europe 2010

1 March 2010 The ride from Casablanca to Agadir was a rocking time (rocking and rolling all night long, but we survived the ride). We arrived in Agidar to a bright, sunny day and decided not to take a shore excursion at this location. Agadir was almost completely destroyed in 1960 by a large devastating earthquake that killed half of the 30,000 people living here. The old Agadir can be seen on the hills, but has been left as a cemetery / memorial to all that have died here. The new Agadir is located south of the old one and is relatively new because of rebuilding that has taken place since the 1960 earthquake. Noel somehow had pictured sand dunes coming right out to the shore, but in actual fact the hills are covered with sparse ... read more

23 February, 2010 Woke up, had breaky, we are still at sea not expecting to arrive at Malta until 11:00 am this morning. Scenery as we are coming into Malta is beautiful, lots of old buildings, large ships, freighters. Noel is taking lots of pics. Ship finally docked at the City of Valletta, which is the capital of Malta. Valletta looked like a fortified City in the past, with lots of forts, palaces and very old buildings. Inside the harbour tucked away in one of the many small inlets, we came across a very futuristic and highly technically advanced sailing ship, maybe it is Malta’s secret weapon, for what I don’t know. We left the ship on foot for our own excursion. We were hassled by about 50 taxi drivers and at least a dozen ... read more

19th Feb, 2010 Today when we arrived in sunny (temp in the 70’s) Izmir, Turkey, just like when we arrived in Greece, we noticed dust that looked like smog, but the locals call it yellow dust, but apparently it comes from Africa and is blown across the Mediterranean. This dust obstructs your long range vision and the landscape looks hazy. From Izmir we made our way to a small town near Ephesus. Our first stop was a carpet weaving store where they make handmade carpets from wool, cotton and the silkworm. They tried to sell us one hand woven silk carpet for $7,000.00, shipped free to our door, sounded a little expensive, however when you consider that it took a year to make and contained 400 double knots per square inch, who are we to say ... read more

15th February 2010. We started our day at 7:00 a.m. with a trip to the Garden Restaurant for breaky. Then Noel was back to the state room to do the finer points on the blog, while Gerrie did bingo. No I couldn’t talk Noel into this adventure, “Just couldn’t do it”, I must be losing my touch. This is our first full day on the ship. We have been running around exploring the ship and have been inundated by special deals/offers/bargains/discounts/and one time deals only like, wine, water, next cruise, jewellery and $91.00 for pop for one person (go figure.) Yeah, I got sucked in for this, Noel is a coffee drinker and he is quite content to have his java fix for the day, at no extra cost. You have to stand back and take ... read more

Testing 123, testing 123.............. The day to depart has arrived. Hopefully everyone on our email list will receive this communication, if you wish to contact us you can do it through this site or send a e-mail to noelc@shaw.ca . We have checked and double checked everything, odds are we are missing something we just don't know it. We will be off to the airport in our limo, actually it we be a Camry driven by Shawn, it's a close second.... We are going to the airport about 4 hours early in the event the the whole Olympic thing has turned the airport into nightmare. I suspect we will get to experience the body scan, that should be fun, sounds like it is much like someone looking at you with x-ray glasses, the alternative is a ... read more