May 18/19

May 18 watching The Golden Horn. I spent a quiet day doing pretty much what I said in my last post. We are docked in the perfect spot to view Istanbul's Golden Horn which is a confluence of waterways. I spent much of the afternoon up on Lido Deck with a spectacular vista of Topkapi Palace, Haiga Sofia, and the Blue Mosque (seen here left to right), along with the busy water traffic. (And no, I don't know what the big white ship is.) There were ferries of every conceivable size and type -- those for passengers, cars, overnighters to other cities, etc, -- going in every direction at once. It's amazing that they don't crash into each other, but with only one bridge between the European and Asian sides of Istanbul in a city of, I think, 14 million people, the ferries are a total necessity.

This evening Debbie, Dave and Liz, Chris and George, and I all went to one of the ship's "specialty" restaurants, a Teppanyaki place. We had a lovely meal, but of course, no flaming onion volcano since we are on a ship. I have five eye witnesses that I ate more than one bite of  a seaweed salad (very green in color), a whole big slice of carrot (enough garlic butter makes almost anything edible), and more green for dessert which was green tea cake and green tea ice cream (both surprisingly good). I had also had two vegetables for lunch, i.e. french fries with catsup (if the government can count it as a vegetable, so can I).

Also this evening I had an in-depth discussion with Shore Excursions about walking distances past and future, and the lack of adequate information on same. The Holland America system for handling handicapped people on shore excursions is far superior to NCL's, and the information on shore excursions available online at Princess beats 'em both all hollow for being able to make informed decisions.

By bedtime I was feeling a whole lot better although still achy in a few spots. I think I should be okay by tour time tomorrow.

May 19 and I'm pretty well back to "normal," at least MY normal.

Mary, please tell Betty that Izmir is now the third largest city in Turkey! I've sent her a postcard of it. I doubt there is any piece of it that she would recognize from when she lived there.

My tour today went to Ephesus, but it was sort of a drive by photo shoot for both the upper and lower gates. The photo here is of the ruins at the upper gate. for a good photo of the big amphitheater at the lower gate, you can scroll back to my other visit there. There was a longer visit to the Basilica of St. John. We had a very good tour guide who did a lot of educating about both Turkey and Islam. 

The countryside has ranges of high hills or even low mountains that separate very flat valleys. The hillsides remind me very much of the Hill Country region in Texas. They are very rocky with what appears to be limestone, and have an arid-looking cover of scrub and pine trees. The flat valleys are very fertile and are planted with just about every kind of fruit and nut trees and vegetables.

A fair chunk of time, as determined by a poll of those on the tour, was spent at a shop in Kusadasi where we got the usual glass of apple tea and a roll along with a lecture about how Turkish rugs are made an a display of some gorgeous samples of the craft. I have now been to various Turkish ports a total of eight times. For seven of them I managed to resist the salesmanship of the Turkish men. This time I succumbed and bought a rug, but it's a very small one. It's being shipped home, so if you want to see it, you'll have to come visit me.

May 17/18

NCL's cabin stewards do towel animals just like the other lines. I sometimes wonder if each cabin steward does his/her own, or if there's some poor soul in the depths of the ship who spends all day making swans, elephants, monkeys, etc. to be distributed to all cabins. But yesterday evening we had one I hadn't seen before...a bat hanging from our ceiling, wings out-spread. I wonder if this is a comment on my cabin mate's habit of sleeping in until noon or even later when she doesn't have a tour so that the cabin steward can't get in here until late. Hmmm...

May 17 and we are at Mykonos, Greece. I had signed up for basically the same tour that I took last time to the village of Ano Mera. It's a good tour, scenic with ouzo to drink (or not), Greek appetizers, and village cats to watch. Almost everyone I've talked to in the last couple of days seems to be signed up for this one. We may just over-run the little place.

We anchored off and tendered in because the huge Ruby Princess was taking up the cruise ship dock that was just being completed the last time I was here. Fortunately, the ocean was very calm which made getting on and off the tenders a good deal less strenuous than the "Tender High Jump" event that I have occasionally experienced in the past. 

The weather was overcast and extremely windy which did not help the ambiance of the island or of Ano Mera. Even the town cats were snugged away somewhere warm, except two or three who must have been the designated tourist greeters for today. I didn't take any photos worth uploading today, but if you want, you can scroll back through this blog to my previous visit.

