Mood:  rushed

The ship is docking at 4 AM back in Barcelona and there's no stinkin way I am going to be awake for that. But we're up in time to check and see what we packed, and get the luggage we didn't send out last night ready to haul downstairs.

We are late seating dinner so we have one of the later disembarkation breakfasts, which is to no end preferable. Today it's like "Don't let the gangplank hit you on the butt on the way out," they're in such a hurry to turn the ship around.

Last night, Jill surprised us with postcards with their email address, so I took the ones in the stateroom that show Goofy in a contemplative pose on the ship and wrote my email address on it, and Amy added hers, and we handed those out at breakfast. Well, we only had two Goofy postcards, so the last ones at breakfast (sorry, Boise) got an envelope from the in-room stationery.

Noel surprised everybody by hauling out a mostly empty jar of Vegemite and slathering it all over his toast. We missed witnessing this every morning because we don't normally have breakfast with our tablemates. I've had Vegemite in Britain (I think they call it Marmite but it's the same stuff) and it's nasty. Noel says you have to grow up eating it. Hank didn't much like the smell of it, and he's still a kid. He's 14, maybe you have to start younger. This also led to a discussion of the old Men At Work song, "Down Under." I didn't mention that I've got it on my Ipod. I ate two of the smallest pancakes in the world, and diced fruit.

We sat in the Promenade lounge with our suitcases and listened to poor Amy cough her lungs out. Linda and Amanda sat with us. Everyone we've ever met on the cruise seemed to pass by - Buck (Dan) and his family, the Illinois couple from trivia, etc, etc, etc.  Finally they let us off the ship.

We went into the big open room they held us in before the cruise to pick up our luggage, and the place smelled overwhelmingly of fish. I wonder about the folks who are going to be waiting in here pretty soon for them to clean the last vestiges of us out of the ship. Will it smell like fish all day?

Outside, there are a lot of helpful young ladies who point us to a bus that is going to Terminal A in the Barcelona airport. Nobody checks to see if we belong on the bus but we get on anyway. Out in front of the port we see our Aussies being put on a bus, and Robert and his tired-looking family waiting for a cab. So long, farewell, auf wiedersehn, adeiu.

They drive us to the airport, and another young lady gets on the bus and tells us to follow the revolving doors. We are to go into the fifth revolving door to the right to board international flights. That's quite a hike.

The Barcelona terminal is a madhouse. On either side of us there are check-in desks and nobody seems to know which one to use. We start looking for one that is going to Philadelphia. I don't know how I spot it, but it says "Filadelfia" on the monitors. Behind us in line are a bunch of girls who were studying in Barcelona, who say they couldn't find it because they weren't looking for something that started with "F."

A gal with what looks like a laptop in a briefcase checks us in and asks lots of questions about who packed our luggage. We get to the head of the line...and the luggage conveyor breaks down.

Well, they can't move the luggage, so nothing moves. Now we get to wait.

I think it takes something like 45 minutes before they get the thing moving again. Finally we can check in our luggage and get rid of the suitcases. By now, we have to get through security and find our gate.

The security people, we find, are terribly serious about liquids. The woman ahead of us gets pulled over for a bag search because they spot a cosmetic bag in her carryon and want to check for liquids. Amy has to unpack and show them her scissors (little blunt ones). Of course our gate is across the airport.

In order to get to our plane, we have to ride a bus. Barcelona doesn't seem to have gates. Out on the tarmac are lines and lines of planes with ladders. Amy has a wheeled suitcase that now has to get up a ladder to the plane.

So they get everybody in the plane, close the door, and get out of there. We taxi for awhile but don't wait a lot in line like we did in Philadelphia.

Our meal is ravioli and if there are Italians on the plane, I bet they didn't eat it. Saving grace: There's a little Toblerone in the package. There's also a Secret Mousse. I think the secret is that I couldn't figure out from the packaging that it was coffee flavor. Yuck.

Guess what? Only our section of the plane is unable to hear the inflight movie. I wanted to see it, too. I have my Ipod, so I watch about 3 movies on that. The battery dies in the middle of Dr. Strangelove. Keenan Wynn is about to meet the wrath of Coca-Cola, and I like that part. They need better batteries.

I have a two hour layover in Philadelphia. This is worrisome, because upon disembarking one has to walk throughout the entire terminal, go through customs, pick up your luggage, go through customs AGAIN, recheck your luggage, and then find your connection. A good-looking young customs agent asked me if I had food in my bag. He asked where I'd been. He likes cruises. I tell him I have some wine and candy, and with a straight face he says he will have to confiscate it. Ha ha. But he stamps my form and lets me go.

Fortunately it doesn't take long for the luggage although Amy's shows up first, and her layover is longer than mine. When I get mine, we have to walk some more. Then we get to a section where they grab our checked bags and stick them in an exray and we don't see them again. That's it.

Now we get to part ways because I have to go to Terminal C and find my flight, and Amy's is still here in Terminal A. Once again I walk around the airport forever. Then they change the gate on me. More walking.

They put me on the regional jet to Washington and behind me is a child who likes to kick the seat. Fortunately as soon as they get the thing into the air, the kid falls asleep.

I guess all else I can say is that when I got to Washington, so did my luggage. I have heard the horror stories of the DIS people and I don't have one.

Posted by cathlam at 9:20 PM EDT

Updated: Monday, 16 July 2007 9:51 PM EDT

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Mood:  spacey

This is a final sea day. We dock at Barcelona tomorrow morning. The ship hits port (not literally hits it I hope) at 4 AM which is probably when I'll wake up because they'll turn the thrusters on and it will start shaking. We are all supposed to be off the ship by 9 AM. Let's see how that one works.

We had brunch at Palo this morning where I did seven bloody mary shooters and then I had to go and play Scrabble at the Cove Cafe because Amy and I promised Paul the pubmaster that we'd play Scrabble. Of course we were the only ones that showed up. Paul won. I always lose. I got stuck with the V. We got Disney Cruise Line pen sets for showing up and lots of cards for the port side. He also provided us with pastries from the case of pastries they have in the Cove. I ate one. I don't know why. I wasn't supposed to eat anything after going to Palo.

While we are at Palo being shown the brunch offerings by our server, a guy comes in with a young girl. A manager goes up rather smoothly and asks for proof of age for the girl. The guy (most likely her father) says "She looks 18, isn't that good enough?" They were told rather promptly that the girl would have to leave. Dad came back in by himself a bit later...then still later, he was joined by Mom, who didn't eat much herself but carried out a plate for the daughter. I think they should have thrown Dad out and let the kid stay.

Amy decided with the way she was coughing she shouldn't be going on the galley tour so I did it myself. A chef from India took us through the galleys for Lumiere's and Parrot Cay and told us the inside stuff, like they keep the food below decks in big walk-in coolers and bring them up in special elevators. They only stock in Barcelona and Civitavecchia and that's only to supplement; they try to bring everything with them from Barcelona. We got a chocolate chip cookie that I shouldn't have eaten, but it was hot. A hot chocolate chip cookie must be eaten. They have a dishwashing machine that can wash 360 plates in 15 minutes. The chef said the hardest part of the entire thing is clearing out and setting up between dinner seatings.

After that was over I have gotten some stamps to mail postcards in Barcelona and I am due in Diversions to play Wheel of Fortune in awhile. I've been trying to pack since then. I have to take an extra bag.

