After a lazy sea day it was a bit difficult to rise this morning, but we made it up to the Lido anyway as we approached the ancient walled city of Dubrovnik in Croatia. I got myself a bowl of Irish Oatmeal and a banana, and two of their tiny demitasse cups of Swiss muesli each crowned with one raspberry. Sharon waited in line to get her scrambled eggs, potatoes and white toast. The Nieuw Amsterdam is definitely fuller on this leg of the cruise. We’ve been meeting many people at meals that are also on a Collector’s cruise, as we are, who embarked in Venice when we did some two weeks ago. There are still some on board who came before us who lived thru ‘the incident’. We came to dock in direct view of ... read more

We had no trouble finding a place to eat in the Lido this morning. I tracked down the tiny cups of Swiss muesli by the coffee in the cross-section between starboard and port serving sides. I took three and poured them into a single bowl, berries and all. Sharon just got potatoes and toast because the French toast wasn’t cooked the last time she had tried them. Moving through the arrivals terminal we saw the luggage of many of our fellow travelers neatly arranged in color coded groups, ready for collection by departing passengers to clear customs and passport controls. Some of the people leaving the ship here in Venice and who had flights later in the day were joining us on our tour to Murano and Burano. We walked to the floating docking pier for ... read more

We rose again not worrying about any early tours. Sharon went to mass and I worked some on the blog. Later we had breakfast in the Lido: eggs over medium for me with some sausage and far too little potatoes… Sharon had hers scrambled and again was unable to get a lone single piece of crispy bacon. We had to rush off to make our 10AM collector cruise meeting for those 250 or so of us who were continuing on to Barcelona. We received a tag-team presentation from the Destination Specialist Tom and the Excursion Specialist for our upcoming ports of call. Dave gave us the three pieces of information of what we would need to get off the vessel in Venice: 1-Nieuw Amsterdam Room Key Card, 2-Passport and 3-In-Transit Pass Card (that lets us skip ... read more

Another early morning found me needing more sleep after a bit of a restless night in which neither of us seemed to be able to nod off. I made the brilliant decision to don my cargo pants shorts with its many deep pockets, some sealed by Velcro for keeping items secure. I’d wanted to where these out on tour before this, but some of the places, such as Ephesus made this impractical as some religious sites have dress codes that these pants simply wouldn’t meet. I got my shoes on, and then proceeded to put together everything we needed for the day and packing the backpack. I then couldn’t find my small wallet (the one with my room key a little money and a credit card). Then I remembered that it also had Sharon’s room key ... read more

Sharon went to mass after we slept to almost 7:15 AM. I finished up one blog, and still had to write yesterday. I chose to try the Eggs Benedict, which must not be as popular as they are on cruises in Alaska or New England. My experience is that they often have a dedicated Eggs Benedict station with a dozen different types of Eggs Benedict offered. Here in Europe there was no special Eggs Benedict station, just the normal Egg Station. And the eggs weren’t ready, they were cooked to order rather than already there to take out of the hot water. My dish was very good, but there was a bit of a wait. We headed up to the Crow’s Nest to meet our trivia teammates; but, first we were to play our Sudoku Challenge. ... read more