UNfortunately, while we were out on tour, some "they" with a non-operational brain moved the location of the tender dock ashore from where the buses had picked us up and then also dropped us off to the other end of Mykonos town. I'm sure they did it so that the tourists would have to pass through the shopping area. We had to walk the entire length of the waterfront which I'm guessing was about a mile since the guide kept referring to it as a ten minute walk. And it was all rough cobblestones! I made it with numerous stops to rest, but toward the end I had some serious questions as to whether I really would survive it.  Bless my friend, George, and my cabin mate, Debbie, who stayed with me the whole way back. I plan to have some strong comments for the NCL Shore Excursion people who did not mention this when I specifically asked about walking distances on the tours I had booked.

Needless to say, I was exhausted, so after lunch I set my alarm clock for our early dinner hour and took a nap. When it went off, I happened to be facing away from it, so rolled over to turn it off, and ran out of bed before I finished rolling. So I'm lying on the floor, clutching the alarm clock, and the muscles in both legs are cramping from all that hiking. Again, blessings on Debbie, as between us, we managed to get me back up again without having to call for a derrick. 

On to Istanbul tomorrow. I'm going to take another rest day instead of virtually repeating the tour I had last time. 

Early on May 18. It's a very good thing that I'm not on tour here. I'm so stiff and sore from yesterday that I can barely move! Sleep late, do some reading or crocheting, and just hang around the ship is about all I can manage today. I need to be in touring shape for Izmir tomorrow so I can report to Betty on what it is like these days, although I've heard that it is now the third largest city (or maybe that's port) in Turkey.

May 15/16

I think (hope) I've got this photo thing under control again, so here's a picture of the Leaning Tower of Pisa that I didn't get posted last time.

Yesterday afternoon was perfect weather to remain on board...a deep blue sky, gentle sun, slight breeze, temperature right around 70 F and plenty of chairs to choose from on Lido Deck. I love it when the rest of the world goes sightseeing and I don't have to! To celebrate, I had my hair done then topped off the afternoon with a luscious hot chocolate buried under whipped cream and a slice of vanilla marble pound cake. Yum again. The food on board is fine, but this pound cake and hot chocolate thing is totally decadent! And there's no charge for the pound cake!

May 15 and we are in Naples. I would have loved to tour to Pompeii and/or Herculaneum, but as with many things these days, I find myself going with a Plan B involving less walking. So I was booked to take a tour called "Leisurely Sorrento" instead. However, when I reread the description, it casually mentioned walking. So I asked one of the guides exactly how much walking. The reply was one half mile each way from the bus park to the city center. My reply to that was what you might expect. The Shore Excursion folks were very nice and refunded my full ticket.

So I spent another peaceful day on the ship. There were even fewer people left aboard today than yesterday. One of the many things I did today was go up top and take a lap around the jogging track...no, of course I was not jogging. Get real! But the view of Naples' harbor was interesting. I'm fairly sure that I saw Vesuvius, and from descriptions by friends who did go on tour today, this is it.  

May 16 is a sea day, and is rather choppy, with force 4 winds and 3 meter seas. It's the first of only 2 sea days on this cruise, and the other is the next to last day. Personally I like sea days even though all the other passengers are on board also. This ship has very few quiet places to sit and relax...Muzak everywhere and too loud. I thought I'd found a nice spot and 10 minutes later I was in the middle of a "1970s Name That Tune in X Notes Team Trivia" event. I hadn't heard that much disco music since the 70s ended! At least I met some nice folks from Lynchburg, and the husband got 17 out of 20 correct for "our team" which included me by simple propinquity. 

I tried to post this, but with 2,000 passengers, and probably 60% of them using their various types of electronics, things are slower than usual. Access is always slower by satellite on the ships, but now that the whole ship is wi-fied instead of just a few public areas, more people can get online at once. So, I'll wait a while and try again.

May 13/14, 2013

My weather magic is still working. While it did rain on and off in Barcelona, so far since we boarded the ship, we have had good weather other than some strong winds the first night. There was not a whole lot of motion, but yesterday several of our group complained of being seasick. Most of them have cabins with balconies pretty high up where the motion of the ship is greater. Our cabin is in the steadiest part, low and  midships, although location wouldn't affect me too much.

Today, May 13, we are docked at Livorno, Italy. The skies are cloudless. Most folks are off to Florence which is a two hour bus ride from here. I went to Florence many years ago, and while I liked it, I feel no compulsion to go see it again. This afternoon I have a tour to Pisa to see the Cathedral's campanile (bell tower) lean.

