Venezia Part Due

Venezia...Parte Due

Gabe and I awoke to sunshine this morning! Rejoice! Gone were the stormy clouds and cold winds of yesterday's Venice. Today it was all about sunny, romantic and beautiful Venice.

We were off the ship by 8:00 a.m. and took the vaparetto to Murano, a small island known for its glass-making factories. At 8:30 in the morning, the island was completely empty and peaceful. Few shops were open, but it was so nice to be away from the crowds. After Murano, we took the vaparetto to Burano, the most colorful of Venice's lagoon islands. The island was once a prosperous shipping village (and had the most sought-after lace in Europe), and the houses were painted brightly so fishermen could find their way home again. It was quiet as well, and had only a few visitors. We walked around over an hour and paid one Euro each to use the "water closet." If we'd had more time, we would have taken a separate ferry over to the island of Torcello, home to a cathedral dating to 639 A.D. (there is a throne there that was used by Attila the Hun and relics of St. Heliodorus, whoever that was)...I hear that NO ONE goes there, or even knows it exists, so it would have been interesting to visit. Oh, and there are stray cats and dogs everywhere, and it is SO HARD not to stop and pet them...I don't need rabies.

After our stop in Burano, we took the vaporetto to Lido, where we wanted to get off once again...one side faces Venice and the other faces the Adriatic Sea. The sea side has sandy beaches and a ton of tony homes. We were worried about getting back to the ship in time, though, so we took a few pictures from our double-decker vaporetto. The ride back into Venice, past Piazza San Marco and through the Grand Canal was so much prettier today than yesterday...we were really happy the weather turned out so nice. Then, as we left Venice, we got to see everything again onboard the ship...at that point, we were several stories high so we were basically looking down on the city. It's a great way to enter and leave port.

Tomorrow...we head to Dubrovnik!

Gabe wants me to point out that, despite his bitter attitude about yesterday's rains, he did find a great store selling silk ties from Milan. He's already planning an outing to their sister store in Florence.
-Jenny

Buona Sera from Venezia!

Buona Sera from Venezia!,
It's Friday night and Jenny and I are here in our ship docked in Venice. We arrived early today at around 11am into the Venice area. We first came through the series of Dams they are building to help with height of the water around venice and to help prevent further floodings. We then came across all of Venice along our starboard side, including St. Mark's square, and the Campanile, before coming into to dock just west of that area.

Yesterday was a sea day and we slept in until 11am. We had partied the previous night with our new cruise friends until about 1:30 am. Then we all ended up getting together again last night and hung out and partied until 2:30 am. It was a great time, but I think Jenny and I laugh at ourselves given that I'm certain it's been a couple years since we were up that late. But time flies when you're having fun. And with these new cruise friends, time always seems to fly. We continue to add to our group of "couples" including Tony and Kat, which we met last night, along with everyone else we continue to hang out with (see previous post). In addition our cruise critic friends always say hi to us and we keep bumping into them wherever we're at... at the buffet line, or in Venice, or on the way to the vaporetto, or whatever. It makes this trip that much more fun... we know people all over the place. It's like one giant family....

Ok sorry I went off on a tangent but had to give you an update on our first day at sea. Now back to Venice Day 1 (as we are docked here today and tomorrow). The weather called for showers.. and showers we got. 7 or 8 of us couples gathered shortly after the ship had docked and went on down to proceed to get the shuttle bus from the ship to the area where we can get the water taxis that take you down the canal and to places like St. Marks square. When we got down to Deck 0 to leave the gangway, we saw the large line for getting on the shuttle bus, so we decided to hike it over to the area where you get on these vaporettos (water taxis). It continued to rain and was blowing, making it more cold and chilly. I reminded my of one of those cold octobers in Chicago or in Columbus, when it would rain and it was cold. Everyone had their umbrellas and it made navigating around Venice difficult. Within minutes of all 8 couples getting their vaporetto passes for the next 24 hours, all of us were split up doing our own thing, as we had all planned on doing.

Venice was busy, we were the only ship in port today and we kept them pretty busy there along the canal and other parts. I took about 300 photos today. Venice was cool and getting lost in the little streets was very very cool. The only thing we could have done without was this heavy rain and windy weather. We got drenched, but luckily got to explore the cute little towns, the st. marks square, the campanile, the rialto bridge and the bridge of sighs...

