Day of Rest

 Today was a day of rest …..on a Saturday.  We have been at sea all day so no excursions.

I failed to mention something.  Art is a huge lover of lamb chops. We often decide on a restaurant based on the fact they have lamb chops.  He was very excited when we were looking at the menus of restaurants  and one of them stated they had a night they serve lamb chops.  Woohoo.!  Well we have watched every day for it  to show up and nothing ….. But all wasn't lost.  A few days ago we were  getting our breakfast and  they had a sign you could order them with your breakfast.  I thought praise the saints.  But this is a conversation Art and I had 

Art : I can order lamb chops for breakfast

Me: Awesome are you going to do it

Art:  Not for breakfast…that’s a dinner food

Me:  They have breakfast steak.  Maybe this is breakfast chops

Art:  It just seems wrong. I don’t  think my system can do it

Me Okay but I think you should try

Art:  I don’t think I can

Well…a couple day after that he bit the bullet and ordered it…..and his system did so well he has order every day since.  And the restaurant finally offered them for dinner tonight and he got them.  They were good but he likes the breakfast chops better.  Lamb chops …..the new bacon.

We went to a name that tune game.  We aren’t very good at it but thought what the heck.  Our new friends were there as well and I told Art we should have teamed up with them as we found out he sings with two groups and he knows songs pretty well. But there weren’t any chairs by them and we had scored primo seats.  We had a possibility of 30 points.  Surprisingly, we got 17 points we felt pretty good about it.  Our friends scored 10 points .  We felt especially good after hearing that. 

We went to a couple presentations. One with the Professor from Cambridge.  He is really good.  And another one about Pompeii.  It is a great story.  If you are unfamiliar I am happy to tell you or you can look it up.  The presenter shared the story and he was terrible telling it.  It drove me nuts.  You can say a story or tell a story….he said the story.  It was too bad too because his very first slide he said you can relate history and folks eyes glaze over so he was  going to drop the HI and tell a story.  My gosh he was terrible at it.  A story teller he is not.    

One cool thing.  Tonight we went to the show.  It was the house band with a few singers.  It was great. After the show, we all went on the deck.  We went past the volcano Stromboli. It is off coast of Sicily.  It is an active volcano.  We got to watch it spew out lava.  It was pretty cool to see.  

Tomorrow we have an early excursion so to bed for us.

It’s All Greek To Me

When we got to port this morning we joined a couple other huge ships.  We looked so tiny next to them.  I heard the one ship had over  5000 people.  A couple more big ships docked after us. 

We had a fun day.  After our delicious breakfast we headed out for our tour in Corfu.  What a beautiful town.  It is where Prince Philip was born so I had kinda heard of it but didn’t really know anything about it. I was surprised to find out close to Albania it is.  It is only a 30 minute boat ride.  We had a wonderful tour guide….Irene.  She was great and we enjoyed her tour very much.  It is interesting you can stand above the air strip and watch planes land and take off.  It is so close it seems like you can touch them.  

It was really HOT and humid.  If I think it it’s hot ….. you know it was hot.  Irene said they had had record heat.  One day it was 112 degrees with 85 % humidity.  Woosh even I wouldn’t like that.  After Irene was done with her portion, we had some free time to wander the shops, restaurants, and churches.  Because of all the ships, the streets were loaded with tourist.  It was crazy at times.  We decided to stay and have lunch there.  We found a bar and grill close to the entry.  It felt good to rest our feet.  We did a lot of walking.  Getting back to the port was hectic.  We had to go through a security check similar to TSA.  The lines were long but we seemed to get through without a lot of delay.  

Before dinner, we went to another presentation from the Professor from Cambridge.  He is very interesting and entertaining.  I wish more folks would have attended.  Tonight was lobster night.  Needless to say, we had a great dinner. (We really enjoy lobster). After dinner we went to the show.  It  show tunes night.  After we went for a nightcap with a couple we met our first day.  They have been on every tour we have.  And in the same group.  They are from Australia.   We had a fun time visiting and we closed the place down.  Not bad for some old folks…hahaha.

Tomorrow is our sea day.  Yeah for being able to sleep in. 

Moving Along

 My goodness the time is moving right along.  We had another great day.  I was worried about everyone around me today because it was really really hot and humid.  I love the heat but I will tell you what, today was HOT.

Our tour today was really cool.  We are in Dubrovnik.  Our tour guide was the best we have had. She was entertaining and informative.  We went to Old Town.  It is surrounded by a thick towering medieval tower.  At one time it had draw bridge to keep enemies out.  It had several churches.  One of the churches currently has monks living there.  We never saw them but we did tour the church they live in.  We saw where the walk of shame from the game of thrones was filmed.

After lunch we went back to the spa for the snow room and hot tub.  We also took a little nap there.  It was a very relaxing afternoon. Then we can back to watch the boat leave port.  It was pretty interesting to watch.  

