Our trip began with a visit to the cemetery to pay our respects to Robert's Aunty Bruna Paluzzano. This was just off the autostrada on the way from the airport in Venice. Today we paid respects to another Aunty Paluzzano, this one is buried in Paese. We were picked up by Savina and Esther, Esther is Robert's cousin and we met Savina on our last visit in 2009, when we had the Paluzzano reunion. Savina organised our visit after a chat on Facebook. I was sitting wat...

We arrived in Venice just before lunch, after a day at sea. The sun was shining and the view from our stateroom window revealed a Venice in all its summer glory. The tiles on the Doge's Palace were glistening and the trees were in full bloom. The hardest thing was to chose what to do or where to go. We have visited Venice in Winter and the difference is amazing, the number of tourists triples, as do the street vendors and gondola's. Today we had our walking shoes...

What we could have done, according to our Cruise Director Eric (who is retiring after this cruise) 7 am Stretching 8 am Mass (we attended Monday and Sunday) 9 am Indoor Cycling (fees apply) 9 am Rolling in Dough at the Culinary Arts Centre 10 am Mediaspa Seminar - non surgical facelift 10 am Behind the scenes tour of the Kitchen 10:30 and 11:30 are Windows 8 tutorial in the Digital Workshop - will attend these 12 Trivia - name that tune 1 pm Team Trivia Blah blah...

We are in the Port of Argostoli, which is the capital of the island of Kefalonia and the Ithaka Islands. After the towns of Oia and Fira on Santorini it is a let down. The streets are full of closed, vacant businesses and graffiti. A lot of the buildings have concrete cancer, due to the high salinity. We have decided to just sit and watch the world go by, with our two priest mates. As well the frantic contact with Edward and Victoria, and checking emails. Today, ...

This morning I was up to watch the sunrise over the caldera looking directly at Fira on the Island of Santorini. Today is the first day we have used the ships tours. They keep placing highly reduced flyers in our letter box, we have ignored them until now. The idea of a priority tender to a port and a bus to the village of Oia and returned to Fira with a ticket on the Cable car was too good to miss. I know that Paul and Kate are braver than us and rented a quad b...