Friday October 26 - Venice II

From the ship on Thursday we took a water taxi to our hotel front door and checked in for a quick nap before venturing out for more time in the city. It was great to be close St Mark's Square and we had some dinner and wandered through the square at night. There were 3 restaurants with musicians playing outside and small crowds moved from one to another as the music rotated from place to place. We were both tired especially after a glass of wine each, so we didn't stay out too late.

On Friday we were up and out early. Mary wanted to spend some time at the museums in the square and I was anxious to walk, so we split up for a few hours. There are no cars, busses or even bicycles allowed in the center of the city, so it's a great place to walk.

I crossed over the Rialto Bridge and wanted to walk as much of the Grand Canal as I could. I did pretty well even though there wasn't a continuous walkway around. I'd come to a dead end and have to double back into small walkways and passages between buildings. There were so many really nice shops I didn't mind the couple of times I got side tracked. I eventually got all the way over to the train station so I felt I had a good look around. It started to rain later in the afternoon and a few of the paths were so narrow my umbrella just about fit.

On the ship's way up to Venice it seemed we went a long way up the Adriatic Sea to get there. I did some quick checking and was surprised to see that Venice is north of Boston, and almost as far north as Montreal.

On Saturday morning we catch a water taxi to the airport, it seems strange to take a boat to catch a plane. We loved everything about Venice and it's now our favorite city of all we've seen. I'll do one last wrap up post when we get home, but thanks for following along with us on our great trip. If you find yourself trying to kill some serious time one day, feel free to check out all my pics from the trip on my Flickr site. Here's the link, and click on the icon that says Mediterranean Cruise.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/19368857@N02/sets/

Wednesday Oct 24, 2010 - Venice

We pulled intoVenice on Wednesday afternoon, exactly on time. It was fun for me watching as we approached the city from sea. The ship sailed right passed St Mark's Plaza on it way to the cruise ship terminal, the weather was clear, cool and perfect.

We took a walking tour around the major sites, St Mark's Square, the Grand Canal, Rialto Bridge and of course a tour of a Venetian Glass factory & outlet. Their glass was really beautiful but with their prices being so outrageous, only a middle east oil sheik or Michael Jackson would buy anything.  We spent our last night onboard the Norwegian Spirit and we both agreed the ship and the whole cruise turned out to be a really special memory.

Thursday morning we left the ship and took a water taxi to our hotel, just a block from St Mark's. The many, many water taxis all looked chaotic at first but it was a pretty efficient (if a bit pricey) way to get around. I'll still reserve judgment until we get off the water taxi that takes us to the airport on Saturday morning. If we get there dry I'll be happy.

Later today (Thursday) we'll take a walk with our camera and see how much of the center city we can cover on foot.

Monday Oct 22, 2012 – Athens

We stopped in Athens for the day and tied up in the port of Pireas, a close 15 minutes from the capital center. We were last here in 1973 when Mary and a group of navy wives came to visit my ship on deployment. We were curious about how much of the city we’d recognize after almost 40 years. There were lots of ships in the harbor including another 8 to 10 cruise ships. The weather was a little cooler, cloudy and in the mid 70’s; perfect for seeing the sights.

Our tour went first to the Acropolis, ancient marble ruins high on a hill, visible from almost anywhere in the city. The most famous of the buildings is the huge Parthenon, erected in the 400’s BC. It turned out the Acropolis is about the only thing we recognized from the city, and it hasn’t changed much in the last 2,500 years.

We climbed up the side of the Acropolis hill, but it started to shower so we didn’t stay long. The worn marble steps leading up were slippery enough even when they were dry. We waited for the rest of the tour crowd to come back down and headed to our next stop, the temple of Poseidon, which was about an hour drive south of the city along the coast line. After we cleared the city limits the coast line view out of the bus window was terrific.

With all the economic problems the Greek people have been facing, we halfway expected the city might be a mess of litter and graffiti. But everything looked very nice, good for them!

Our ship left port around 7:00 PM and went south to clear the Greek mainland, then turned right, passed the heel of Italy’s boot into the Adriatic Sea. We’ll be spending Tuesday at sea heading north in the Adriatic with Italy on our port side and the ex-Yugoslav countries to our starboard. We’ll arrive in Venice (last stop) on Wednesday afternoon and have a night in the city before we debark on Thursday morning. I’ve booked a couple of nights at a city hotel so we can spend a little time exploring Venice before we catch our flight back to Philly on Saturday.