I did manage to rebook the cruise I signed up for next June. I upgraded from 12 to 11, got about $100 off the price of the cruise, and $100 shipboard credit. So that was worth doing. Makes it more likely I will actually do the 4-night on June 29.

After I spent some time at the internet station trying to make the beginning of this entry, Amy ran off and left me. I went to see if she was in Diversions and she wasn't, so I went back upstairs to use the loo and write postcards. When I went back to Diversions I learned that I had missed the hot dog eating contest on TV. What we watched the other day had been highlights of last year's competition. Joey Chestnut ate 66 hot dogs, plus buns, in 12 minutes, a new world's record for hot dog eating. Paul is endlessly fascinated by the whole thing; he is using a video camera to tape off the television screen. He wants to hold a hot dog eating contest in Diversions. Dita and Claire try to dissuade him by saying that the hot dogs they serve are too big. I think they just don't want to clean up afterward.

Amy wore a scarlet I for being a Scrabble cheat (She isn't really a Scrabble cheat, she just forgot to check the back of a tile and thought it was one of the blank wild card ones, but it was actually an I). Paul tried to stick the paper with the scarlet I on it to her back with a wad of electrical tape, but it fell off.

Claire made me a mojito with vanilla Absolut instead of rum and we picked a team to play Wheel of Fortune. They do this on a big screen with a computer hookup that Natalie of the cruise staff sits in a corner and operates while Paul does MC duty. Our team keeps spinning bankrupts and I think we are considering throwing Natalie overboard. But thanks to a lady who can solve Wheel of Fortune puzzles with only a few letters on the board, we win the second round. We all get medals.

We went to change for dinner and had a little time to kill so we went back to Diversions intending to watch the golf putting contest. This turned into a battle pitting the men against the women, and yes, we had to play. It went on forever. Paul kept score. He refers to me as "Cat" because he can't spell my name (my name isn't worth much in Scrabble). The ship wasn't moving as much as it had in the morning, so it was easier to do putting, but the carpet isn't the best place to play golf and they had this freaky thing the cup was in, so the ball would roll right by the hole just when you thought it would go in.  By the time we left for dinner we had a tie game (2 to 2) and nobody could sink that last putt. Of course we were assured that we'd find out later who won.

Ivan was waiting for us at Parrot Cay and I wonder how long he'd have stood there if we had decided to stay and play golf. We sat with the group and I finally let Kevin taste the Chateau Neuf de Pape because he had been eyeing the bottle enviously ever since I first brought it to dinner. They had pasta arribiata on the menu! It was not as good as Palo, but it was good. There was a lot of shaved parmesan cheese on it. After Palo brunch and extraneous pastry and cookies I had during the day, it was easy to skip dessert because we wanted to get to pub night early. We stayed long enough to watch Noel order his traditional pirate ice cream bar but he shocked everybody by going for baked Alaska.

We were able to hand off our tip envelopes to Ivan and Milan and our tablemates took lots of photos for which I posed with my Chateau Neuf de Pape and there were photos of the ladies at the table with our servers, both young attractive guys. Michelle the head server was nowhere around; she usually stops by for dessert but we were out of there. We held her tip envelope for breakfast.

Amy and I went back to Diversions and got our pick of pub night seats. The other Diversions regulars apparently left dinner early (or maybe their tables and servers are less chatty than ours) and we all sat up front. I had a chocolate martini for dessert. Then I had another one. I should have stuck to one. Two is better than five, though. They're just so freakin GOOD.

Paul let us know that the women had won the golf contest. A lady named Mary had sunk the last putt. I was sorry to have missed it, by the time we left for dinner it was quite a contest. We were given Disney Cruise Line golf towels for playing on the winning team. I can't figure out what you do with a golf towel. Even if you're playing golf I don't know what you need a towel for.

Paul did the intros for pub night (Christian on the piano, cruise staff members Travis and Laura and Trent helping out, and Scott the tech was still hanging around...he is the one who tried his best to make a putt-putt windmill for Amy when she was in the golf contest), so Travis and Laura sang My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean and you had to jump up out of your seat at certain words (we used to do that at the Adventurers Club) and then Paul and Trent sang the beer song. Yes, the beer song from the Adventurers Club. Right now I am waiting for them to do something that hasn't been done at the Adventurers Club.

Paul read a top ten list which I don't even remember (hello martinis) but Amy has it on video. Then the cruise staff performed "If I Were Not Upon The Sea." This is a tradition and it's the funniest thing.

The Starboard side won the card competition. I think Amy and I are the only port regulars anyway. We got smeared.

When Pub Night was over we got hugs from Paul and he demanded a Scrabble rematch someday (if it ever happens I am going to study the dictionary first because I never win the damn game; my job is apparently to set up everybody else's really cool words). We went into Rockin Bar D for a bit. The High Frequency band was playing. They weren't singing anything we wanted to dance to with the college kids. The female singer still has this strange accent. We talked a bit with Trent, still in the silly tennis player costume he wore for the song, who offered us cots behind the bandstand for the next cruise since it was sold out. I think we were sort of partially considering taking him up on that offer.

We went back to the room after that. Didn't seem to be much else to do but finish packing and try to sleep.

Posted by cathlam at 10:05 AM EDT

Updated: Tuesday, 17 July 2007 9:50 PM EDT

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Today we are docked in Villefranche. This port is situated right in between Nice and Monaco on the French Riviera. We're docked here, apparently, because the bay is deeper and our ship is bigger. Of course they can't get the ship all the way into the bay, so it anchors offshore and we have to tender to port.

We are on the Nice and Eze with Wine and Cheese tour. Its meeting place is at Sessions, the piano bar with the really obnoxious purple and green quilted pillars. It looks like the Joker threw up in there. This is the one bar we don't set foot in for the whole cruise, unless they make us meet there for a shore excursion.

Our crew member dispatcher (Dave from Canada) thinks it's really funny to call the excursion "Nice and Easy Wine and Cheesy," probably because the French pronounce it "Neece and Eeeez." He thinks this is really hysterical. What is it with these Canadians anyway? The drunk woman showed up for the excursion, but she's wearing sunglasses indoors.

Dave hands out our Mickey stickers while trying his best to make the tired and hung over appreciate his jokes. Then we have to go down to Deck 1 and board our tender boat.

The boat fills up with other shore excursioners, if that's a word (and if it is I will have to remember it for the next time I play Scrabble because there is an X in it). Linda and Amanda are on the boat. They are going on the Scenic French Riviera excursion, which probably didn't get sent off with jokes. I learn on the tender that the French apparently refer to life jackets as "brassieres" which makes me want to fly Air France just to see the flight attendant get up and say "In the event of a water landing, your seat cushion will serve as a brassiere. Put it on and pull the tab to inflate."

The port is inside an old fortress, which is pretty cool until you figure out that there wasn't any good place to park 8 motorcoaches and they probably had to do a lot of maneuvering to get them inside. We get on our bus and meet our guide, Pierre, and the driver Pino. Great, an Italian driver. Linda and Amanda get on the next bus, a huge aqua blue thing that looks like someone pulled the wings off of a gigantic dragonfly and left it in the road.

Pierre tries to offer the seats in the front to anyone who needs extra help. Nobody takes them. He tries to offer them to anyone who wants a better view. Nobody takes them. He tries again. Amy and I take the seats behind the driver. Some other folks decide to get the ones on the other side. Well, we gave everybody else a chance. Turns out this is the most scenic of our tours, so nyah nyah nyah.

