italy

---

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 a break so that you aren’t taken in by all the so called deals. We bought into the wine, this will allow us to drink it in the restaurants (without having to buy by the glass). We attended the seminar on “on-shore” excursions. We already have trips planned in Rome, Athens, Turkey and Egypt. As a result of the seminar we may be rebooking our Egypt tour. We also attended the seminar on shopping, where to shop, items to purchase, who to avoid, how and when to negotiate (just up Noel’s alley, like he likes to shop, god grant me the courage).
We are quickly learning how vast and abundant the food is and we are moving about the ship by stairs only, (or we would be 20 pounds heavier when we left, and their goes Gerrie’s fit as a fiddle resolution). The elevators are off limits.
So far, the cruise has been really smooth, the seas have been calm. Gerrie can’t believe there is no rocking and rolling, it’s like being on land. We haven’t had to get our sea legs, nor get the sea sickness patch, YET.
Tonight we are off to the Grand Pacific Dining Room, sounds impressive, eh, but guess what, it’s free, no surcharge. Tomorrow, we are on our excursion to Rome to see St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City and the escorted trip into the Coliseum and don’t forget shopping.
16th February 2010
We started our day at 3:30 a.m. when a bird hit our sliding glass doors,(I won’t tell you what it means when a bird hits your window). Suffice to say, it freaked me out. We were about 50 miles west of Rome. Noel says we ran into a flock of birds that decided to hitch a ride to the mainland. We then went on to have breaky at 6:00 a.m. after that went to the seminar on our off ship excursion. We were very impressed with how efficient and organized they were. Most people got the picture, but there is always a few bricks in the load that just don’t get it even after the announcer announced it at least six times, there were still the few that walked down to him to ask about their excursion, like dah, hello, you could hear the frustration in the announcer’s voice, we felt sorry for him. Oh, as a side bar issue, it would appear that Gerrie and I are in the upper 5 - 10 percentile of younger people on the ship. In other words, we’re the young pups, younger than we thought and we like that.
We docked at Civitavecchia because Rome does not have a port (for cruise ships). Back to the excursion, we got on the bus proceeded to Rome which took an hour (by Rome time, it is actually 1 ½ hours). The weather was not co-operating today ranging from a drizzle to rain. Our tour guide pointed out to us that in fact the snow that Rome had last Friday was the first since 1986 (global warming my ass). We also heard that Barcelona and Madrid got snow after we left. We arrived at St. Clemente’s Basilica which was built on top of two basilica’s, the last one was 1200 AD and the first one was 80 AD (no photography allowed here). Can you believe that there is over 400 Catholic Churches in the old City of Rome. Population for Rome is approx 3 Million.
We then walked about three blocks to the Roman Colosseum (there had to be over 10,000 people there, even on a day when the weather was the pits) The Colosseum held 70,000 spectators and during the 100 days of ceremonies and games, there was 5,000 animals killed, but there is no record of how many humans died (is that wierd or what, they kept track of the animals but not the humans. I guess back in those days humans (slaves) had no value. We took photos and videos. There were a few scary moments for the tour guides because we were missing a deaf person who managed to separate himself from the tour and was lost amongst the other 10,000 people in the Colosseum. After locating him, we then walked to our Restaurant for lunch, lasagne, salad, veal, dessert and of course vino. Time to move to our next stop, I had to practically carry Gerrie out and according to her, once the bus started moving to our next stop, it was also spinning (no place big enough for Gerrie to ground herself, she looked pretty white - let me tell you the washrooms aren’t anything like we have. Note to self no more vino for Ger before riding the bus. Vroom. All this and it’s only 2:00 p.m.
We’re off to Vatican City (not part of Rome). We toured the plaza and went into St. Peter’s Basilica where you could easily take 400 -500 photos if taking pics of everything. The Basilica is far larger than we ever imagined. The building and it’s contents are a magnificent work of art (took 150 years to build and 300 years to decorate. Tidbit - the highest dome in the Basilica is higher than any building in Rome. We only had ½ hr in the Basilica to take photos then back on the bus for the ride back to the ship. We arrived back on the ship ½ hr before leaving for Athens. Had dinner and saw a show highlighting songs from the 60’s and 70’s (it was great) now we’re eating chocolate and vegging.
The really good news is that they are promising sunshine and sixty-five degrees F which is 15 degrees higher than today. Yipee.
Next update, after we depart Athens.
To use the local terminology Chow for now Baby.......

---