Athens

 Apologies for being behind in our blogging.  We have visited the Acropolis and Parthenon. 

It was a slog to get up there.  The tour description said 78 stairs and yes there were 78 stairs, but there was also long uphill path that was kicking the entire tour’s butt.  Happy to report my hip did really well and we weren’t the last to make it up the hill. 

Something interesting we learned this is not the only Acropolis - every city had one, but this one is the most well known.

This is the remains of the Temple of Athena

After this visit was over, we were again Forced Marched to a restaurant.  Shan and I made it, about 5 others got left in the dust.  Our guide had to go back and find them. 

It was a nice lunch - various Greek types of food.  Outside of it was a lovely small square

Doing the blog on the ship has been difficult as it takes FOREVER to upload photos.  So I am going to pause until we get to our hotel in Istanbul to catch up

1. The rest of Athens

2. Santorini

3. Rhodes

4. Kusadasi

Montenegro and Sea Day

 Today our port was Bar, Montenegro.  

This was a change in ports - initially we were suppose to go somewhere else and this was substituted. This port area was on the smaller side without much to see.  We didn’t book any excursions so we were left to explore the port area. 

We promenaded along the shore, looked at some vendors, and sat in a cafe watching all the locals out on the beach with their children playing. 

These folks greeted us. 

Below the castle is now an admin building

We also saw this interesting statue.  It is of an artist called Uris Tochkowitch.  He was a vagabond on and off through his life.  He went to art school, lived in Paris and is included amongst Picasso and Dali.  He often rejected the commercial aspect of his work.  He was born in Montenegro and died in Bar.

After Montenegro we had a sea day.  There was a lot of things going on and we participated in the lot - mostly trivia games.  We did the “behind the scenes” tour of the boat.  Shannon has done one before, but I hadn’t .  We were able to look and learn about the Kitchens, the provisioning, the gigantic freezers, the laundry, the engine room, and ended with a nice chunk of time on the bridge. 

I had found this video game while walking around the ship, but couldn’t figure out how to get it to play.  Finally Shannon helped figure it out and I got to play my favorite video game….GALAGA

Zadar

 Today we had a short stop in Zadar Croatia. We only saw old town, but what we’ve seen from port to town was very pretty.

There was beautiful park settings all along the water.  They has this one point of interest - the Sea Organ.

There are small openings along the concrete steps.  When the water comes in (waves) there are sounds or notes that play. I’ll upload a short video clip later.

Prior to dinner there was a line dancing class - we only observed. It was hilarious to watch coordinated and uncoordinated people out there dancing. We had dinner ad watched a ballroom dance show in the theater.  

Tomorrow is Montenegro 

On da Boat

 We were very fortunate to have a smooth transfer to the cruise port.  Arrived, dropped our luggage, waited about 15 minutes to clear immigrations, no wait to check in and voila we were on the boat. All told it probably took us 30 minutes.

We were some of the lucky ones as a bit later there was some issue and busses and taxis were stacked up waiting. From what we heard some people were still in their bus waiting to get to the port to get off and start getting on the boat for almost 2 hours.  There is construction all around so that may have played a part along with an accident somewhere but they were mad! (Know from Facebook posts)

Needless to say we were late departing the port.

Ravenna

 We made it to Ravenna yesterday.  Only took a couple of trains from Florence.

Our hotel is just out of the city but. Lose to the cruise port.  However, there was a very large number of people staying here and the soonest we could be sat for dinner in the restaurant was 9:00pm or later.  So we ordered food for delivery.

We discovered that Ravenna is known for having very old mosaics.  If we had done any research on this city we would have come to it a day earlier so we could have seen these mosaics.

Today we board our Norwegian cruise on the Viva.  We are currently just hanging out waiting for our transportation to the port to arrive.

Bonus - we have TV that lets us choose English.  We are watching The Mummy.  

Our first port is Croatia - can’t wait!