We drive out of the fortress and up a lot of winding roads to Eze. Pierre talks about how all the rich people live here. He must be right, because the houses by the road are really elaborate. They look like museum pieces. Some of them actually look like museums.

Eze is a village on top of a mountain. When they say it's on top of a mountain, they mean it. It has little picturesque narrow winding streets. Pierre gets us off the bus once it's parked and shows us where the restroom is. It's 40 cents to get in, no pay, no pee. This is the first pay toilet I have seen on the trip although I was warned.

We walk to what looks like a main road and then Pierre says we can either follow him up into the village or go and do whatever we want. We go back to the bathroom. It's staffed by two grim-faced women who watch to make sure you put the right amount of money in the bowl, then they say "Merci!" Gosh thanks for paying to indulge in a necessary bodily function. Anyway, the bathroom is clean.

When we get out of there we walk up the mountain to where the group is. They're gathered just below the church. Pierre is talking about the village. It's mostly shops and restaurants. The main restaurant is called Le Chevre d'Or, or the Golden Goat. You have to be a goat to be able to walk up to it. There are only 35 people living in the village and you can tell who they are, because they all have gigantic calves.

We pass a guy using a device that is sort of a motorized hand truck with tank treads on it to bring supplies up the mountain. Actually, with that thing ahead of him, we let him pass us.

We poke around in a couple of shops but the higher you get on the mountain, the higher the prices go. We walked up to the church, then down the other side of the mountain, and encountered a cemetery. How do they get a cemetery into the side of a mountain? Very carefully I guess. But you get a tomb with a view.

We went all the way down the mountain on the other side and looked around in the tourist shops at the bottom where the bus is. I bought a tee shirt that just says French Riviera on it.

When we go to get back on the bus, in pulls the big blue wingless dragonfly and Linda and Amanda get out.  Ships crossing on the side of a mountain.

Our bus leaves Eze and drives back down the mountain, around some more corners, and we get to see Nice. We get to see all of Nice because you can see the whole harbor from up there. We are on our way to a cheese restaurant to have our cheese and wine tasting. Pierre says they don't have anything but cheese. My kind of place, I think.

We drive down to the beach, where we are let off the bus in front of the flower market. This place is wild. They have flowers, but they also sell pretty much everything down there...food, souvenirs, clothing, all kinds of crap. We walk through getting hungrier. Then we turn off and walk down some more side streets, past the House of Pain tattoo parlor. Some obnoxious guy jumps into my shot when I try to take a photo of it, so I deleted him. Ain't digital photography great.

We reach the cheese place. We are hot and hungry and we need wine. Pierre tries the door. It's locked. He knocks...nobody comes. He rings what looks like a bell or intercom or something on the side of the door...nothing. He gets flustered. He pulls out a cellphone and starts making calls.

After about ten minutes of this, a guy comes to the door and lets us in. He has to put out the signs that they leave in front of the restaurant first because they're blocking the way inside. We go downstairs to a stone cellar with art on the walls. At the tables there is a selection of cheese and some wine glasses.

We get sliced baguettes, a white and a red wine (they're great but I can't get them home with the Chateau Neuf de Pape) and try each cheese with the wine. Our tablemates were at our table in Florence. I am getting a kick out of saying "Hello, didn't we lunch in Florence?" I try that in my best Mrs. Thurston Howell III voice.  I don't think they got it.

We've got more cheese than bread and pretty soon I am eating the cheese off the tip of my knife and trying each one with the different wines. Okay, I could do this all day, but we can't stay there that long because they have another tour coming in. Pierre turns us loose in the market. We are supposed to meet outside by the beach road.

Amy and I stopped for gelato. This is not just any gelato. What we ran into was a cornucopia of gelato. This place, which was called Fenocchio (think Pinocchio with a Fen) and was located just down from the cheese place before the streets got back into the market, had gelato you wouldn't believe. They had everything from chocolate and vanilla to rosemary gelato, thyme gelato, avocado gelato and Corona beer gelato. So, conceivably, one could be here in France, eating Italian ice cream made from Mexican beer.

This place called for a double scoop. Amy's was Nutella and cinnamon. Mine was fig and ginger. I would have liked to try the rosemary. Maybe I will have to go back.

We went around the market for awhile. I tried buying a magnet in a store but they were so slow that I put it back and got one from a stall outside where they were a lot quicker and charged a half euro less. The market had marzipan and lots of spices. So far I am liking how this part of France smells.

When the group gets back together, Pierre has to call for the bus because they can't park it on the beach road. We wait and wait for the bus to come back. While we wait we cross to the beach side to get onto the bus more easily. Then we wait some more. We kill the time staying out of the bike lane because the bikes will run right over you, and trying to find topless bathers on the beach. There are a few and they're all little skinny girls.

When the bus comes we jump back in so as not to tie up beach traffic on a glorious weather day, and on the way back they stop the bus on the hills and let us out so we can take panoramic photos of Nice.

When we are driving back to the port, Amy says she won't make it to Monaco. She's too sick and needs to go back to the ship and sleep. She is coughing a lot. I think I will go on to Monaco, I won't be too happy if I came all this way and don't see it.

 So when they finally get the bus parked, she goes to catch the tender, and I check with the cruise people who say they aren't checking in for the 1:30 Monaco tour yet. So I go wait in line for the bathroom.

When the Monaco tour finally gets going, I am the only person on the bus who admits to having been on a morning tour. Our tour guide is Sandrine and the driver's name is Michel. I only remember his name because he either thought he was in the Gran Prix or he was trying to show us exactly how Princess Grace drove off the road on the mountain.

They stop first to let us out of the bus and take panoramic photos, this time of Villefranche harbor and the Magic. Then we get back on the bus and Sandrine talks. She tells us about the principality of Monaco - it's the second smallest independent nation besides the Vatican. They have no taxes, and the native Monagasques get cheap rates on apartments. Most people who live there are French and/or rich. The French get taxed by France. Only the Monagasques (and there aren't that many of them) get off tax-free. Monaco survives on tourism and whatever the casino makes.

Sandrine also wants to impress upon us that Prince Albert II is single. Don't know what that's supposed to mean. I'm no Grace Kelly.

Michel tries his best to drive us into the Mediterranean but he gets us into Monaco. Our first stop is the section called Monaco-Ville, or the Rock. Up there is where the palace is, and the cathedral, and the Oceanographic Museum which had a lot to do with Jacques Cousteau. We are set to meet at the Oceanographic Museum for our tour.

The bus parks in an underground garage and Sandrine leads us up some escalators to the first of the Infamous Monaco Elevators. This will take us up some more floors where there are more escalators. It takes her forever to get everybody into elevators and send them up. She assembles us in front of the museum and I think she managed to find everyone. She tells us that our future meeting point is in front of the museum, so after she turns us loose we need to find our way back here.

We walk past the museum (there is a yellow submarine out front) and on our right is Princess Caroline's white house, Princess Stephanie's yellow house, and the Cousteau family's pink house. On our left is the public gardens. You can visit the public gardens but you must pay to use the restroom. You can't pee for free in Monaco.

Around the corner we find the cathedral and the Hall of Justice. Across from that is a spot for more panoramic viewing of the section called Fontvielle. Past the Hall of Justice is the Prince's castle, which looks oddly like it's made of Lego bricks. There is a white flag flying from the parapet, which Sandrine says means the Prince is in residence. Oh, and did she happen to mention that he's single, too. Nudge nudge wink wink.

