My last journal entry was written in FCO waiting to go home. We got off the ship at an ungodly early hour, maybe 6:30 or so, when it was still dark. I had never made contact with the people we were sharing a ride with, but I knew her name and just looked for the driver that was looking for her. We got to the airport in plenty of time and we said our goodbyes to JoAnne, since she was going on a different airline she got off at a different terminal than us. The lines to check in, then go [View Full Entry]

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Our last day. And as it turns out, I think this was our best day. I had hired a driver for the day, Mariano Fiorentino. We were going to tour Pompeii, then drive to Sorrento and the Amalfi coast to Positano. I met people on CruiseCritic to share this trip with also, Sandy and her husband. The day before I had asked them if they were interested in a guide for Pompeii, and they said sure, so I emailed Mariano and asked him to set up a guide for us. We met at Cova Café again and were some of the [View Full Entry]

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Finally! A sea day to rest and recuperate. This itinerary would have been so much better if there was one more sea day, either right before or right after Istanbul. But, there wasn’t so I savored this one day that we had. I slept until 9:30, which isn’t real late, but just enough so I felt more rested. I did the bridge tour with Rick, which he got more out of than I did. The one thing that I realized is sometime during the trip we changed masters of the ship (captains), because this tall dark handsome guy was not the [View Full Entry]

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Today was not good. The government strike was on. I never heard back from my driver, so I had no idea what would happen when we got off the ship. The Acropolis and other tourist sights were open. Our driver, Dennis, did show up to take us to Athens and show us around. But it wasn’t what I thought it would be. I told him we needed to get to an ATM to get Euros, he said we could do it later. We were supposed to go to the Acropolis first, to beat the crowds, but he was afraid of traffic, [View Full Entry]

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I had pre-arranged a tour with EKOL tours of Turkey to take us to the archaeological site of Ephesus. While chatting with people online I met up with someone who wanted to join us to help keep costs down. We met Lianda, Joe, Alice and Alice’s husband at Cova Café and we headed off the ship as soon as the gangway opened, even before it was announced that we could leave the ship. We met our guide Yelda and our driver and headed to Ephesus. It was great being part of such a small tour group. Yelda was a licensed guide [View Full Entry]

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For my birthday, JoAnne gave me a beautiful “evil eye” ornament that she had found at the bazaar the night before, a blue glass ball with the eye on it on four sides, enclosed in a silver casing. We woke up with the intention of catching an early tender to the city. But the tender people thought otherwise. They decided to wait until we were full. Then there was a woman who stood on the bow and waited for her husband, or someone in her group anyway. And they let her. We waited and waited. We finally left and got to [View Full Entry]

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Istanbul! I did not sleep well the night before, convinced that something would go wrong and Istanbul would be a disappointment. It was a gray day as we approached the city, our arrival time scheduled for 1pm. We had been told there was a schedule change and we would be tendering instead of docking, so I hoped that meant we would drop anchor closer to the old part of the city and shorten our trip to the area that most of us passengers would want to visit. Through the mist we could see lines of ships waiting to enter the Bosphorus [View Full Entry]

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I think if someone forced me to choose which island I would go back to of the three we visited, I would say Santorini. It was beautiful. I loved the way the buildings were built up the side and into the side of the cliffs. We took a ship's bus tour, so we got to see a little bit of the island besides Fira and Oia. The tour started with a tender ride to where we met our guide and a bus to take us to our sights. The bus climbed up a road with quite a few switchbacks that I [View Full Entry]

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Rhodes was not what I envisioned a Greek island to look like. We did not have specific plans today, other than to check out old town. Rhodes old town is a walled in medieval city with cobblestone streets and old and restored buildings. And as a typical tourist trap, lots of little shops and cafes. We had a map, but the map had the names in English and the signs on the buildings with the street names were in Greek. So we got lost. But it was ok, because we ended up finding some interesting places. We walked up the stairs [View Full Entry]

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Mykonos was beautiful. It was just what you see in pictures, white washed buildings with blue roofs. What surprised me was that some of the roofs were red. We took photos as we approached the island. We had made no plans for the day, so all we had to do was get off the ship and wander at our own pace. We decided to head to the windmills first. The town was built to confuse pirates with its winding, narrow streets. But it confuses tourists just as much! There was not an obvious direct route, but we managed to get to [View Full Entry]

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