Ok well all of us, including Jenny and I are very tired tonight, mostly due in part to the rainy weather we all received today. That can really take it out of you. So many of us are retiring early to bed tonight ( I dont think 11:15 pm is necessarily early), instead of meeting up tonight to party as originally had been planned. I know Jenny and I are planning on getting up early tomorrow and using our 24 hour vaporetto passes to get out to the islands of Murano, Burano and Lido. We will then set sail for dubrovnik croatia at 3pm ship's time. So look for an update tomorrow. I know many of us on this ship are hoping for much much better weather tomorrow.

Ok Good Night!,
Ciao!
Gabe

Greetings from somewhere in the Med.

Good Afternoon from the Med!!

Jenny and I are taking a quick break from our first "Day at Sea"-meaning, no ports are being visited today. The last time I typed about our upcoming day long amalfi coast tour. Well we did it yesterday and it was a blast. Adriano with "Drive Amalfi" tours picked us up bright and early. It was Jenny and I, along with other cruise critic couples I had been chatting with: Debbie and Brent from Utah, Kelly and Kim from Houston and Diane and Tal from I think it's Oxford Florida (just south of Ocala, but north of Tampa-is what they said). We got to visit Pompeii and that was really cool. Our Pompeii guide, Roberta, was there waiting with us by the time we got there with Adriano. She took us to see some of the more interesting highlights of the ancient town, such as the public baths and the brothel. It was very neat. I took tons of photos as always. Jenny was petting stray dogs that seem to linger around acropolis, and I immediately told her to disinfect her hands with the hand sanitizer we brought.

After 2.5 hours in Pompeii (where one could easily spend a day there), we headed onto the amalfi coast. We drove through sorrento, and saw the beautiful coastline, then we headed to Positano, which is the little town most people see in the postcards hugging the mediterranean. It was very cool to see the town and photograph it. After we saw Positano, we headed onto Amalfi, but not prior to stopping at a roadside photographic point where we all took photos and also checked out the little fruit and vegetable stand, where the group purchased some bruschetta mixes, and where Kim purchased one of those giant (larger than grapefruit) sized lemons, and had the vendor cut it up for us in slices to eat. It was very cool, because all along we could see the giant tour buses with carnival tours meandering their way through the small cliffside roads, but we were a minivan of just 8 and adriano kept educating us about the region, while cutting jokes about how many points he could get for hitting someone, and how many more he could get for hitting a fat person.

Ok back to the tour, so from the cliffside fruit stand, we continued on into Amalfi, where when we reached the bottom central square we saw tons of motorcoach busses, signalling an instant tourist trap. Adriano was so kind to give us a drive around the square, then we hit it onto the Ristorante San Giovanni further up in the hills high above amalfi. It was so cool, because the road we took doesn't allow for the motorcoach buses, so we went to an exclusive place for lunch. Adriano called ahead and had the "mama" of the ristorante begin preparing a hearty lunch for us with appetizer samplers of italian dishes of the regions, plenty of wine (red and white), and yummy italian main courses. All of this in a little village overlooking amalfi and the med as well as the nearby mountains. Our seating area was like a giant suspended patio room with views that were amazing. I took plenty of photos. We all sat at one table, and after the main course, got to go into the restaurant kitchen and watch them make our dessert. Then we got dessert, and three bottles of limoncello (Melon, regular and Fennel- which tasted like licorice) to drink there while enjoying the view. You can imagine with the wine, food, and the limoncello, we felt very exclusive and vip there. Also aside from us, there were no other people there, but one guy, who kept writing. Later Adriano would tell us he was a writer from Philadelphia who comes out there to write each year. So we basically had the restaurant to ourselves. No tourist trap or anything like that.

Upon completing lunch, Adriano took us further up the mountain to Ravello. What a cute little hidden gem high up in the mountains. There we walked around for about 20 minutes and looked at their pottery. Again, no motorcoach buses, just cars from england, austria, germany, etc. whom knew about the place or had stumbled upon it. Again I took many photos.

We continued on with the trip heading back to naples by crossing the mountain range we had earlier circled to get to the coast. Adriano got us back safely and was an awesome tour guide. Next time in the Naples area, I'd recommend him in a heartbeat.

Once we got back to the ship, Jenny and I were stuffed and therefore didn't go to the normal dinner sitting, we instead napped (as we had awakened at nearly 6am to get ready for this trip) and then later in the evening picked up something in the buffet area and proceeded to head to tv theme song trivia. Jenny treats these things very seriously. Well need it be said that Jenny won? Yep another plastic cruise ship trophy for our trophy collection back at home.