She takes us past the palace to get some photos across the harbor of Monte Carlo and La Condemine, then turns us loose. There are a lot of little shops in the area. I manage to walk past one that has tee shirts for 5 euros so I buy one.

I went back to the cathedral and did the walk around to see the graves of Princess Grace and Prince Rainier. Grace gets more flowers.

When that was seen, I took a walk through the gardens and then back past where the princesses and the Cousteaus live. Then I spent some time poking around the public areas at the back of the Oceanographic Museum. These are beautiful. They built the museum pretty much hanging off a cliff. In the water you could see what looked like oceanographic study vessels.

When Sandrine came back she rounded everyone up (not before I had time to buy a Coke because it's hot) and herded us back down to the bus via escalators and elevators. Michel drove us down into the harbor area toward Monte Carlo and threatened to show us the Gran Prix route.

We were let off in the "Grand Prix tunnel" and taken down to ride another elevator. At the top of this one we came out into a garden overlooking some huge yachts moored in a small cove.

To one side is the back of the Hotel de Paris, to the other is the Casino of Monte Carlo. Sandrine says we have tickets to get in. She is going to lead us in, and then she will sit in the bar and drink water until we leave.

When we enter, they take our large bags and cameras and check them. I can't tell what they consider to be a large bag. I just know they take my bag and give me a chit to recover it with. Sandrine hands out blue tickets and we go on into the casino.

The casino is opulent but small. There is a room for table games, a blackjack room, and a slot room. Some men in tuxes are sitting at the tables in the first room. They're the one who look out of place with all the tourists.

I go to the slot room and proceed to lose 5 euros in the machines. Didn't take long. They don't have penny slots or it would have taken me a bit longer.

I looked around a bit, reclaimed my bag, left the casino and took a lot of pictures. Then I went back to the bus.

The last people got to the bus after having won some cash in the casino, good for them. Sandrine talks to us on the way back to Villefranche about France. We hear about how much they pay in taxes and that kind of thing. She even says the birth rate is up in France. That's apparently a big thing there.

When we get to the port Michel has to wait to park the bus in its space because there are lots of other buses in line, but the way he drives he gets it parked in there pretty quick. Then I have to go and catch the tender back to the ship. One boat leaves, and another pulls in and they stuff it with people going back to the Magic.

I think if I had tried to pick a spot to sit on the tender that ensured I would be the last one off the boat, I couldn't have done much better. The Magic was pretty far out in the harbor and it took awhile to get there. Then it took much longer to get the people off the boat. There were so many they had to let them off in groups.

By the time I got up to the room it was too late to go and see When Mickey Dreams in the Walt Disney theater. Amy wasn't up to it anyway. I was up to getting ready for dinner and starting with nachos in the pub because there wasn't any real food on these excursions and I was ready to eat. I had nachos and a Newcastle ale. Everybody wanted to know where Amy was.  She definitely wasn't going to make it down for trivia - of course it was sports trivia. Paul bugged me until I agreed to play. I told him I'd lose anyway, after all, I'm a girl.

I did lose, I only got two football questions right. Somehow the Muppets came up; he couldn't remember Statler and Waldorf. That resulted in this bit of dialogue, recreated to the best of my ability:

Paul: I wish Disney would buy the Muppets.

Me: They already did.

Paul: They did? When did that happen?

Me: A couple of years ago, I guess.

Paul: Well, I wish they'd have the Muppets on the ship.

Me: They already did.

Paul: They did? When?

Me: 2005.

Paul: Are you sure?

Me: Yeah, I saw them, we've got pictures. It was great.

I wasn't going to turn in my sheet but Paul made me, probably because he was jealous that I got to see the Muppets. I think he wanted it for entertainment value. They will probably laugh at it down in the crew quarters. Amy came down later to find out how badly I lost in sports trivia.

I had fish, Chateau Neuf de Pape and half a cheesecake for dinner. The other half got left behind because of the dessert buffet. That was supposed to take place at 11:30. I had a chocolate martini at Diversions in the meantime - only one martini. I heard the drunk woman in the pub the last night had been operating under the influence of five of them.

We ran into the dessert buffet - it was mobbed - took some photos and left. I left with a piece of caramel torte. They had chocolate fountains with fruit and crew members to dip them for you, but you couldn't get close to the fountains, too many people were crowded around. On the stairs we saw a guy who had a plate full of pieces of cake. He must have had about 10 pieces. Wonder how many of those wound up in the hallway for someone to pick up.

Posted by cathlam at 1:00 AM EDT

Updated: Saturday, 21 July 2007 2:16 PM EDT

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Mood:  suave

 Happy 4th of July from France!

Today we have an excursion to Avignon and Chateau Neuf de Pape.

This area of France is having a wind problem. Around here they call it the mistral wind. There are huge whitecaps on the sea. The ship rocked most of the night. I don't mind that. It still wasn't as bad as the first cruise I took when the ship did a lot of rolling and dipping on the last night. I still don't get seasick. I was far more uncomfortable on the Trenhotel.

We get put on a bus with today's tour guide, Dominique. Dominique likes to practically put the microphone in her mouth when she talks. We got the seats we like, in the front just behind the driver, and she was sort of too loud on the microphone. She didn't talk a lot on the drive, spent most of the time chatting with the driver. There was a guy who kept asking her to turn up the air conditioning. I don't think she liked that much.

This was the first excursion where I brought a jacket, we needed it in port. The wind was blowing hard off the sea. By the time we got into the hills we did not need the jackets anymore.

We stopped at a winery. Chateau Neuf de Pape is French for "the new castle of the Pope" and is named for the time they had a bunch of French popes in the 14th century who decided they were going to move the center of the Church to Avignon. One of them apparently decided to make wine. The wine is now famous, and so is Avignon (World War II may have had a little to do with that, too). But for some reason, they haven't had any more French popes.

There are a lot of little wineries in the region and we're going to one of them. They have, of course, a nice store to buy wine and condiments and various supplies. You can buy lavender sachets and herbs de provance, but I will wait until I get to Avignon to buy those. Before we tour the winery we take the all important bathroom break. That takes awhile because it's the typical bathroom with one stall. Then we are introduced to Jean Paul of the winery. He speaks a little English but most of the time Dominique translates for him.

He shows us the rooms with the oak barrels where the wine is aged. The newer oak barrels are made in Iowa. Go figure.

Then we get a taste of a white from 2006 and a red from 2001. Both are wonderful. We look for them in the store. The 2006 white is affordable but the red is 29 euros. I settled for a red from 2004 which was about 10 euros cheaper. My thought is to bring the white back home for my parents (they don't export the white) and drink the red on the ship at dinner. We still don't have a corkscrew. One of us is going to buy one in Avignon.

The couple from Connecticut is on this excursion, too. If they have names I don't think we ever got them. We had a discussion about taking wine home. They were buying a couple of bottles, also.

After everybody buys lots of wine, we go back out and get on the bus and drive into Avignon. There we are supposed to have lunch first and then see the Pope's castle.

We park by the old walls of the city and walk in. There is a theater festival going on in Avignon and all the walls and poles are plastered with posters for fringe theater productions. These are highly amusing. There are some improv groups performing and I am wondering if we will be able to get Amy back onto the bus.