We went to a presentation regarding the Geological and Oceanographic changes in the Mediterranean Sea.  It was given by a professor from Cambridge University.  It was really good and all 8 of us attending enjoyed it.   Well 7 of us……. One lady slept through it.

Tonight we went to a show.  It was a guy from New Jersey who sang song from artists that are from New Jersey.  He had wanted to be a Broadway star but instead became a cruise ship singer.  We did enjoy the show. 

When we got back there was note telling us to turn our clocks ahead and hour.  Greece is in another time zone. With that it is late and I am losing an hour so I am going to join Art in bed.  Later Gator!

Did we split

We woke this morning in Split.  What a quaint place.  We got up early and went for breakfast.  Yes ….yes I did have an omelet again today.  And yes it was as good as yesterday. Sadly they didn't”t have the fresh chocolate donut.  Today was coconut donuts with coconut  flakes…. Not for me. 

After breakfast we gathered for our tour.  It was a walking tour.  It was a beautiful day (interpretation..it was hot).  We walked to the Diocletian Palace.  It was built between 295 and 305 AD by Emperor Diocletian.  I will admit I didn’t know who it was prior to going but when I heard it was where Game of Thrones was filmed I knew what they were talking about.  The emperor had it built to celebrate his retirement.  It took 10 years to build.  We were surprised that it only took 10 years.  The place is huge. Our tour guide was long winded he went way over the time allowed and by the time he was done over half the folks in our group had bailed.  We bailed  (or I should say we split) and went and got ice cream.  There is a huge shopping area in the palace with multiple shops.  We had our ice cream and got back and the guy still wasn’t done.  

We did get back in time to have a late lunch on the ship.  We ate at the poolside grill.  After lunch we hung out at the pool for a couple hours then went to the spa and did the cold plunge.  At first I last about 30 seconds  but then I got up to a full minute fully in.  I did do waist down and could stay in for over three minutes.  They also have a snow room that is like a sauna in reverse.  It has ice all over and is really really cold.  I could do that way easier.  Then we spent some time in the hot tub.  It actually was quite rejuvenating.  It helped our tired legs and feet from all the walking.  I had to laugh as my watch kept sending messages that I had exceeded my steps in walking. No wonder they were tired. We are going to try and do the spa plunge again tomorrow.

We had a lovely dinner. We sat by some great folks.  On one side, it was a guy who had aphasia and his companion was a good friend. They were from New Zealand and we learned all about them and on the other side was a couple from Virginia and we really enjoyed visiting with them.  So much so we were the last four to leave the restaurant.    

Now we are tucked in a ready to call it a day.  Another early day full of walking. 

Mediterranean Start

 I have had trouble signing in but hopefully I got it figured out.  We started out on Sunday morning.  MK and the Buddy picked us up and dropped us off at the airport, The flight to Seattle was flawless.  A super smooth ride.  Our layover was a few hours  so we went to the airlines  lounge.  We sat in these cubical seats.  Next to us was a cute couple that got married last Friday….they were headed to Paris.  They were super cute and we had a fun time visiting with them. 

We got on our flight for Frankfurt.  We had the seats in the very front of the plane.  The flight attendants were friendly and very attentive.  There were two seats on the right side of the plane two in the middle and two on the left.  We had the two in the middle.  The woman assigned to the seat to my left was getting something’s out of the overhead bin and her full heavy metal water bottle went flying out and smacked my  arm really hard.  It ached most of the flight and is still tender to the touch but I am ok.  

We had the seats that lay flat into a bed.  They also came with a blanket, pillow and a mattress pad. It was nice to stretch out but the beds are pretty narrow, so you have to sleep on your back.  Better for snoring I guess (wink wink).  We did have two very unhappy dogs on the flight.  They barked very loudly and for a very long time.  Even with headphones, you couldn’t drown the out. I did get to watch three movies though. 

The Frankfurt airport was crazy.  It isn’t laid out very well and the signs are not very visible but we did manage to find the lounge.  We were in a pretty large plane so you would think we could pull into a gate.  But nope.  We landed…. taxied for 15 minutes to stop way out on the runway and get on buses to get to the terminal.  The bus ride was another 10 minutes.  Customs was really strange.  We had to stop at a machine and scan our passports, take a photo and do our fingerprints then do it again with an agent.  But the agent was super distracted.  Art went first then when I went I never had my photo taken he just had me do fingerprints then asked Art for passport again and said he didn’t do the fingerprints. We told him Art just did it and he got a funnily look handed us our passports and said have a good day.  Not sure if he ever realized I didn’t ever do the photo.  We got on an other bus ride for another 15 minutes out to catch our flight to Venice.  They kept saying the flight was completely full so find bin space wherever you could.  The bus dropped us off at the plane and returned to the terminal to pick up another group.  Turned out that was the only other group and the plane was not full.  But because the bus had to return to pick up the other folks, we were late taking off.  It didn’t affect us thankfully. The man (not Art) who sat next to me had a gas problem.  He belched and farted the whole way.  I was grateful there was an empty seat between us because he was pretty loud as it was.  I was worried a couple times he was going to hurl.  And a couple times I couldn't help but laugh.