After this, we met up with Theresa and Ryan, another couple from the Orlando area we had met through our cruise critic roll call and we compared our dog spoiling stories and chatted it up about the Orlando area and what we do. Theresa and Ryan are close to our ages as are Sweta and Samir (another couple from cruise critic that is close to our age, and from Columbus). We all got together outside the disco dance club for drinks, and our group grew from the 6 of us to another 4 additional couples: Paul and Theresa (cousins we met through cruise critic from long island and brooklyn respectively, Joe and Emmy (a couple samir and sweta met on their capri excursion just yesterday) from the southern california area, Chris and Nina (4 day old newlyweds from Philadelphia that theresa and ryan met on their excursion). We all chatted it up late until the night and were the happening group. We even had the shady david blaine magician type guy come by and do his card tricks which rocked. All of us were in the same general age range, so it was cool to hang out.

Today, everyone onboard is pretty much lounging, or doing laundry and ironing shirts as we speak. It's a "Day at Sea" as I mentioned above and its now 2:45 pm on the ship and we're all getting ready for Formal night tonight. In addition, our cruise critic group has a second meet and greet in about 45 minutes, with the cruise director and his wife joining us. Jenny might head out to do trivia at 4pm as its on the lido deck and it's movie trivia. So I'd type more but there won't be more until we get to venice tomorrow beginning at about 11am, This port is the one I let Jenny have free reign on and therefore didn't plan anything out for it, other than a 24 hour water taxi pass.

Ok thats all for now. Rest assured, I had another busy day yesterday of photographs, taking nearly 400 of them all in high res.
Ok Ciao to all of you from somewhere in the mediterranean enroute to Venice,
-Gabe

BuonGiorno From Carnival Freedom

Good Morning From Naples!,
Hey everyone, I'm typing this first on one of Jenny's Macbook applications. Then I'll copy and paste this into our blog, as Carnival charges you for internet usage vs. us getting the free wi-fi, as we did in Rome.

As I speak, the cabin is slighly shaking, very minimal, as the aft thrusters of the ship are helping to turn the ship to position it correctly here in Naples. We woke up at 5:45 AM as we have an 8am meeting for a full day tour over to Pompeii, and many of the towns along "La Costa Amalfitana" (The Amalfi Coast). We're not doing Capri on this cruise. But the cruise director said, several movie stars are there right now, as the Cannes Film Festival is about 2 weeks away. He mentioned, George Clooney, Beyonce, Gwen Stefani, and Jude Law to name a few actors currently on the small island. Capri is not far from Naples here and some of the cruise tours will go there.

Yesterday was a fun day, we packed our bags and joined several of the cruise critic people I had been chatting with to get our transfer from Rome to Civitavecchia. The countryside was fun. Diana, Stefano's counterpart from Rome Cabs, drove us and she was a very fun character. Also we, along with many other people were getting out to the country yesterday as it was a national holiday here. Also we found out that over 70% of the ship's passengers flew in yesterday. That has to suck for them with all the jetlag. But for us, it was perfect. Embarkation here, was sooo much easier than even in Miami, which I found interesting.

Jenny and I put up my cruise critic door sign yesterday on our cabin door. I made this sign earlier this year and emailed it to a couple people on our cruise critic roll call and I've seen my sign on a couple other doors. It's funny.

Around 5pm, Jenny and I went up to the Aft Bar on Lido Deck (Steve and Jan-thanks for the drink coupons!!) so that I could meet up for our first cruise critic meet and greet. Jenny got to share her experiences with other spouses of cruise critic folks to discuss how they don't understand how the whole cruise critic thing works and how everyone can remember names. It was really cool to put faces with the names of everyone. We quickly had a group of over 50 or so in the bar there, that the bartender had one of his helpers, come outside the bar, and just tend to us. I know on our second meet and greet, scheduled for tomorrow, the Cruise director is coming with his wife.

Ok well I can type a bunch here, but I know Jenny and I need to get breakfast as we're supposed to meet our private driver Salvatore, from Drive Amalfi, for our big tour with three other cruise critic couples. 2 of which, we did the full day rome tour with: Brent and Debbie from Utah, and Kelly and Kim from Houston- both fun couples.

Jenny and I are loving this trip so much as everything we see and do is all new. And rest assured, although I'm not posting any photos, I'm taking many many photos. I think I'm averaging about 300 high res photos each day, as there are so many ancient, and pretty things out here. Also we have to get the occasional Gabe and Jenny standard self portrait.