We had lunch in a restaurant that set a group of tables for us in a shaded patio on the side of the restaurant. This was a gorgeous place and the food was teriffic. We had French bread, wonderful herbed olives with fried spring-roll type appetizers, a salad with a terrine (my guess is it was vegetable pate), lamb cassoulet, and a flaky apple pastry. I swear there was a peach in my pastry. Don't know how it got in there. Nobody else had a peach. We sat with the Connecticuts. There was both red and white wine on the table. I preferred the red. There was the ubiquitous water bottle that I was able to refill my plastic bottle from. I still have not had to pay for water on this trip. I've still got half of the big bottle from Sardinia in the room.

After lunch we got to walk through Avignon. We had to climb streets to the cathedral and the pope's palace. This is in a little square. Two different popes had the cathedral and palace built and their tastes are reflected in the differences in what they called the old and new sections. Then we walked down to a square behind the palace where there was a lively bunch of folks walking around, a carousel for the kids, and lots of ATM machines.

Dominique turned us loose in the square. Amy and I walked through it. I bought some silver earrings from a guy who was selling them on the street. I guess they're real. They're silver and that isn't really expensive anyway.

We walked back through the square and a group that was apparently trying to get an audience for their theater presentation was performing in front of the palace. They were all wearing big animal heads and singing and doing a dance. We watched them for awhile; it looked like a low-budget production of the Lion King in which Simba grows up to be a French lounge singer.

Then we bought lavender sachets and some bags of herbs de provence while debating the possible problems of getting them back through customs. I don't think there will be a problem unless we encounter sniffer dogs who like cooking herbs. I finally got a corkscrew, a nice one with wood trim. It's got a big honking knife on it so I won't be able to use it for traveling unless I am checking a bag. I think for the 4 night in June I will check a bag with a nice bottle of 3 Buck Chuck and the corkscrew.

When everyone had gotten back on the bus, there was a couple missing. Nobody knew where they were. Dominique was sort of forced to decide how long she was going to wait for them. Finally someone saw them running for the bus. When they got on, they were hauling Sephora bags. I mean...you almost miss the bus in Avignon because you went to Sephora? That place is only in every mall in the States now. They must have needed makeup really badly.

There were a lot of wind warnings posted on the road on the drive back to the ship. Europe has smaller roads than the US does. They drive these huge buses right up next to guardrails on narrow little bridges. They make me nervous. Fortunately we have had good drivers.

I walked around the ship's deck before going back down to change for dinner. The wind was heavy. Flags were standing straight out. There were some 4th of July decorations by the Goofy pool and they were getting blown around. Someone put up a big American flag in the atrium.

I tried to use my new corkscrew to open the red Chateau Neuf de Pape and broke the cork. It came out, but there was only half of it left.

We got dressed in our pirate shirts and went down to Diversions to hassle Paul about scheduling adult trivia in the middle of late seating dinner. He was thoroughly apologetic. They'd done the scheduling to accommodate the early diners who couldn't do anything before 8. He said if we came back later he'd read us the questions and see if we beat the group. We say we'll be back about 10:30. We'd probably miss the fireworks, but I would personally rather play trivia.

Linda and Amanda came to dinner in full pirate regalia. Noel and Jill had pirate hats. Kurt wore an eye patch and an Australian flag as a do-rag. Amy and I had pirate shirts.  Debbie said she wore black for the occasion. Kevin lusted after my Chateau Neuf de Pape. We talked about the excursions we did. When the photographer came around, Table 56 got our own group photo.

There was a special menu for the 4th of July with a fried chicken platter, but I got the fish. We joined Noel in ordering pirate bars for dessert. You can now say ARRRRRR when Ivan asks for your dessert order, and he knows you want a pirate bar. Hank named them ARRRR On A Stick.

The servers took charge of my wine so I didn't have to bring it back to the room; besides, they had a stopper for it so I didn't have to try and stick the half cork back in there. I went up to the deck to see if I could spot the fireworks. They didn't start on time. I forsook them for Diversions.

Amy got there when I did. Paul was wandering around the room. The guy has the attention span of a swarm of gnats, but he's cute and amusing, so he gets a pass. There was a very drunk young lady there with a guy who it turns out wasn't related to her. She was quite smashed and when we did get to play trivia, she kept loudly interrupting Paul when he tried to read us the questions. She is on our wine and cheese excursion tomorrow. Well, they do say the best thing for a hangover is to drink heavily the next morning.

The trivia questions were extremely difficult. We guessed on a lot of them. It wasn't like we could just fill out the slip within seconds as we did in the first trivia game. A few of our guesses turned out to be right. My main contribution was knowing that Ernest Hemingway once ate raw lion. We got 9 and a half right (half point for knowing only one of the two stars of MASH who were on the show from the beginning) and while that didn't look too good, it excited the heck out of Paul, who said nobody scored that high. He gave us travel mugs.

Then we stayed around and watched the drunk woman try to hold a conversation. She did things like say how many body parts she'd had pierced. That was for some reason so entertaining that I forgot I wanted to go to the Pirates 3 movie.

Posted by cathlam at 12:34 PM EDT

Updated: Saturday, 21 July 2007 2:26 PM EDT

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Mood:  incredulous

Today is our insanely early tour of Rome, starting from the port of Civitavecchia.

This is the first port that isn't worth taking photos of from the ship. It's just a port. Nothing to see here. Move along please.

We have to meet at 7:30 in Animators Palate, the biggest meeting place they stuck us with so far. They seem to have cut down on the number of tours they are giving - some of the ones that were described on the site did not end up in the list of meeting times on the Navigators - but maybe added more space to the tours they kept.

Jumping Back into Eternal Rome was the name of our tour. We got our Mickey sticker from the cruise staff and were taken to a bus. On this longer tour, the tour company gave us an escort for the transportation phase, an energetic young lady named Benedetta (some cruisers immediatly started calling her Bernie).  She got us onto the shuttle bus for the short ride to the train.

Here is the Roma Express, a little train with a few cars and sets of nice red leather seats. However, someone thought it would be really fun to place groups of four seats facing each other. Because it's not much fun to squeeze knees with strangers, Amy and I sat opposite each other at a window (her legs are short, mine are long, it works out) until Benedetta (I can't bring myself to call her Bernie) came and asked us to switch because a family wanted to sit together.

We had to move next to a quiet couple and convinced them to switch to opposite seats because they surely would rather bump knees with each other than with us. Of course we lost our window seat. It's a fervent hope there will be nothing to see until Rome.

There isn't much except for big fields of sunflowers. Oh, and this train had the nicest bathroom I have ever seen on a public transportation vehicle. I could have spent the ride in the bathroom. It even had a light on it so you'd know when it was occupied.

We're quietly watching out the train windows and some travelers are sleeping when Peter Pan LEAPS into the car and does some very loud rooster crowing. He wakes up the kids who don't look thrilled. Then he goes to each and every group of seats and asks where everyone is from and some take photos of him with the kids. One kid asks him if he's coming to Rome with us. I guess he could, but his knees are showing, so he'd never get into St. Peter's.

We don't have kids, so he just asks us where we're from. His stock line is "I fly over there all the time" so I tell him he can't fly over Washington DC, he'll get in trouble. (I almost said they'd shoot him down but I didn't think the kids on the train needed to hear that one. Too bad, I wanted to hear his answer.) He said he flew too fast to get in trouble and moved on to talk to somebody less cynical. After he moves on to the next car we discuss whether or not Peter Pan ought to have a five-o'clock shadow.

Benedetta hands out our Whisper devices. These are different from the ones in Naples. They have a tube with a little earpiece on the end that you have to shove into your ear. Then you shove the other end of the tube into a hole in the front of the device and turn it on. Our guide will have a microphone and we're supposed to be able to hear through the earpiece when it isn't falling out.