It stopped raining

 Yesterday we were confined in the hotel because it was raining off and on all day.  It would rain for bit then stop for 15-20 minutes then rain again.  We did make it out to a nearby restaurant for dinner though

Today, after checking and rechecking the weather, we ventured out.  The plan was to go to the school of leather to watch the craftsmen work.  Stopped by the Duomo again and were thankful that we weren’t trying to go in! The line was so very long! 

We get to the leather school and they are now closed on Wednesday.  It was a bummer.

 

We stopped at a cafe and sat outside with a beverage for a while. Then we went to this ceramics store and looked around. Then we just meandered doing a bit of window shopping and ended at Central Market for lunch.

In our window shopping we saw these items

Finally found a “wine window”

In the 16th century these came about when citizens were allowed to sell their own wine from their house.  Later in the 17th century these were useful for a variety of things due to a plague that was around.

We finished our adventure by taking the wrong tram - we were quick to notice and got off then on the correct tram and rewarded ourselves with gelato.

We leave Florence tomorrow and are headed to Ravenna.  This is where will will embark on our cruise.

The are you twins holding steady at 5

PS:  we walked about 4 miles today and my hip hasn’t bothered me much at all.  Could be the rest days or the baclofen I took yesterday!

Another slow day

 Today was another slow day.  BUT… It did start off with a bit of intrigue. It all began on a partly cloudy morning in the hotel restaurant. We were there for breakfast and what do we see? 3-4 Italian police officers encircling 2 people.  They were having a soft conversation but Shan positioned herself to try to hear what was going on.  The man asked to go get something from his room - he was not allowed. Then he asked to make a call - he was not allowed.  After a few minutes they were quietly escorted out.  So we think this is over and finish our breakfast

But it is not over, they are standing in the lobby with an officer, then they are placed in the police car and driven away.  We are soo curious as to what this was all about.  Here’s some pictures we snapped covertly

We explored a bit around our hotel and did a bit of window shopping and finally, we visited the grocery store.

We picked up a bunch of food items as we are going to be locked down in the hotel the next 2 days.  This is because of thunderstorms that are starting overnight.  They have used the term torrential downpours so we don’t think our umbrellas will cut it!

We were smart and brought our small travel bags for our grocery haul.

PS. That is Shan’s hand in her pocket. Her shirt is NOT I repeat NOT hiked up around her waist!

The bell peppers were huge!  Larger than your hand.  All of the produce was stunning.

We spent €48.50 euros, so about $56 US.  We got pre packaged salads and stuff for sandwiches and of course snacks.

We ordered pizza for dinner in a vain effort to eat before 8:00.  It arrived at 7:30 so not much better!

A day for relaxing

 So today we took it easy. We lazed around the room we went and saw the devil wears Prada 2 at the local cinema. They do have original language, timeslots, so we went to the English version with Italian subtitles. You would think there wouldn’t be very many people in the English language showing, but there were a fair amount of non-US Britain English speaking country people at the 

It was an OK movie I wouldn’t call it better than the first one, but it was interesting and a fun watch.

Also  there is an intermission halfway through the movie  perfect time for a bathroom break!

We then were on the hunt for the grocery store so we could buy laundry soap. It appears the grocery stores here are only open till 1 PM on Sundays. However, we did stumble upon what turns out to be a house cleaning store. It had everything from soap to dyes to dryer sheets to shampoo to just anything cleaning wise. It was quite interesting.

When we Returned to the hotel we went down to the laundry room where the washers and dryers are to see if the gentleman that had been there all day so far was still there. And he was. So we had to wait what 2-3 more hours and finally got one load of laundry done. We plan to do the rest on the day it is suppose to have thunderstorms.

We did end up eating dinner at a Mexican place. We weren’t sure if it was gonna be close to real Mexican food or not but to our surprise, it was fairly good.

Now we are back at the hotel again because we have been sloths today and Missy is busy googling how to fix her hip. Shannon does not think I will find a solution before we have to walk forever in Athens. So here’s to hoping for a slow paced tour guide there.

We may have a more exciting day for you all tomorrow - so stay tuned!