My next post will likely be from the hotel, their internet has to be better than the ship’s. I’ll try to post our travel pictures on my Flickr page before we head home. I’ll let you know when I get that done in case someone wants to take a look.

Sunday Oct 21, 2012 – Izmir, Turkey and Ephesus

I was feeling good about getting out of Istanbul without having to drag a new carpet around with me for the rest of the trip. But yesterday I realized I did take something away from the rug shop, a nasty head cold. But I think we’ve managed through the worst of it.

On Sunday we pulled into Izmir, in Southwest Turkey, an Asian port on the Mediterranean that many people have never heard of; its original name was Smyrna. The city has around 4 million people living in and around it, but the main reason for our stop there was to explore the nearby ancient city of Ephesus.

I can’t say I ever heard of Ephesus before planning our trip, but Mary got excited when she saw it on the itinerary. She’s been reading about it in National Geographic magazines since she was a kid. It was founded around 2,000 BC and was occupied by the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Persians, Romans and more over the centuries.

During the Roman age it had 250,000 people there and it’s thought that St Paul and St John the Apostle both lived and wrote in the city for significant periods of their lives. It’s also believed that the Blessed Mother moved here after the death of Jesus and lived in Ephesus until she died (maybe she started the taxi service for some extra pocket change). After the Roman period, the city was abandoned, covered over by dirt and sand over the years and almost forgotten. Excavations were only started a little more than 100 years ago.

To get there, our tour bus drove south of Izmir about for about an hour, through small farms growing olives, figs, hazel nuts, pistachios and all kinds of fruit including citrus. Around the ancient city gates there were the expected groups of people selling to tourists, looking at the signs around town, some of them seemed to have a sense of humor.

We left Izmir around 7:00 PM headed for Athens the next morning.

Saturday Oct 20, 2012 – Istanbul, Turkey

We entered port at 9:00 AM and tied up at a pier next to the old city part of Istanbul. We parked in the Bosporus Straight that opens into the Black Sea just to our north, and separates Europe from Asia. As we sailed into town we passed about two dozen cargo and tanker ships anchored to the south near the newer commercial part of the city. From where we moored we could see the modern suspension bridge that connects the continents. It was great to be able to sail right into the heart of the city, like we did in Naples.

In addition to being old, Istanbul is a huge city with 15 million people living here. It’s no surprise that car traffic is crazy, but even ferry boat traffic is crazy too. The harbor in old town has mosques end to end at the skyline and ferry boats end to end on the shore line.

We took an all-day tour inside the old city that included a shoes-off walk inside the Blue Mosque, and later to the very old St Sophia Cathedral, built around 530 AD by the Byzantine Emperor, with 10,000 workers. For over 1,000 years it was the largest cathedral in the world; and in 1453 it was converted into a mosque when the Turks conquered the Byzantine city. The Turkish government converted it into a museum in 1934.

On the tour we got to walk through a giant underground reservoir constructed by the emperor in 500 AD that held a 90 day supply of water for the city. The reservoir walls were brick with the roof supported by over 360 columns. Mary was familiar with the place from her reading and was thrilled to get to walk inside.

The tour ended at the Grand Bazaar, a building that houses over 2,000 shops with high end items like jewelry and carpets in the main hall. But the passages became narrow as we walked deeper inside with the goods getting smaller and cheaper.

We were afraid to venture too far into the smaller passages and I’ll have a new recurring nightmare about being abducted by a carpet salesman and bargained to near-death in a dark shop deep inside the bazaar. There would be no escape without the purchase of a $5,000 hand woven wool and silk “art treasure” when all I was looking for was a $2 souvenir lapel pin.

We got back underway at 6:30 and headed south, back through the Dardanelles. Tomorrow we visit the city of Izmir, Turkey and tour more ancient ruins in Ephesus.

Friday Oct 19, 2012 – Mykonos, Greece

We enjoyed yesterday at sea, and caught up on our sleeping, reading and relaxing. Thursday night we sailed into the Greek Islands and Friday morning we docked for half a day in Mykonos. Mary remembers it as a celebrity hot spot when she was a kid and now it still has a pretty old town area with a maze-like area of white shops that seem to get nicer the deeper inside you go. There are villas dotted all over the brown rocky hillsides, and all the villas are colored the same bright white.