Sometime later we pull into St. Peter's station where all you can really see is the dome of the basilica. Then we meet our tour guide, Adelada (this is how she pronounces it, we have no idea how it's spelled). We decide at some point that she reminds us of the Frau in the Austin Powers movies, so we just call her The Frau. She has to be a closet German. She gets us together and tests to see if we can hear her through the little plastic things we all have jammed into our ears.

They put us on a bus. We don't repeat the Olbia bus thing and get a seat that actually has a full window. The Frau points out some sights like Mussolini's office and balcony and something Victor Immanuel built. (Blame the internet on the ship for being sucky because by now I have forgotten most of this stuff). We are driven to the Colosseum.

That isn't the name of the building, but apparently Nero used to live next door when he was emperor, and he had a big-ass statue of himself put up in the square, and that's where the name came from. The actual name of the building is the Flavian Amphitheater.

Outside there is an arch (Arch of Constantine) that the Frau tries to tell us about but everyone is trying to get photos with the gladiators and centurions that Disney has installed in front of the building so they can convince us to pay for pictures. I get a picture with a centurion who decides he's going to get a little grabby and then he wants another photo kissing my hand. Some kid didn't get their photo because this guy was playing up to the ladies. At least he didn't have body odor like the other guy apparently did, we heard the folks on the bus complaining.

The Frau doesn't like this turn of events - what? a deviation in the schedule while photos get taken? and we sort of expect her to start shouting "MACH SCHNELL! WE ARE TOURING!" as she tries to get us all together. Of course we have to be together so that she can work some of that tour guide magic and get us past the line to get in.

This gal should have been wearing a button that said "Want to cut in front of long lines to visit the sights in Rome? Ask me how!"  First she got us all in a bunch and then she got out a little flag on an antenna, posted poor Benedetta at the end of the group, and strode off toward the Colosseum ("Schnell! Mach schnell you tourists!") where she got us somehow into single file and walked us past the lines. People looked at us (a bunch of schleppers in Mickey Mouse stickers) like the Splash Mountain line looks at people with fastpasses.  The Frau parks us at the turnstile and has to go and get a ticket to get us in. She puts us right at the front of the line and tells us not to move while she goes to the ticket window. We are thoroughly intimidated and do as she says.

When she comes back she has the ticket, and she and Benedetta herd us all through the turnstile, and then we get to see the inside of the Colosseum. The floor is gone, and you can see the network of tunnels underneath. They used to keep animals down there for the gladiators to fight. The seats are gone, but you can see where the stairs were. Someone has put up a big metal cross. The Frau says that obviously it wasn't there during Roman times, but was added later to commemmorate the Christians who died there. She says there is a smaller arena nearby where the gladiators would train, and the major bouts were done here.

You can go to the upper level of the Colosseum, but we don't have time for that ("Schnell, mach schnell!") and we walk about halfway around the perimeter and look at the entrance halls, the stairwells, and what used to be the seats for nobles and the Imperial box (maybe Nero could see his statue from there). Then we are herded out and back to the bus.

We drive a short distance through Rome and the Frau gets us all out of the bus again and marches us down a series of streets and we turn around a corner and there is the Trevi fountain. It's an impressive thing, a big wall of white marble with Neptune in the middle and some other figures and the names of a few popes carved into it (lots of stuff in Rome has the names of a few popes on it). Here the Frau actually turned us loose. Amy and I went down to the fountain and pitched a couple of coins in and went to use a restroom in a cafe (it was located in what seemed like an endless cavern under the street) and buy gelato. Mine was baci (chocolate and hazelnuts). That's all the time we had before we met the Frau again. 

She marched us off through the streets of Rome past a lot of intriguing little shops we couldn't stop at ("Mach schnell! Time for shopping later!") and we turned another corner and there was the Pantheon.

The Pantheon is so damn old it looks Greek (everyone knows the Greeks started everything). It has big impressive doors and when you walk in it has tiled marble floors and a really cool dome with a sort of skylight hole in it that is designed to provide the only light.  In one wall is the tomb of Victor Immanuel, that king who liked to build stuff, and there is somebody else on the other wall but I don't remember who it was. Another king, probably.

We looked around and took photos and the Frau gathered us and marched us off and said we would have time for shopping at the Vatican but now we had to get to the bus and go to lunch.

While we were waiting for the bus at a street corner, it started raining. This was the only rain of the trip. When we found the bus we were driven along the Tiber to our lunch destination.

Lunch was antipasti, lasagna, white wine and (frozen) tiramisu. The tiramisu was pretty good, just like the stuff my mom gets from Costco, ha. We sat with a couple from somewhere I don't remember and a family from North Carolina with two little boys, one of which loves to play Star Wars Lego video games. So does my nephew (this kid was about the same age) and we had a discussion of how many levels he could get to. He's not allowed to see all the Star Wars movies. I tried to talk his parents into letting him see the Empire Strikes Back. I plan to show that one to my nephews, I don't think there is anything objectionable in there. Of course I am spending lunch in Rome talking about my favorite Star Wars bounty hunter, but what can you do.

We ate and used the loo and I filled up my water bottle from the stuff they put on the table for us and we went back out to the bus and drove to the Vatican. It remained cloudy and sprinkled for most of the rest of the tour.

We entered on St. Peter's Square and saw where the Pope's residence was, where you went in to see the Sistine Chapel, where they carried out the body of John Paul II, where the Swiss guards stand, the statues of Saints Peter and Paul (the inventors of Mounds and Almond Joy) out in front of the basilica, and then we got into the line to pass the clothes police. The Vatican is very serious about enforcing the shoulders and knees must be covered rule. I didn't see anyone get pulled out.

Then we followed the Frau and her flag around the big honking line to get in. We had to push through everyone who was already there but hey, we were on a SCHEDULE. She wanted to get us all through the metal detector and on our way.

Amy passed the metal detector, and then it was my turn to pass it, and when I got there the security person was interrupted by an American woman with a couple of preteens who said they'd taken away her husband because they had an issue with something he'd had in his bag, and they didn't know where he was or whether or not they could meet up with him, and the security person didn't speak enough English to help, so I waited until they found somebody who could talk to this woman. I guess it held up the Frau's scheduling because she stood and watched us all pass the metal detector. Only when she got us all through could we proceed into the Basilica.

We toured the basilica, which is huge inside. There are many popes buried in the basilica, most of them beneath the building. We visited the tombs of a couple of them who were in the basilica itself. You could take photos of the artwork...the Frau let us know that it wouldn't ruin the paintings if we used flash because they weren't paintings at all...they were mosaics. That's right, all those big intricate artworks in the Basilica are all mosaics. It must have taken forever to put them together.

There was a statue of St. Peter, you were supposed to rub his foot for a blessing. He had no toes left. I guess you not only get blessed, you get everyone else's germs. Maybe the whole blessing thing works. I rubbed the foot and I didn't get sick. Amy didn't, and she got bronchitis.

In a corner is Michaelangelo's Pieta, which is smaller than I thought it would be but a beautiful sculpture. The Frau says that Michaelangelo's work is so important because in an age when nobody really understood what made the body tick, he sculpted human bodies with perfect musculature. He created the dome in the basilica, also. I don't know when he had the time to do all this stuff.

After we left, we got shopping time...in one store. And it mostly carried religious items and expensive artwork. Fortunately the top floor had tourist crap. I have a Rome tee shirt and calendar now. Amy bought a figure of Romulus and Remus and the wolf.