Ciao! - Gabe

Rome: A Nine-Hour Tour

Today we went on a 9-hour driving tour with two other couples Gabe had "met" on CruiseCritic. Our driver, Stefano, who was kind of cute and had a fun accent, drove our little minivan all over the city (and parked wherever he wanted, regardless of whether it was an actual parking spot). We returned to Trevi Fountain and did the coin over the shoulder thing, but there were so many pushy people that it was hardly romantic. We went inside the Pantheon (after passing by the outside for the last few days), explored the Roman Forum and visited the Colosseum. The Pantheon was interesting, architecturally, but I kind of liked the outside more than the inside. The Forum was very cool, as it's pretty much in ruins and is way below street level, and the Colosseum was ok...it was great that we didn't have to wait in the huge line out front (Stefano got us up front right away), but once you got in, it really only took a few minutes to see everything. The ruins of Circus Maximus were interesting, but I loved the ruins of the massive Imperial palace up on Palatine Hill behind Circus Maximus. They were HUGE.

After lunch at a little cafe, we went to the Vatican, where we had another private tour guide take us to the front of the line (an angry German man yelled at us for cutting in line and Stefano said something snide to him about being a Roman citizen (it was funny) and we just went on ahead of him. The Vatican was unbelievably impressive and quite possibly the most crowded place I have ever been. There were people everywhere and many of them smelled. Pretty much all of them walked right into you without even caring. There was such build up to get to the Sistine Chapel and you only spent about 5 minutes in it (all the time, people were running into you while guards said either, "Shhh! No talking" or "No photography!" St. Peter's was BIG and ornate and over the top. I asked Gabe after we left why the Catholic Church needs so much money...they stole bronze from the Pantheon to build this massive canopy over St. Peter's tomb. They sure love St. Peter. People waited in line 2 hours to get into the Vatican and then another 2 hours to view the tomb of John Paul II. Did I mention how crowded it was?

After that, we were totally sick of being around people. Stefano took us up to the top of Janiculum Hill which overlooks the whole city. It has lots of hilly, winding roads and big trees...it was my favorite part of the tour. You could see the whole city and even the mountains way in the distance. It was peaceful and completely devoid of crowds. Our last stop was outside the city...we wanted to see the Appian Way and some of the tombs along this entryway into Rome. I really enjoyed this as well (again, lots of trees and no crowds!).

After our tour, it was back to the hotel before heading out again (just Gabe and I this time) to a cute little restaurant recommended online). My favorite part of Rome has been just wandering around and exploring all the little cobblestone streets. When the crowds are gone, as they are at night, it's a really amazing place. I'll be sad to leave tomorrow!

Give me your tears Gypsy...

Buon Giorno de Roma,
Just a quick post here, let's see how much I can type before the breakfast cart arrives.
Yesterday Jenny and I walked all over Rome. We saw the Spanish Steps, the Trastevere area, Campo Di Fiori, and much much more. We also got to meet up with two couples who I had been chatting with on Cruise Critic. We met up for an afternoon, evening walk with Morgan, our tour guide from Icontours.com. She was very informative and had all sorts of scoop on Roman history and politics and all that stuff. I'll go more into that later today, as our tour guide from Rome Cabs, Stefano will be arriving in about half hour to take us on a 9 hour driving tour of room, which includes admission into the colosseum and all that cool stuff.

The highlight/sobering part of our trip yesterday was when we made it to the spanish steps, which by the way, I think are overrated. The pantheon is sooo much better than the spanish steps. Anyways, we walked to the top, all the while looking out for the gypsies (as Borat would call them), and we saw them. uhh they aren't too hard to spot.. let me see.. hmm the dead giveaway for me was the kids around them, plus them openly breast feeding their babies, and carrying cardboard and staking out the place. So we kept on the gypsies, waiting for them to "Try and trick us" - like Borat would say, and we stayed clear of them. Those of you who know me, know I'm always planning and calculating. In fact being that this was a landing at the top of ths stairs, I was joking with Jenny (and those of you who know me know this) that I was waiting for a gypsy to approach me so that I could push her down into the people like the guy in the movie "300" then yell "THIS IS ROMA!!!" - Instead of this is Sparta.
Unfortunately the Gypsies did converge on a poor Asian tourist and his camera, I dont know if they got anything but they went at him like crazy. We got to see them try to attack him.

Ok gotta go Breakfast is here.
- Gabe