We survived Naples!!! Okay, that may sound a bit dramatic, but after the last 24 hours of adventures in this city, we just got out of a taxi, saying a mutual "Grazie a Dios!" with the driver and "We Survived!" We arrived in Naples yesterday afternoon and took a cab to our hotel, Hotel San Mauro. In checking out the location, the reviews said big rooms, clean, good restaurant, and it is close to both the airport (where we depart from tomorrow) and Pompeii (which w...

Today begins our journey down the Italian peninsula toward Naples. We hadn't realized it when we purchased the seat reservations, but this train passes through about every major Italian city one might want to visit. Beginning in Venice, we then head through Bologna, Florence, and Rome before arriving in Naples - and all that in 5 hours. Praise God for high speed trains! We're writing this post from our seats (9C & 9D) on car 7 of train 9419. It's a packe...

Today was another wonderful day, although the warmest by far that we've experienced. In fact, once our day at Olympia was finished and we returned to the ship's pool to cool off, a crew member joked about it being 50 C and we wondered if he might have been serious. And another thing, it's really inconvenient doing all of the mental conversions traveling abroad. We should have either mandated the American measurement system when we had some collateral after WWI...

Yesterday and today we sailed around the southern tip of Greece to visit Santorini and Athens. We went on cruise excursions in both cities and felt like we got to see quite a bit in our two days. Santorini is the island in "Mama Mia" and "Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants" and it is more beautiful than words can describe. While I've been generally pretty surprised by how dry and brown Greece is, Santorini has the postcard village of Oia on the north side of the...

Sorry it has been a few days...it has been hard to fit in a blog post with our busy schedule of eating and laying beside the pool. This is one of the first times we've remembered to use data while on shore since we aren't sure our cell service works with 'Cellular at Sea'! We have spent the last two days touring our first couple of ports - Dubrovnik, Croatia and Corfu, Greece. Both were beautiful and we have enjoyed the transition to the summer climate, so much...