Dickinson Family

Saturday October 3rd and 4th:
We got up at 4am so we could make it for our 6:30 flight! It's a long day of traveling first to Atlanta(4 hours+4 hour layover) and then on to Spain(9 hours)!! I actually slept pretty well on the 2nd leg of our flight from Atlanta to Spain. Dj had a hard time even with the sleeping pills. The sleeping pills worked great maybe a little to great. We stayed up for the first 4 hours of the flight watching movies and eating dinner. Then we took our sleeping pills, but then they woke us up kind of early for breakfast so we only got about 4 hours asleep. I'm pretty sure you're supposed to have 8 hours of sleep if you take those sleeping pills. Needless to say the rest of the day as soon as I sat down it took me about 1 second to fall fast asleep..no pillow needed! By the time we got our taxi and made it to the port both of us where to tired to even go look at Spain(we had left Utah more than 24 hours before at this point) Once the let us on the ship we found yet another comfy spot to take a nap out on the deck. Next came the food! Oh glorious all you can eat food! And we did you will see 50% of our pictures are probably us eating, looking, or swimming in food!The ship was beautiful brand new! The staff was great did I mention the food was good... We checked out the spa, dj got acupuncture(just a sample, nap, eat, nap, eat

October 5th:
Day at sea. I actually really love days at sea it forces you to relax and you don't even feel guilty for taking a nap! Which we did a lot on this trip(we are getting old)

October 6th, Malta:
Our first stop of the trip was in Valletaa, Matla a place I actually didn't even know existed. But, it was beautiful. An walled city with stone streets and beautiful buildings right on the sea. The town was not very big so we took a taxi to the center and then walked to all the sites. The most important stop being St. John's Cathedral we spent a lot of time there. The city and the wall was in amazing condition you could actually picture what it must of looked like in the 16th century.

October 7th, Naples, Italy:
We tumbled across an unsuspected find in Naples. As we left our cruise ship we found the most amazing castle. We spent hours there. I have never been in a real old castle before. They even had an old door with the cannon ball still lodged in it. Under the floors in the castle they found old baths that they have excavated and a lot of skeletons. It was kind of funny it was mentioned to us a couple time while we where in Italy that they have a hard to adding more freeways or subway systems because every time they try to dig the end up unburying some ancient artifact that has to be delt with. While we think that would be some amazing the locals seemed a bit annoyed by it.
After the castle we met our tour for our trip to Pompeii. The city of Pompeii was covered by 60 feet of pumice and ash when Mount Vesuvius erupted in AD 79. It was discovered in 1748 and the excavation process has been going on since. They have excavated so much we only saw a small portion. There is still a lot that has not been excavated it was a huge, huge city. It was really interesting to see Pompeii. They had excavated full bakeries complete with the mills to grind the grain and the full ovens to cook the bread. They had uncovered houses as well as spas, brothels and also fast food type restaurant with the terra cotta pots still intact within the counters. The had cross walks of sorts. Because they had no sewage system the streets where really filthy so they would place rocks in between the streets that they could hop across so they didn't have to step in the steet. They even had speed bumps to get the carriage drivers to slow down. We got to see a couple of bodies the had been recovered it was interesting to see their size(they where so small) feature, perfect teeth and clothing. One of the men had a belt on which they said meant he was a slave. They found the 2 men together and assumed it was a master and slave trying to escape. I love old cities like this. I love trying to picture what the city must have looked like and been like back it it's day. Pompeii was a very important port city in it's time.

October 8th: Rome, Italy
Rome was amazing! It was surreal seeing things like the Sistine Chapel, St. Peters Square, the Colosseum because we have seen those places in movies so many times it makes you want to go back and watch the movies just so you can see what you missed! I have a new found appreciation for Michelangelo's talent after being in the Sistine chapel and hearing more about him. To see the things he did and progression in his work as he got older was amazing. From what we where told he resented having to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel he was a sculptor and did not like to paint. But, the last Judgment was incredible I'd actually never looked at it that closely before. I wish we could've taken pictures, but that was not allowed. Michelangelo actually drew the priest or pope who he answered to in hell, because we where told he got reprimanded for painting everyone nude. Later, they had another artist come in and paint loin clothes on everyone. And if you'll notice the skin that one of the men is holding the face is actually a self portrait. We went to St. Peters Basilica that was huge and beautiful and included more work done by Michelangelo including the sculpture of Mary holding Christ after he had been crucified. He captured it amazingly it was touching to see that. Michelangelo was truly an inspired man. We had an authentic Italian lunch at a local restaurant. Pasta, salad, veal, and dessert. We then drove around in the bus while they showed us different aspects of the city like Circus Maximus the even older Colosseum. They then drove us over to the Colosseum, unfortunately we didn't have enough time to go inside because the line was really long. So we just walked around and looked inside the best we could. Then we started the long bus ride back to the port. The port was an hour and a half away. We where dropped off from our tour about 2 hours before the ship was due to leave. I guess some people instead of paying for the tour decided to take the train in and do it themselves. The tour was very expensive it was $250 a person! At that price we could've almost paid for another person to go on the cruise with us. But, because the port is so far away the transportation was really expensive. Anyway back to the point...About an hour after the boat was due to leave they where still waiting for 11 people return from Rome. Dj and I where out on the deck and heard this from some other people. 1 1/2 hours after the boat was to leave we see them starting to put the stairs up and get ready to take off. The ship only has so much time to be in the port and then they are forced to leave with or without you. Well we had barely, barely started to move when we see a taxi flying up the road, it screeches to a stop and a couple people run over and start talking to the man at the closed gate, pointing to our ship. Next thing we see is 3 more taxi's all flying down the road and people hoping out pointing at our ship and yelling to us "tell them to stop" "we are here" they where yelling and throwing their stuff down on the ground and yelling at the man at the gate.. and we get further and further away. We heard one of the people the next day talking to someone else about getting left. The train that went back to the port was canceled and they had to take a taxi back which cost them $300 unfortunately they still got back an 1 1/2 hours late and had to take another train to meet us in Florence the next day. I felt so bad for them I couldn't imagine being stranded in the dark in a foreign city all night!

