Maybe if I keep this up each night for the next week, I’ll get all the picture posted. Tonight I put up the pictures from the Ilse of Capri and a couple from Sorrento, Italy. Next will be pictures from Pompeii.

Capri was a lovely stop on a very enchanting island. I’m sure that the improving weather made a lot of difference as well. The Isle of Capri almost has legendary fame and it was a delightful experience as well.

Today we had snow. It didn’t stick and by the end of the day, it was pretty much gone. However, it is a portent of weather to come. The next few days will be cold but no more snow is forecast for the remainder of the week. It won’t last! Next week is Thanksgiving week. Nina and I will be on the road once again, this time flying to Cleveland, Ohio to have Thanksgiving with daughter Dawnmarie and family in New Wilmington, PA and to attend a grandson’s baptism.

The weather today reminded me a bit of the weather we had in Rome a couple of weeks ago. It was cold and it rained throughout the day. The difference was, we were in Rome and we were happy to be there. Today it was cold and snowed and I didn’t want to be here!

Rome is a beautiful city, even in the rain. It felt good to be there. We didn’t spend nearly enough time there. I want to go back. I want to go to the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. I want to throw some coins once again into the Trevi Fountain (we once spent a couple of hours trying to find this fountain). I want to eat and eat and eat in a real major Italian restaurant going through all six courses of a normal Italian meal. I want to walk all the way around the upper level of the Colosseum. I want to spend some time just taking in the city and all of its sites. I’m sure later this winter when the snow is here for real, I’ll think once again of Rome and rain and how nice it was to be there. That’s when I’ll call up my pictures from Rome and relive the day.

Our second port of call was Livorno, Italy. The port of Livorno is about an hour and a half’s drive from Florence and was Florence’s port in the days when they were in competition with Genoa and Pisa for commerce and business. Again we had the choice of a number of tours available to us. This time we elected to do the Florence On Our Own tour.

When we were living in Germany in the mid-1970’s, we made a couple of trips to Florence. It was one of our favorite vacation spots. The downtown area had changed quite a bit, however. The market just off the Ponte Vecchio bridge was markedly different. The shops on the bridge are now all jewelry shops where twenty-five years ago straw and leather were the big selling items.

The artwork in the city has been for me the biggest draw. Everywhere one goes in the city there is lovely artwork, sculptures, architecture, and scenery. This time, however, we were there on a bad weather day. Rain showers punctuated with deluges were the norm for the day. In addition, for some reason there were lots of people in town. We were there on a Wednesday which was not a holiday, but even in the lousy weather the city had a plethora of tourists.

The picture accompanying this post is one my five favorite pieces of art in Florence. It depicts Perseus slaying Medussa and I like the snakes coming out of her severed neck. This is a very graphic sculpture and I just like it. The other favorites are Michelangelo’s David, the paintings on the Ponte Vecchio bridge, the sculpture of Hercules and the centaur, the Michelangelo Pieta in the Duomo Opera, and the altar in the Duomo. Because of the weather and the crowds, we only saw the Perseus and the Hercules. That’s OK since we’ll be back. A rainy day in Florence is still better than not being there at all.

We only get a few hours in a particular place on a cruise. We arrived in Marseille, France around 8:30 a.m. and we were back on the ship around 5 p.m. There were several tours available and we elected to do the Marseille City Tour. We boarded a bus with a tour guide and drove around Marseille to see some of the city highlights. We stopped at the Notre Dame Basilica for a short visit and then had about a half-hour for souvenier shopping. The result was an overview of the city and not much more.

There wasn’t much about the city that would cause me to go back there on purpose. It is a huge seaport and consequently a very important commercial place. I was surprised to learn that Marseille is the second largest city in France after Paris. I knew that Marseille was the gateway to France’s African colonies, Algeria in particular, and that a lot of goods passed through the port. The book The Bourne Identity had it’s beginning in Marseille. I didn’t know much more than that and, even after visiting the city, I still don’t know much more than that. The downtown area is pretty run down. The city is putting in a new tram system so there was construction everywhere and that probably contributed to the run down look of the city.

Tourism, particularly French tourism is important to the city. The beaches are an important draw and lots of French take their summer holiday in this part of the country. I didn’t see much that would draw American tourists — particularly with Monaco so close. I did take several pictures in Marseille and have put them up on the website. I was happy that we stopped here at the beginning of the cruise since each successive port of call was better than the previous. As I said in a previous post, I’m glad we weren’t doing things in the opposite direction.

I’ve added a group of pictures from Marseille, France, and have put in about half the planned pictures from Florence, Italy.

My first pictures from the trip are now posted. I’ve put up the pictures from Barcelona, Spain. Click on the "pictures!" link on the right to see the pictures index.

We disembarked from the Grand Princess on Saturday, October 29, 2005 in Venice, Italy. We had come to the end of another very enjoyable cruise. Princess Cruise Lines is new to us as our four previous ocean cruises have been on Holland America. I’ve found a pretty good review of the Grand Princess which describes the ship well.

