way, we were up in plenty of time to have a sit down breakfast and find our tour car with time to spare. Gill, our tour guide from Avitours, is in his 50s, served in the army in a special forces group like the green berets, is a part time volunteer police officer and is now a full time tour guide. He's a stocky guy with a beard and what we would [View Full Entry]

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October 3, 2009 Today is a day at sea for us as we sail to Israel. Judy and I did our laundry this morning on the ship. Four washing machines for 800 passengers doesn't work well. The laundry room does not open until 8 a.m. but I showed up 30 minutes early and still was second in line. THe attendant opened the room a little early and we all grabbed the machines and got started. One lady came in at 8 a.m. and got upset because it opened a little early and no machines were available. Then we discovered one of [View Full Entry]

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October 2, 2009 Fortunately in Kusadasi Turkey, the cruise ships can dock without tendering. This makes it much easier to get off the ship and starting doing stuff. We easily found our guide from Trans Balkan Tours for a day long tour of the nearby sights. Our driver, Hassein, showed up with a nice mid sized car and the four of us took off for the home of the VIrgin Mary. Although still contested today, most believe that the Virgin Mary lived about 15 km away from the town up in the hills at this small rock house. It had fallen [View Full Entry]

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