It was very windy but the temperature was in the mid 70’s and it’s supposed to stay warm the next few days for us. Mary had some luck shopping and bought a hand stitched white summer top. She needed something cooler because she brought mostly long sleeves for the Ireland part of her trip.

The streets in old town were really narrow and it was easy to get lost. I had a map in my pocket but reading the street names in Greek took more than I could do quickly. I started worrying about getting stuck inside the maze and not being able to find our way out in time for the ship’s departure. We made it out and back in plenty of time, so it was just me over-worrying, again.

Mykonos has lots of friendly pets wandering the narrow streets and we stopped to say hello to more than a half dozen cats and dogs. At a café where we stopped for coffee, a huge pelican decided to lumber his way inside. He didn’t want to leave and had to be picked up and tossed out by our waiter. Mary was already outside waiting for me to pay the bill and she was petting the big guy’s feathers when I walked out. When I wouldn’t let the big bird back inside he started biting on my leg; nothing serious but his beak was sure big. I finally got a picture of our ship on the way back, the ship’s size makes it impossible to get into one shot unless we’re far enough away.

We got underway on time at 2:30 and are sailing for the Dardenells and Istanbul. We’re not sure how much of the narrow straits between Europe and Asia we’ll see in the dark when we get close, but we’re hopeful. On Saturday in Istanbul we start another three straight days of touring, so again hopefully we’re rested up and ready.

Wednesday Oct 17, 2012 – Leaving Naples

 

 We spent the last three days sailing south along the west coast of Italy. Yesterday we pulled into Civitavecchia (the port of Rome) and today we docked in Naples. There must have been ten cruise ships docked yesterday and almost that many again today,but the ports are big and seem to handle the traffic well.


Since we already spent a week in Rome, we took a side trip away from the big crowds on a two hour bus ride to the medieval, hilltop town of Orvieto. The ride through the country side was very nice and when we got to the city, we took a funicolare (passanger tram) to the get to the top of the hill where he town was. From there we hopped a bus to the cathedral, supposedly one of the five finest in all of Italy. We spent a couple of hours walking the town and rested our legs at lunch in a café on one of the small streets. We got back to the ship in plenty of time to catch dinner at one of the better restaurants before the Rome tour crowds arrived back onboard.

Today after we docked in Naples, we took a tour bus to Pompeii to see the excavations of the city destroyed by the eruption of Mt Vesuvius in 79 AD. The city was founded in the 8th century BC and grew to around 20,000 before an earthquake struck and reduced the city to rubble in 62 AD. It was during the reconstruction 17 years later when Vesuvius erupted and doomed the city and remaining inhabitants with a coating of hot ash 20 ft deep. Much of the city is now excavated and tourists like us can wander (and trip over) the stone covered streets to see surprisingly how much remains of the homes and shops. We could easily see in front of us the grooves worn into the paving stones by ancient charriot wheels.

Tonight we got underway around 8:00 PM and sailed passed the Isle of Capri, where the best view was from our stateroom balcony. We round the tip of Italy’s boot early tomorrow morning on our way to the eastern Med. I don’t remember Naples as a pretty place from my navy visit in the 1970’s, but it sure looked great today sailing away just after dark.

Tonight we have a time zone change and spend tomorrrow at sea on our way to Mykonos on Friday. After 3 busy days of touring it’ll be so nice to sleep in tomorrow and enjoy the day relaxing aboard ship.

 

Monday Oct 15, 2012 – Livorno, Italy

We had two terrific days onboard ship, Sunday stopping for a day in Toulon, France. We took it easy and went for a walk around the harbor in the old city. There wasn’t a lot going on but there was a huge open air food market with farmers selling fruit and veggies from the countryside. The area around the old city is a big commercial harbor and it’s also the major Mediterranean port for the French Navy.

On Monday we did an all-day tour from the Italian port city of Livorno. Florence is the closest major city but since we’ve already spent a week there a couple of years ago, we took a side trip to Pisa and the Tuscan walled city of Lucca. It rained most of the day and the umbrella I brought from home gave out, so I bought my second umbrella of the trip.