The next several posts will be about different ports of call during the cruise. Before that, however, here are some general thoughts about the cruise and the itinerary.

• This was a fairly long ocean cruise — twelve days. Two days were sea days, that is, the ship sailed all through the day towards the next port of call. The other nine days were spent in different ports of call. We did a huge amount of walking on the trip and by the end of the cruise we were right ready to spend some downtime. We visited four ports (Marseille, Livorno, and Civitavechia, and Naples), followed by a sea day, three more ports (Mykonos, Istanbul, Kusadasi) followed by a sea day, followed by Venice. That meant four days in a row with lots of walking, a day of rest, and then three days in a row with lots of walking.
• The cruise was far different than any of the Alaskan or Caribbean cruises we’ve taken in the past. It wasn’t as intensive as the river cruise we took with Viking River Cruises last October. It was very educational and very interesting.
• On sea days the ship offered computer classes on a variety of subjects. The link goes to the Computers@Sea website and the job description for the computer instructor. Nina and I both took six classes on board on Adobe Photoshop Elements. The instructor was excellent and both of us learned a lot about the program. I don’t know if similar programs are offered on other cruise lines, but this was a real bonus.
• October was a good time to make this cruise. I’d think that anytime from mid-September through mid-October would be good. The temperatures were very mild, upper 60’s and low 70’s. The humidity was high (above 90% every day), so this was plenty warm. I can’t imagine climbing up to the Acropolis in 100+° temperatures with 90+% humidity, not to mention all the crowds! We were there during the off season and were quite impressed even then with the number of tourists….
• The direction we took is the better trip as each stop was better in some way than the previous stop. I think starting in Venice and ending in Barcelona would have resulted in some disappointments towards the end of the trip. So, when you go, start in the western Mediterranean and go eastward.
• This was the largest cruise ship we’ve been on, and the cruise was booked full, meaning we had about 2,600 fellow passengers. Most of the time the sheer number of people on the boat was not noticeable — until time to go up or down the elevators. The worst was during embarkation or disembarkation in the various ports of call. The elevator system on the Grand Princess leaves a lot to be desired. Perhaps the most annoying attribute of the elevators was that the elevator call button light outside the elevator turned off when the doors started to close on an elevator. If anyone pushed the elevator call button before the elevator actually started to move, the doors would open. Sometimes we’d be on a crowded elevator with lots of people waiting to get on an elevator and the doors would open and close five or six times before we could actually get underway. Very annoying.
• There were lots of other elevator features that became annoying before the cruise was over. There just simply weren’t enough elevators for all the people on the ship. I don’t think I want to cruise on a ship with this many people again.
• Internet access on the ship was abysmal. In some ways it was good that the blog website was down during the trip as the poor access on the ship would have made posting to the website very painful. Princess needs to make some significant upgrades to this capability. The wireless access was so painful as to be unuseable most of the time. There were no tables or desks in the area where the wireless signal was available, only easy chairs where manipulating the computer while seated was very difficult. For that reason alone I would not do another Princess cruise!
• There were a number of things on the ship that we did like. There were four pools on the ship with two reserved for adults only. Two hot tubs were also adults only (and were PLENTY hot). The movies under the stars with the huge LCD screen was fun — the nights were a bit too cold; this could be great summertime activity. The shopping on board was good, particularly for sundry items. The casino was tucked away and out of sight unless you really wanted to go there. There were four venues for shows each evening which meant we could find some interesting entertainment when we wanted to. The embarkation process was smooth and very fast — Holland America could definitely learn from this process!!
• We probably should have done more research on the Internet about the tours we signed up for. The Athens tour we selected included almost three hours of sitting on the bus going to and from the Temple of Poseidon on the southern tip of the island. We could have taken a different tour that would have spent a little more time in the center of Athens. The tour descriptions sound wonderful, but often aren’t exactly what they’re hyped to be in the cruise brochures.

We had a great time. We were with some good friends and we really enjoyed their company. At the beginning of the cruise Nina remarked that the next twelve days will probably just fly by. And so they did. No sooner had the cruise started than it was over. Stay tuned for detailed information about our adventures at each port of call.

We are in Salt Lake City for the evening. Tomorrow morning we go to the airport and begin the long trip eastward eventually to end up in Barcelona, Spain. So, we’re almost ready to start! It’s been a very quiet evening. I’ve been in Salt Lake since Wednesday evening for business meetings. The meetings were interesting and informative and ended this afternoon about 4 p.m. Nina drove down this morning and spent time with Heather at the Family History Library. We met up at the hotel about 4:30 p.m. She’s moved into the hotel room and it’s good to be together again. We had a very nice dinner at The Olive Garden and then watched the end of the White Sox / Angels baseball game (the White Sox won). Just right to wind down and get ready for the long flight tomorrow. Here’s an attempt at our schedule for the next couple of weeks — with everything in Pocatello times:

No guarantee that all of this is right — but it should be pretty close! We’re moving up to the starting line….