There were several folks on that plane who are the cruise with us.  We took about a 40 minutes bus ride from the airport to the boat.  We got all checked in did a little exploring, had dinner and went to bed. We were pretty tired.  

There is an eight hour difference between here and home. Let me tell you that is a real butt kicker at first.

Today we got up at 5:00 am and had a lovely breakfast and went on an early morning tour of Venice.  I need to pause here to say breakfast was absolutely delicious.  I had an omelet and it was the best I have ever eaten.  It was so good.  

We took a water taxi into Venice.  It was a 90 minute  ride each way.  Not the most ideal but we did meet 3 sets of friends, so that was really fun.  The tour of Venice was amazing.  We had a very entertaining guide.  The weather was perfect ……. Well for me so you know it was hot.  We did have some free time after the tour so after walking around we stopped for some delicious ice cream.  I did score a hoodie.

After we got back we had some lunch and watched the boat leave dock.  We went to the room to rest a minute but we fell asleep and that minute turned into a few hour nap.  It really helped.  We watched a beautiful sunset tonight and after dinner we did some more exploring.  Overall it was just a great day.  Tomorrow when we awake we will be in Croatia.  Another early morning tour so I am headed to bed,  Excited to see what tomorrow brings. 

Sick baby Update

 The weather was much better today.  Nothing like yesterday. Yesterday was really cold and the wind blew 40 mph.  Trixie wasnt feeling at all well so she stayed in bed.  The Coonster stayed with her.  Art and I braved the weather but we never put our swimming suits on.   Every once in a while the sun would try to shine but it didn’t last long.  We had a great dinner at the Thai restaurant. 

Today was much better.  Trixie was doing better so we went and had hot stone massages and facials.  I loved loved loved mine.  I would say it was in the top three.  Trixie’s wasn’t as great. 

We braved it and went to the barter market so the Coonster and Trixie could get some things.  It was a success!  I needed to get some things from the Farmacia but there wasn’t one within walking distance.  Art asked the uber driver if he would stop at a Farmacia on our way back and he was more than happy to  but the one we stopped at wasn’t the one I wanted so he said he know of a different one he could take us to and yeah!!!!  It was the right one.  He was such a great guy and was so willing to help us out.  

The trip wore Trixie out so when we got back she went back to bed.  The Coonster joined us for dinner…..kinda…….. as we were waiting to get seated Trixies bug hit him and he had to hurry back to the room.  He is in bed not feeling good.  The good news is ……. What Trixie has wasn’t caused but eating gluten.  But dang I feel bad they are both sick……not a Happy Fiftieth Anniversary.

Hope tomorrow is better for them. 

It was a Ruin Kinda Day

 The weather has gotten a little chilly.  Not the great warm Caribbean weather we are used to.  

Man we got up super early to get on our private shuttle.  Art made arrangements for us to go to Chichen Itza with a private tour company so it was just the four of us. So it was worth getting up early.  It was great not having to go on a tour bus.  We had a great tour guide….. Dulce.  She was fun and very informative.  We got there before the big tour buses arrived.  That was also great.  We could go at our own pace and stop whenever we wanted.  As we were finishing up the buses arrived and there were people everywhere.   It was interesting, when we got there, there was a very long line of folks with carts and totes waiting to get in.  We discovered it was vendors.  Everywhere you went and every path you took it was completely lined with vendors.  It was crazy.  They set up and take down every single day.  I couldn’t believe it.  Art and I had been to the ruins before and I must say they are still awesome and I am so glad we went.  There is always a certain reverence to me when I am on the ruins grounds.

We were tired when we got back,  Everyone laid down for a quick rest.  Trixie and I went to the sweet shop.  I ate way too many sweets yesterday.  I am sure my blood sugars were way too high but it was sure good.

Dinner was an experience,  We went to an outdoor restaurant and it was cold.  Not only that to add insult to injury, the wind was blowing 30 mph…. truly Art looked it up.  And it look forever to get our food.  After we went back to our room to watch college football  and we all wrapped up in the hotel robes to warm up.  Oh they are so warm and comfy.  Trixie and the Coonster ordered hot chocolate and Art and I went to the sweet shop.  Sadly I think the hot chocolate had gluten as Trixie is now sick.  I feel so bad for her …..hope she feels better soon.   We were going to go to the market today but we’ll wait til Trixie is better.  Probably no beach this morning it is pretty chilly.

Stay tuned to see what we end up doing today and how Trixie is doing………….