October 9th: Florence
We actually didn't go to Florence we went to Pisa and Lucca. Pissa was kind of eh... they charged a lot to go into the Tower and even the Baptistery and Chapel. It seemed like kind of a rip off. I think this was the most touristy place we went. Lots of vendors..expensive stuff etc. I was actually really surprised unlike when you go to Mexico and the Caribbean the vendors where really nice the don't harass you and chase you down the street. They just let you look and answered your questions if you had one. Even when we got off the ship and did things on our own instead of taking a tour there was maybe one Taxi there waiting. In the Caribbean you get mobbed buy taxi drives and time share sellers. They didn't have anything like that in Europe it was really nice. Before we went to Pissa they went to my future retirement city LUCCA. Loved it! This was exactly what I thought Italy would look like. Stone streets, original architecture lots of shopping! You couldn't even drive your car in there it was a walking city only. It is a walled city and the wall is still in perfect condition. The original founders manufactured silk and where extremely wealthy thus, they paid other cities to not come to war against them. And they didn't as a result you have a perfectly preserved Italian city. I can't wait to go back there. I would love to live there it was beautiful I think this place even topped Brazil for me! We took a tour there and looked at the usual Chapels, towers etc... got a lot of history we hiked up one very high tower and could see Tuscany forever...just like in the movies!

October 10th: Cannes, France:
Cannes was pretty not much to do there. We took a little train tour and saw where they did the film festival. Went to the beach for a minute(literally a minute we where in a hurry)shopping, had some really, really, good pizza. Probably the most least interesting place we went, pretty though.

Time on the ship:
Every night was a date night! How could it get any better than that? We ate in the dining room every night which is like eating in a 5 star restaurant except you can have as many appetizers, main courses and dessert you like! And you don't have to pay!! They have shows every night, comedians, dancers, improv we went to most of it. I won $90 playing Roulette! It's the only thing I know how to play...or do I really you just put chips on numbers?? It was fun though..except for when Dj started pestering me about not having a plan then it ruined the fun so we left:( We went to a club one night and danced. It was tons of fun! Always something to do that's for sure. Dj did get sick while we where there I think we had flu it had been going around the neighborhood. I actually think it was swine flu because he just had a real high fever and chills so that was crappy he didn't feel good, but luckily it only lasted a couple days.

October 11th&12th: Barcelona, Spain

Off the ship and on to Spain. In hind sight we should've spent the extra days in Spain before we left on our cruise we where so tired from the cruise and we missed our kids(surprisingly). It was hard to use all that energy to go out and explore on our own. When we left the boat we still had hours before we could check into our hotel and we are cheap so we decided instead of paying the $50 for the taxi we would take the bus. Well it turned into the a bus, and then a subway and another subway and lots and lots of walking. In there subways they don't have elevators so we each had two bags each I took the 2 carry ons and muscle man took the 2 full size which where both 50lbs each. And we had to carry them up and downstairs. People kept looking at us strangely. It was actually kind of fun it felt like we where on the Amazing Race because we literally had to look at maps and maps of subways and figure out how to get there, but we made it eventually. We actually decided to take the bus to the airport too..I know we are so cheap, but we took the route the day before so we knew exactly where we were going. It worked out perfect except that they couldn't find our flight when we checked in because Delta had changed it, but after a couple hours we got it worked out good thing we where early!! Spain was fun though we got there on Sunday so most everything was closed and Monday was a holiday so we didn't get to see everything, but we got to see enough. We went to the Olympic Stadium and to the Art Museum which was a huge building that had tons of stairs, but once you got to the top it had an amazing view of Barcelona. There food was kind of different I didn't really what I got. They had a lot of fish and we all know I don't like fish:P Most of there menus you ordered "Tapas" it's like a small appetizer and you just order a bunch of them and share. So that was fun to try so many different things. I think that's where I lost all the weight from the cruise because the portions where so small I was always still hungry! The had really, really good ice cream thought, all the cities we went to did. We went to one really nice restaurant while there. They had a roof restaurant you could overlook the city while you ate it was nice. It was funny though the first restaurant we went to I ordered a dessert called toastada with marmalade I thought it would be a "dessert" they brought it out and it was white toast!! That was pretty funny..it was the best toast I've ever had! To get home we took a series of flights because Delta changed our flight it took us exactly 24hours to get home. We went from Spain to Paris and Paris to Cincinnati and Cincinnati to Utah. We looked and felt like crap, actually we looked and felt like crap for 5 days after too! The jet lag was a killer I've never had it that bad both Dj and I woke up at 3:30am for the next 4 or 5 days after we got back. Anyway... The good part about our layover in Paris was we got a Paris stamp in our passport and had a Paris sandwich and lemon tart it was delicious! Well I think that sums up our trip to Europe. Can't wait to do it again!! Looooved it!!