After our morning tour we headed to the Dining room for lunch. Sharon had watermelon gazpacho and grilled chicken breast sandwich in a bun, followed by more coffee ice cream (she forgot to mention that after climbing all of those steps out of the cave, they conveniently located a couple of cafes where we each bought a scoop of ice cream). John had spicy linguini with Andouille sausage and passion fruit mousse in white cake. We were thwarted in many of our attempts to do other shipboard activities. They were out of the daily Sudoku puzzles. And posting our blog took much more time than expected with problematic internet connections. John called his mom and finally connected, was able to say hi when that connection dropped as well. As we were leaving his iPhone showed no ... read more

With some extra time in the morning before our tour would be ready, we had breakfast in the formal dining room, a nice change from the hectic pace of the cafeteria style Lido. Since we were arriving from a non-EU country there was a bit of a formality we had to go thru. Our bus picked us up at the ship and drove us to the port-Authority building. We marched into the North-West side of the building and then out the South-East side, showing our papers (driver’s license and boarding card) to no-one. We were however handed a Duty-Free guide to the various shops in Corfu. On the other side of this “passport control” checkpoint we got back on the bus which had driven around to the other side of the building. Corfu is one of ... read more

It was an early morning after our wonderful tour last night to catch our Venice Sightseeing Tour. We had a quick breakfast in the Lido then headed out on our tour. They used the same water taxis and dock as last night. We then walked over the first 4 bridges from last night then entered the Doges’ Palace. Venice was an Oligarchy that lasted over 1000 years. It was comprised of 300 families of power and wealth. The Doge was selected from these families and had to be over 80 years old so they weren’t around long enough to be threat. The palace was very beautiful especially the painted and gold leafed ceilings even in the Golden Staircase. We saw the rooms where the senate, the accused, the lawyers etc waited to see the Doge. The ... read more

We’re aboard the Nieuw Amsterdam and getting ready for our evening. The bus left the hotel about 11 this morning for the short ride to the ship. There are quite a few ships in port today including the Vision of the Sea and the Queen Victoria. The bus stopped at the luggage area quite a ways from the ship where we had to identify our luggage and turn it into the porters. Then we followed our guide to the check-in area. There was no line for checking in but at 11:45 they hadn’t started boarding yet so we waited in the waiting area for about an hour till they called #10. After the X-Ray and photos it was still quite a walk to the ship. As expected the cabins were not ready so they ushered us ... read more

Time to head out on another cruise but this one is very special since it's our Honeymoon. We had a wonderful wedding day yesterday and are relaxing in Malibu before flying to Venice (via Amsterdam) tomorrow. On Wed morning we'll be boarding the Nieuw Amsterdam for a 12 day cruise from Venice to Barcelona. John has been to several of the cities we'll be visiting but it's Sharon's first trip to this part of Europe. Our ports will include 5 ports in Italy, 1 in Croatia, 3 in Greece and finally Barcelona. We'll update this blog when we can from the ship to let you all know where we've been and the sights we've seen. We'll probably also inlcude how we're doing at Bingo and the Casino as well as our dining experiences and our comments ... read more