Outside the store we ran into Noel and Jill, our Aussie dinner companions, who were on another tour, and we talked with them until the Frau rounded us up for the bus and we drove back to the train station. Here the Frau left us and Benedetta got us back onto the train and we were really glad to give her back the Whisper things.

We got our window seats this time, accompanied by a man from Taos, New Mexico and his son. No Peter Pan on the return trip, but we got a visit from a gladiator I immediately dubbed "Gluteus Maximus." We didn't get a photo with him; we would have had to get out of our chairs for that and I already had a picture with the ladykiller centurion in front of the Colosseum.

We got back late enough that we didn't have a lot of time to get ready for dinner, so I wore my Rome tee shirt.  I don't have any pictures of dinner. This may be the night I had the turkey. Whichver night it was that we had turkey, Amy and I were harassed by a guy with a puppet bird outside the Walt Disney Theater who told us not to get the chicken for dinner (well, that's what the bird said).

 I feel like we must have done something on the ship tonight, we usually do something on the ship...but the only photo I have is of a towel monkey wearing my sunglasses and a DVC hat. I know we went to the pub because I remember Paul telling us we were crazy to go to Florence, it was a 2 and a half hour ride on a bus. Well, yeah. But it's freakin' FLORENCE. I don't know where he'd suggest that we go instead. I have a 45 minute commute to WORK for goodness' sake.

Posted by cathlam at 9:43 PM EDT

Updated: Saturday, 21 July 2007 3:10 PM EDT

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Mood:  on fire

Today we are docked in Naples.  The ship docks early every morning. I used to like watching the docking procedure when I had a veranda to watch it from...but now I have an inside cabin and can't see squat. We know the ship's docking though, because they turn on the thrusters and the whole thing shakes.

Naples is a big industrial city or so it looks from the ship. We have an excursion called Pompeii and Taste of Sorrento. We get put by our Disney Cruise staff onto a bus with our tour guide, Gino, and Carlo the driver. Gino has a dry sense of humor, uses English words like "etymology" (lots of folks who have English as a first language don't know what that means) and keeps us entertained with a steady stream of mother-in-law jokes (although we can't be entirely sure he's joking). Our driver, Carlo, is a miracle worker. He only hit one sign the whole excursion.

First thing we do is drive out past the outskirts of Naples, right up next to Mount Vesuvius. For those who don't know, that's a volcano. An active volcano. The highway's right next to it. There are buildings up to its slopes. It last erupted in 1944. Gino says that according to the geologists and vulcanologists who keep an eye on such things, there will be about two weeks' warning when it's ready to erupt again. Then everybody in Eruption Zone 1 nearest the volcano will be evacuated, followed by Zone 2 and Zone 3.

As if to puncuate this discussion, we pass by the exit to Pompeii. We're coming back this afternoon to tour it. Gino says we have to stop at the cameo factory. I get the impression he'd rather not but it's on the tour. He says, let's stop now and get it over with. So, we stop.

They have a guy carving a relief of Jesus onto a seashell (cameos are carved on seashells, not rocks or anything like that) and then they try to sell us some stuff. Okay, it's nice stuff, a little too nice, as the plain coral earrings cost about 30 euros. I don't want to know what even the microscopic cameos cost. But hey, the place has a bathroom, so it wasn't a total loss.

We get herded back on the bus and drive through traffic and a few tunnels and then we are in Sorrento. Guess what, it's Saturday. That means all the Italians decide they want to go to Sorrento too and hit the beach. (For Italians, that means go down to the seashore, weave your little car in front of the gigantic tour bus while trying to get a parking place, and sit on a rock because there isn't any sand down there.) They park on either side of the narrow cliffside road and cross the street when they feel like it. It's up to the bus to stop. Carlo doesn't hit any of them, although we can't figure out how.

We get a lot of really nice views of Sorrento and the Bay of Naples and the island of Capri, which is pronounced CAP-ree and not cap-REE. We hear lots of jokes (we think) about Gino trying to get his mother-in-law to jump off the balcony. We get a question from a woman in front of the bus who wants to know why she doesn't see any houses (most people in the area live in apartments which the majority of them own) and then she proceeds to tell her child how lucky he is to have a front and back yard that he never goes out to play in, at least he doesn't have to live in an apartment.

Guess what, when we get into Sorrento (the streets get narrower and the bus gets slung around them pretty quickly; this is where the bus hit a sign) we are going to stop at a place called the Lucky Store. They're Lucky because they're on the tour route. The guy who runs the store sells inlaid wood. We get ushered to the basement where he tries to get us to buy some tables. Amy and I look politely and run for the restroom before all the other women get the same idea.

We get turned loose in Sorrento. Gino says to go down a side street and we will encounter a pedestrian walkway where we won't have to dodge the little cars. If one of those cars hit me, I'd probably put a huge dent in the hood, because you could park one in my cubicle at work. Down in the pedestrian area is all the tourist crap I am out to buy. I get a shirt and some liqueur bottles (I wanted to take home some limoncello, found a guy selling minibottles, for the same price as the touristy bottles I got that and some orange and amaretto to go with it).

Outside a leather store I see a bag I need to have to carry to work. So I went in there and found one to buy with my Visa card. Now I think I have done enough damage in Sorrento and we see if we can walk back. It doesn't take long.

We get back in the bus and taken for lunch at a farm. Once we get there, we have to walk uphill looking for the place. When we find it, it's a working farm. Two ladies named Rosa and Maria show us how to make mozzarella cheese from cow's milk (the best is apparently made from buffalo milk). The show is stolen by a farm dog demanding her cut of cheese samples. She gets her allotted two pieces and leaves.

They seat us in a shaded area and feed us some antipasti and fresh mozzarella. This is great stuff. They have a place where you can buy limoncello, but you can't buy the cheese there. I wonder how it would have lasted being carted around on the bus anyway.

We also get pasta and a jug of red wine. A couple from Connecticut sits with us, plus some other folks including a young crew member from England named Daniel. We discuss England and I drink a lot of the wine.

For dessert we get cake soaked in limoncello and shots of limoncello and lemon cream. The limoncello is strong and the cream is not so strong. On top of the wine it's even stronger.

After eating like that we have to walk down the hill and find the bus. Once we get on, Gino tells us that he and Carlo have had half a jug of wine each which should make the rest of the tour interesting. Everybody laughs but I know we must all be wondering if Carlo has to be drunk to drive the way he does.

Gino hands out the amazing tourist device called a Whisper. This is a walkie talkie type thing you wear on a strap and it has an earpiece that picks up whatever your guide says into a microphone. We have them so we can hear what Gino has to say to us in Pompeii. It means we can wander away from him and still hear him talking. The earpiece is damn uncomfortable though.

We drive back along the same beach road, but since the Italians are now already AT the beach the traffic isn't so bad. Comparatively few of them are providing a moving obstacle course for Carlo the driver, who knows the universal traffic salute to be used when someone cuts you off.

You can't really see Pompeii from the road. You get to the entrance and there are walls of the city, and a bunch of souvenir stands, and a hotel that has a BATHROOM. We got a ticket for a drink or gelato to be picked up at the hotel. I got chocolate gelato, nothing special, but it's good because it's now midday and it's hot out.