In Pisa, Mary & I were both surprised how far over the Leaning Tower was really leaning; it didn’t seem safe to me to let people up on top. When looking close we could see that the Cathedral and Baptistery were also leaning, just not as much. We both liked Pisa but thought that Lucca had more interesting things to see.

We love it onboard the ship, it’s comfortable (especially the bed) and the food is great. On Sunday we had a nice steak dinner in one of the better restaurants and tonight we ate at the 24 hour hot buffet when we got back tired and partially wet from touring in the rain all day.

The first language for everything onboard is English and the currency is US dollars, not what I expected from a cruise starting in Spain. The captain mentioned tonight that four passengers who took a private tour missed tonight’s sailing. He said he hoped they had a good camera to take pictures of the ship leaving them behind. They’ll be responsible to make it to the next port on their own to catch up. I like his sense of humor.

The only negative so far has been the internet and phone. Internet connection is by a slow and spotty satellite; some nights I can’t connect at all and other times it’s too spotty to download e-mail or to upload pictures. My I-phone hasn’t been able to get a signal in France or Italy, but Mary’s phone has had better luck if you need to get hold of us by voice or text. My apologies if the blog entries fall behind, and I’ll wait till I’m in a hotel in Venice to post pictures to my Flickr page.

Nite nite all, an early day again tomorrow.

Saturday Oct 13, 2012 – Barcelona

I had a smooth plane ride from Philly to Barcelona, everything was on time even though the plane was full. We landed around 8:30 and I went to the hotel, dropped off my bag and headed into the city to look for my favorite cathederal. I took a taxi to Antonio Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia to see how much progress there was on the construction since our last visit two years ago.

There was a line to buy tickets and walked around to corner to see that it was over two blocks long. I was deciding whether to wait when it started to rain, so I bought a cheap umbrella at a souvineer shop. Since the line to get inside hadn’t moved, I opted for the 40 minute walk back through the city. I wandered back to the main street in the tourist section (la Rambla) where I could get a free shuttle back to the hotel. I got back a little past 1:00 and took a nap until 6:00 when I got some dinner and caught a hop to the airport where I met Mary arriving on her flight from Dublin.

She had a great couple of weeks with her cousins in Ireland and I eagerly listened to family adventure stories until the jet lag caught up to me. Saturday morning we checked out and caught a ride to the cruise ship terminal and climbed onboard the Norwegian Spirit, our home for the next 12 nights.

Barcelona is a major cruise starting and stopping point; it has a huge deep water harbor and there were at least 6 big cruise ships in port when we got to the terminal. We boarded, found our room, unpacked bags and went out to explore the ship. Among all the things to do we found 14 bars and restaurants that will help us with our weight management goals for the next couple of weeks. One of the bars even had a pool table and I told Mary it proved that Mediterranean cruises are always smooth sailing.

It was warm when we left port at 7:00pm so we had dinner outside on deck as we sailed away. We were on our way; our first stop is Sunday morning in Toulon, France.

Fall Trip 2012

This fall I'll be joining Mary in Europe for a cruise out of Barcelona, Spain. Mary is already in Ireland, flying over for a cousin's week with her sister Rosie and (US) cousins Anne and Barbara. Mary stayed an extra few days to visit with her Irish extended family and will catch a hop on Aer Lingus from Dublin to meet me Friday night. My flight is direct from Philadelphia on Thursday night arriving early on Friday, the ship (Norwegian Spirit) leaves port on Saturday afternoon.

The cruise will be for 12 nights and will finish up in Venice where we'll stay a couple of extra nights to explore the city. Stops along the way will be in Toulon, Livorno, Rome, Naples, Istanbul, Ephesus (Turkey), Mykonos (Greese) and Athens. We're excited about seeing new places and some we haven't seen in a long time, like Athens where we visited together in 1973 when I was a young navy Lieutanant on USS Fairfax County.

I'll try to post as often as I can with the blog. The ship's schedule is busy with a new port most every morning and we have tours set up already for all day in most of them. A work friend who took the same cruise last spring said it's a great trip but tiring. I programmed in a few rest days so we'll see how we do.

My old travel laptop is on it's last  voyage, hopefully it can make one last trip and keep us connected while we're away. That's all for now, I have packing to do before Becky takes me to the airport today at 3:00. My flight leaves at 6:20. Love to all ..... I'll be waving as I fly over the city this evening.