So, out of necessity we picked our first hotel in Lisbon on the basis of in-suite laundry. NO ONE PANIC, it was still a nice hotel. After a couple weeks without laundry, it was very welcome. We spent our first night in the hotel doing a load an hour and hanging it from every possible chair, table and balcony thing we could. The next day we grabbed some breakfast and headed for Cascais, a nearby beach town. It was quite nice, although the walking was slow due to some “dodgy tummyness”. I went for a quick swim in the ocean and [View Full Entry]

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That would be us. Or at least that's what we feel like. Days in the sun and 'terme' at Fonteverde made our brains mush I think. We opted to skip Prague this trip so that it wouldn't be so rushed but we had to get to Budapest as we had pre-purchased our flight to Portugal from there. We booked on an overnight train from Venice to Budapest as it was loads cheaper than flying and this part of our trip had never been minutely planned. So we drove back to Venice and found ourselvse waiting on the platform Friday night for [View Full Entry]

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There are occasions in life where you find yourself in surreal situations. I think our spa classifies for this category. We arrived at our hotel and couldn't get through the secure gate without buzzing reception, HMMM. The hotel is stunning with amazing views. We went for dinner at the hotel and had the most amazing appetizers and good wine, the mains were a bit of a letdown. We spent some time trying out all 4 of the different pools: 3 volcanic thermal pools and one standard temp. The people in the hotel all seem quite wealthy and keep to themselves. There [View Full Entry]

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Despite the beauty of the natural thermal waters at our doorstop, we did feel the need to venture out around Tuscany. On the verge of losing our newly acquired skills, Sunday took us on a search of the Lamborghini Golf Course, which was the closest one to our hotel. The hotel said it was 30 minutes away (and it could be if you know where you’re going and drive like an Italian) but for us it took us about an hour. We went searching for food on our way but it was past 3pm by the time we got to Panicale, [View Full Entry]

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The cruise has been an eclectic mix of music. The Latin band unfortunately didn’t stick to just Latin music. They sang all the greatest English soft rock hits as well but with a Spanish lisp and accent. As I write this the muzak playing is “I keep holding on”. Which brings me to the stage shows. The first night we saw a guy called Dominik Allen who was a part of Foreigner at one time. He came fresh from his Vegas show, VOCAL SOUP. Long rocker hair, skinny jeans, I’m thinking washed up ex or current drug addict. I was wrong. [View Full Entry]

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Most of you know we’re snobs about certain things and food is one of them. It was lovely to have lots of food available on the ship and to be able to make up your own plate for any meal you want. It’s just too bad that cruise food (at least on our cruise) is not that great. Now I know a few of you have cruised before and probably love the food, but to us, after our last 8 weeks in Australia & Italy eating AMAZING food (not to mention the last 5 years eating European-style food and portions), we [View Full Entry]

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1. You can wear Royal Caribbean keychains as earrings for that time when you want a big white and blue plastic accessory to compliment your outfit. 2. You can wear a string bikini when you’re in your 80s. You won’t look good but you can wear it. 3. Don’t ever tell people you wish your wife of 4 days had less attitude in front of a theatre full of people. The rest of us will laugh and laugh and laugh. 4. Re: getting burnt. Response we heard someone say to a friend warning her that she’s burnt: “I don’t burn because [View Full Entry]

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We’ve written our cruise blogs all at the same time on our last day at sea and we would like to end them on a nice note as our first 4 blogs are possibly more negative than positive and we are indeed having a great time. Cruising has been a learning experience for us and we have met some really nice people. We have to mention another Canadian couple we’ve hung out with quite a bit: Peter and Sheena. We’ve had great fun with them critiquing the ship’s entertainment and playing the silly games (what happens at Quest stays at Quest). [View Full Entry]

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We got off the cruise ship at 7:15am on the dot, 5 minutes before our last available time. Turns out they're very strict if you want to take your own luggage off and not wait for yours and a thousand other bags. Thank goodness we were able to book an automatic car for our time in Italy as at least we had a way to get to wherever we were going...which we didn't know. But at least we could get there. We drove to Tuscany as we knew we wanted to go there. Ended up in a town called Pistoia, West [View Full Entry]

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This is not about the actual cheese they serve on board as it’s pretty crap. This blog is about the pure cheesiness of cruising. First of all, I must share that Shane and I have come to a realization that cruising is not travelling. Everything is far too easy here. Everything is done for you and you cattle queue with hundreds of other people for it all and there is no chance of getting lost or not knowing what to do—it’s all pre-arranged and sorted. We’re not saying cruising is a bad thing at all, we’ve actually been having a great [View Full Entry]

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