(Later) It was a nice half day tour to Pisa, although Italian tour buses are past snug to very tight on knee room. by the way, the tower really does lean. In fact the Baptistry of the Cathedral (the red dome ion the left in this picture) also leans somewhat as do two other towers in the city, St. Nicholas and St. Michael. Our guide was most informative about the history of Pisa and their celebrations, for  example why Pisa celebrates New Year's on March 25 making this 2014 for them.

It's only 16 miles from Livorno, and before the Arno River delta silted up, it was the main port in this part of Italy. The silting was partly natural, and partly man-made because the merchants in Florence objected to using Pisa as their port (politics, of course) and preferred Livorno. Since Florence and the Borgias had the upper hand in the area ... well, Livorno is now the port, and Pisa is a university town with an architectural tourist attraction much like Charlottesville except that Pisa has three universities to our one.

On to May 14. Now we are docked at Civitavecchia which is the port for Rome. I was in Rome fairly recently, and am sure that the tourist sights haven't changed in the meantime. The vast majority of the passengers have headed off to Rome which means the ship is quiet except for many, many announcements about "crew only" emergency drills. One of them included automatically closing all watertight and fire doors with a grand round of slamming. Interestingly, while they can close the doors by remote control, they have to be opened by people. 

May 11/12

I suppose I should apologize to whoever reads this that I didn't do any sightseeing or picture taking in Barcelona, but that's just how things worked out. For some reason, the trip over wiped me out more than usual. Then the Hotel Colon was such a comfortable cocoon, and there wasn't anyone to push me to go out...

In the late morning of Saturday, May 11, 5 of us, Chris, George, Sukey, Joan and I, taxied from the hotel to the pier. The check-in area was crowded, but with me in a wheelchair and Chris, who has a high priority level with NCL, we got in a short line and were soon on board the NCL Spirit. It's a cruise ship, so of course the first thing we did was go eat. 

By the time I got to my cabin after lunch, my luggage was waiting, so I got unpacked. About 15 minutes before the mandatory emergency drill, my cabin-mate, Debra, turned up. After the drill, a number of our group met in one of the lounges before heading to eat again. There are something like 32 in our group and evidently the group leader has made a dinner reservation for all of us at 5:30 every evening. I suppose I'll adjust to that. At least we can switch around amongst our group of tables.

Today, May 12, we are at Toulon, France. Well...more accurately we are docked across the bay from Toulon. I did not have a tour scheduled for here, so slept in very late then wandered around the ship some, but still don't have my full bearings yet. I did discover one " bar" that has a selection of fabulous flavors of pound cake and luscious hot chocolate. Yum.

Many of our group who toured today were somewhat disappointed in large portions of their tours, and all commented on the amount of walking and/or steps involved. We had another early and nice dinner and spent the evening in conversation.

(Apologies for the delay in posting...having trouble getting photos uploaded because I brought the wrong cable that connects the camera to the iPad.)

May 8/9/10

I  have survived, yet again, being shut up in an aluminum tube full of people, luggage and germs held up in the air by the Grace of God and the Laws of Physics. Both the flight to Atlanta and the one to Barcelona  were on time. I didn't get any sleep crossing the ocean because each time I was about to drift off the plane would hit a jiggly spot and the "Fasten Seatbelt" light would bong. But that's to be expected.

The Hotel Colon is in the old "rabbit warren" part of downtown. The streets in this area are even smaller and more convoluted than in Rome. However, the very elegant hotel is very close to one of the cathedrals which makes a good landmark. My single room is small but well appointed, and I immediately tested the bed with a good long nap.

The other members of the group on this first cruise are slowly arriving in Barcelona. Most spent the day sightseeing to try to stay awake to adjust to the time zone. Hah! Two naps and a night's sleep and I'm pretty thoroughly adjusted. We are all supposed to meet at a plaza on La Rambla this evening, but I may give that a miss as it's a 10 minute walk for an average person which means probably 30-45 minutes for me, and I would be exhausted and crabby by the time I got there. 

Less than a week to go!

This is one of the most complicated trips I've taken in a long time. Ten different parts (not counting sightseeing excursions), each requiring several pieces of paper, e-tickets, vouchers, schedules, baggage tags, etc.  Sheesh! Bless my travel agent, Kellie, for keeping it all straight and printing it all out for me.

Have begun slowly collecting stuff for the suitcase(s). Have not finished a few sewing chores yet. Still procrastinating on that. Probably won't get the suitcases out until after the cat leaves for Richmond on Tuesday afternoon. (No, she's not going there by herself but will be chauffeured down by her hostess for the next 7+ weeks.) Here's hoping that it all fits into a minimum of bags.