When everyone's ready we get led into the city. Our first view is of a theater that is still used for live performances; they still had a poster of Roberto Begnini out front touting a show that had taken place the night before. Next to it is a smaller theater with sharply ascending seating. Some of us climb up the stairs to look over the back wall, where we get a really good view of the ruins behind the theater.

Pompeii was a sizeable Roman city, it encompasses several miles. It used to be seaside, but now it's inland. In 79 AD Vesuvius erupted and buried it in ash. It was the poisonous gas cloud from the eruption that killed most of the inhabitants. It's thought some of them escaped on the sea.

Years later Pompeii was dug out of the ash and provided a picture of life in a Roman town, because pretty much everything had been frozen the way it was at the time of the eruption. There are streets of buildings with narrow openings; Gino says these are residences. Shops have wider openings. We tour a house that belonged to a nobleman or someone with lots of money. Frescoes are still visible on the walls. In the corner of one room there is a glass case with bones in it, but most of the tour people don't see this because you had to be poking your head into all the rooms to run into that.

After the house, we walked uphill to the Forum. Gino says that because there are children on the tour he isn't going to take us to the brothel district. Drat, that would have been worth seeing. The Forum was big, like a town square. Mount Vesuvius looms behind it. Off the Forum is a room where they have two casts of bodies in glass cases. When the ash covered the city, it covered the bodies also, and preserved their outlines.

On the other side of the forum there is what looks like warehouse storage containing artifacts found in Pompeii; racks and racks of urns and vases and bits of pillars and cornices. It looks like the Pompeii Costco. Then they have statues and more body casts. One is of a person who is sitting up with his head in his hands, probaby trying to keep from breathing the gas.

We saw a bakery, with a brick oven, and the mills to which they'd tie an animal and walk it around to grind grain. There's also an intact sign for a wine shop, and a street that was lined with bars (it's okay to show the kids the bars, but not the brothels, I guess).  They kept the wine in big jugs far back in the rooms.

There was a temple to Apollo, which still had an altar and Apollo's statue in it, and part of a statue of his sister, Diana. The temple also still has a working sundial. At the end of the tour, we see where they've started excavation on the temple of Venus. After we walk past that we climb down a lot of stairs to leave the city. This tour was hard work.

We get back on the bus and return to the ship. I walked around the ship to take photos of Naples since we spent all our time on the outskirts and didn't see much of Naples proper. Looks like they've mixed the new in with the old out there.

I have no photos of dinner. I'm sure we had dinner. I have a photo of a turtle made from a towel and a washcloth.

After dinner we were walking down in Beat Street and we ran into Trent, the Australian from the cruise staff. He was putting on a game show. He asked us if we wanted to play. He didn't have a lot of people waiting to play, so we went in. The band High Frequency was playing in there. The female singer has a weird accent.

There ended up being a good number of people for the game. It went like this: Trent stood on the stage and whatever he asked for, your team had to bring him. He said not to take his requests literally, but to use our imaginations. When he asked for something red white and blue, we were at a loss because everyone else was bringing up napkins with the cruise line logo on them and we didn't have one...so finally Amy brought up me, a redhead in a blue shirt and white pants. Trent accepted that. Next he asked to see a tattoo. He got a lot of skin and then Amy went up, knelt on the floor and said "The plane boss, the plane." She got two points for that and impressed the heck out of Trent.

We ended up losing the game because the last requests were always for a man wearing a woman's something or other and we didn't have men. I got back in the game by putting my earring on Trent. The winners got some cruise line backpacks.

Posted by cathlam at 9:12 PM EDT

Updated: Saturday, 21 July 2007 3:21 PM EDT

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Mood:  chillin'

NOTE: The Internet connections on this ship suck rocks. I might run out of time before I finish all the stuff I have to write. On the other hand, I will go yell at Guest Services and see if they'll credit me more minutes. Thus I will start with the shore excursions and work back if I have time.

 Today we are docked at Palermo, Sicily.

We had to meet for our first shore excursion at 8:15 in the Promenade Lounge, and with the way I move damn slowly getting up I think I had enough time to get up to Topsiders and have some Diet Coke and a banana. I met Amy at the lounge and we presented our tickets to get Mickey Mouse stickers. Then they take us off the ship to this large bus.

One Disney crewmember is assigned to each excursion and they lead us off the ship where the native tour guide takes over. Ally from Australia is our crew member. Ileana from Sicily is our tour guide. Fortunately Ileana speaks pretty good English. Our driver is introduced as Chaco. It seems the guides speak English but the drivers don't, so every time the guide says something about the driver, he wonders if they're making fun of him.

We get driven around Palermo for awhile. Almost everyone rides a motorbike and those that have cars behave as if they are riding a motorbike. There aren't any traffic rules here. The cars like to cut right in front of everything. And the little narrow streets aren't made for tour buses. According to the signs on the road, Sicily has an amusement park called Etnaland where you can ride in a coaster vehicle down an erupting volcano. I think DCL needs to start an excursion there. I'd go.

We get a walking tour of the cathedral in Palermo. Ileana tells us all about the patron saint of Palermo, Saint Rosalie. They make a huge deal out of Saint Rosalie. Every July they have her feast day, with processions and fireworks and a lot of food and wine.

Inside the cathedral, there are four marble tombs where they buried some kings. Ileana tells us a story. They opened one of these tombs awhile back and there were three bodies in it - the king, another man and a teenaged girl. They figured out somehow that the man was another king, but they never figured out who the girl was. She said the bodies were tested and they were all from the same general  time period way back when (I guess the Mafia didn't put them in there or anything).

They take us over to a little trattoria where they serve us lunch. We get a fried sardine, some eggplant caponade, a tomato/cheese bruschetta and some olives, plus Sicilian wine and a bottle of water big enough to drown small animals in. Then they take us to the Ballaro Market. It's one of those loud outdoor markets where they sell very fresh food (the fish doesn't smell like fish, yet) but we're in Sicily, so they sell buckets of snails. Live snails. I think the snails know what the deal is, because they're trying to escape, they crawl all down the bucket. But, they're snails. So they don't get far.

We bought some gelato in a bar (in Italy a bar is kind of like a snack shop, they sell all sorts of things). I had chocolate. It was excellent. We are going to take a gelato tour of Italy.

When we met back from the market, we got on the bus ( nobody on our bus bought any swordfish heads or anything thank goodness) and took the long road back to the ship so we could see some more buildings and little tiny streets.

On the ship we have maybe half the day to waste. I spent it at the pool because it was damn hot. Then I had the drink of the day (Sicilian Kiss, southern comfort and orange juice and they love to throw a little grenadine in everything) and watched Finding Nemo on the big movie screen at the Goofy pool.

We had dinner at Palo but to waste time we went to Diversions and ordered drinks and played Ring the Bull with Pubmaster Paul. You had to swing a ring from the ceiling and hook it on the nose of a bull head painted on a board. It's harder than it looks. I got better after I had a drink. Paul can stand beside the board and swing the thing in an arc and get it onto the ring. He has way too much time on his hands. Then we played Giant Jengo with a bunch of college kids. This is just like regular Jengo but with huge blocks of wood. The object of the game is to get Paul to knock the tower down (as opposed to anybody else knocking it down).

I recommend the pasta arrabiata (angry pasta) at Palo and the rose wine and the chocolate souffle.

80s Night in Rockin Bar D tonight. There are maybe 8 people there (including the band) who were alive in the 80s. We didn't stay long.

Posted by cathlam at 1:00 AM EDT

Updated: Saturday, 21 July 2007 3:40 PM EDT

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