Europe Cruise 6/23/12 - 7/6/12

6/23/12 Days 1-2 Barcelona: We saw a bunch of Gaudi structures including the Sacred Family Cathedral. That is quite a cathedral and worth seeing while in Barcelona. It will be decades before it is finished but still is more impressive than all the other cathedrals that I have seen to date. The pictures below do not do the cathedral justice, it is even more impressive in real life.

https://www.google.com/search?q=sacred+family+barcelona&hl=en&prmd=imvns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=RHf5T7KmHorH6gGatKHmBg&sqi=2&ved=0CG8QsAQ&biw=1680&bih=965

At Olympic Park we found a fantastic contraption. It worked like a 4 way seesaw that spins. That was probably the most fun thing I did during the trip. I want to build one.

Day 3 Monte Carlo, Monaco: There's not much of a reason to visit Monaco unless you want to go to a casino. We took the train to Nice, France. It is difficult for Americans to fathom why Europeans go to the middle east and other far off places for the beach until you see firsthand. Nice is supposed to be one of the nicer beach areas. There "beach" is an area that has rocks the size of your fist. Most of the rocks are smooth. You get to walk/sit/lie on top of fist size rocks instead of sand. It gets worse when you go into the water because now you have gravel sized rocks mixed in with the fist sized rocks. Later in the trip I came to understand why this was considered one of the nice beach spots. In other places there aren't even rocks, there are boulders. People sunbath on top of the boulders and jump into the water from these areas.

We stumbled into a Triathlon. While walking along the course we got to overhear a competitor explain how much time one could save by not taking bathroom breaks, 17 minutes. Presumably if she unloaded her biological wastes on the course. Yummy, you got to really want to win.

Day 4 Livorno, Italy: We decided to skip Florence and Pisa. This was a great decision since we would seen many leaning towers in Venice that are never advertised. Instead we took a train to Cinque Terra (translates to: 5 towns). We took a spectacular/grueling hike through mountain paths that flanked the splendid views of coastal areas. We made it back to the ship with 15 minutes before it departed.

Day 5 (Train riding in Civitavecchia): We set out at 7 AM to take a ride into Rome. After waking up from two hour ride on the train we realized we were in Livorno, Italy. So we just canceled all the traveling we did last night by going two hours in the wrong direction. Instead of trying to make it to Rome (~3.5 hours away) we decided to head to Florence (~1 hours away). When we got Florence we noticed that there were no direct trains back to Civitavecchia. After calculating time vs. cost we decided to head straight back to Civitavecchia.

Day 6 Rome, Italy [Naples, Italy (Napoli)]: Naples is a very dirty city. It almost approaches the filth level of a third world country. We decided skip Pompeii and find a train to Rome. We did get to see Mt. Vesuvius in the distance though.

In the subway we had a wonderful illustration of the Italian bureaucracy as we tried to take a picture of the subway map to navigate:

Subway personnel: No photo! No photo!
Tourist: How do I know which station to get to?
SP: You buy map.
T: Where do I buy a map?
SP: You buy from us.
T: May I buy a map?
SP: We don't have any more.


This is when Allie discovered that you should break in shoes before traveling. Her new flip flops tore the skin off her foot. We taped up her foot until we could find some socks for her. We found a dog that would fetch anything you threw. It's owner was throwing a 3 lb rock and the dog was bringing it back.

We made it to the tourist sites before heading back. The forum looks like a pile of rocks. The library is in good shape and there is enough of the coliseum to warrant a look. The cathedral and Vatican are worth taking a look at just to say you were there. We didn't think it was worth the wait to stand in 95F weather for 4 hours to actually go in though. We cut this trip really close, boarding the ship about 6 minutes before it departed.

Day 7 Sea day. Day 8 Mykonos, Greece: There was already another ship in port so we had to Tender (take a smaller boat) onto the island. There were a couple of pelicans on the island that were clearly not concerned about the human population. I never realized how big those things were. All the structures are white washed and rounded. We found a dog that decided that it was going to follow us around until we went into an ATV shop (no door). The proprietor was obviously not a dog lover as he chased it away. We rented 4 ATV's and puttered around the island. We had a spectacle when one of the ATV's feel off the side of the road, rolled over a fence and into a field. Luckily neither of the riders were severely hurt and just had to decide how to get it back up the 4 foot drop.

Day 9 Istanbul, Turkey: Before I came here I was told how great and beautiful this city was. My expectations for a place that used to be the center of the western world were pretty high. Sadly it did not live up to the hype.

Day 10 Kusadasi, Turkey: We took a mini bus out to Ephesus then a horse drawn carriage out to the ruins. These ruins were in better shape than most of the stuff I had seen in Greece in my past trips.

Day 11 Athens, Greece: It's still a hole, just like last time I was there. At least there was not as much smoking as last time. No riot or general strikes, so I count myself fortunate. We rode the subway out to the Acropolis and spend the morning up there.

Day 12 Sea day. Day 13 Venice Italy: Riding into the harbor in a 5000 passenger ship gives a great elevated view of this city. The architect is spectacular despite the numerous towers that are leaning. Venice sits on a swamp and I guess some of these towers are not on stable foundations. They don't advertise this the way Pisa advertises its defective tower. There are numerous palaces and homes left over from the merchant kings of old. Each with a splendid front containing highly ornate doors, marble walls and carvings.

San Marcos has the largest palace and the cathedral. The square is still used for various events. We walked through while there was a graduation going on.

Transportation in Venice is either water taxi (water bus) or walking. The paths and bridges are not made for motor vehicles. The gondolas are for rich tourist who enjoy riding around on highly congested and polluted sewage. We took trips to two of the smaller islands too. On Murano we got to see a glass blower make a horse. That was pretty neat.