Italy

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Sorry I havnt blogged for afew days. Combinations of random schedules and lack of wifi in some cities has made it abit difficult.
We arrived in Civitavechio afew days ago which is known as the port of Rome, even though its a good hours train ride away. Didnt stop us though, so after an hour on the train we arrived in the centre of Rome. As soon as we walked out of the station we were greated by a sign saying 'welcome to gay pride'. Seeing as one of the techies is gay we decided to go have a look. Hopefully the photo will work of the sign we found, which we all had to have a picture with.
We then started out to find the Colosseum. It took about an hour of walking around the city but eventually we turned a corner and saw it. It isnt as I had pictured it in my head (in a field miles from anywhere, damn you assassains creed!) but was in the middle of a square. Surrounding it were hundreds of souvenior stands and people in gladiator costumes. We looked at the tours inside, but even with discounts it was 24 euros, plus we were not sure how long they would take, so settled for a walk around it, poking our cameras through the barriers to get pictures. The main thing that struck us was 'how on earth did they build this' as it truly is amazing. Nearby are plenty of roman ruins which we took a walk through on our way to a memorial. We then returned to the colosseum then into 'gay street' and slowly back to the train station. The word I would use to describe rome is Beige, as eveything there is either ancient or beige colour. Its still an amazing city though, even with its mental traffic which nearly got us all ran over more times than we can count, aparently red lights mean naff all to the Italians.
After that it was back to the ship, via a McDonalds for a double cheeseburger.
The following day was Naples, I was on In Port Manning (IPM) so had to stay on the ship, but aparently I didnt miss much, apart from the obvious home of Pizza. Ah well, next time I'll get some. The temperature was through the roof so everyone didnt spend too much time on shore. Our lighting engineer even managed to catch norovirus ashore, so as I wright this hes in quarentine and we've all had a play on his light desk. Maybe we're all secret lampies.
Today was Palermo, my knee has been giving me trouble (I twisted it on the running machine) so we didnt go far, just somewhere for more pizza and cocktails. I was cursing myself at one point, for being so far away from everyone and in so much pain, but then got reminded it was a monday morning and instead of being in an office/warehouse etc I was walking around sicily eating pizza in the glorious sun, things could but alot worse. Plus I started my pyro training today.
Once we were back on ship I had to goto the ships doctor and I'm now on steroids and co-codamol which should make the next few days abit blurry. Thankfully tomorrow is a sea day and the day after is only a very short call into Valencia.
As I write this Im sat in my bunk watching family guy, tonight will be another late night as there is a crew party on board.

Life sure is difficult on board here 😉

We will be back in southampton on sunday I think, so everyone can expect phone calls 😊
Peace out everyone!

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