The Mediterranean Cruise (Oct 22 - 29)

Hello Everyone,

(To control the volume of the music, scroll down to the bottom.)


Today is Halloween and we're in Cannes, France. We'll be here for five days, leaving November 4th for Rome.

Sorry we lost touch with you while we were at sea, however, here are some of the highlights of the cruise.

In Tunis, Tunisia - North Africa we toured the old Roman port and saw camels, Arabs smoking opium and toured a palace with an amazing history. We went to a market and Erik practiced bartering. He loved it and wants to do it more. (We´ve created a monster!)

In Messina, Italy we went on to Taromina and tried to imagine the Greek theatre as it was in all its glory. The view of the sea and the tranquil environment as it is tucked back in the mountains made us realize that they were pretty sophisticated back in 700 BC when they constructed it. We also thought it would have been cool to hear Elton John perform in the stadium as it is today - hosting many contemporary artists.

For Georg´s birthday we ate gelato (ice cream) and toured the narrow streets shopping in the unique market boutiques and listening to the rain. YES it poured all day when we were there. By the time our tour was over it was flooding in areas which caused a mud slide. Our bus was trapped in a tunnel for 4 hours and the traffic was halted for 16 km. Several tunnels were blocked!

We finally made it back to our ship and we heard the next day that after our bus had passed through a narrow road, the asphalt caved in, causing the other buses behind us to be over 8 hours late getting back to the ship! I guess Tunis had experienced similar flooding the week prior to our visit and 16 people lost their lives due to the floods.

We took a tour to Pompeii from Naples. Naples is quite a dirty city with a lot of crime and it´s not the kind of place you want to walk around in. There are many people living in cardboard boxes and begging on the streets. We were quite happy to head to Mount Vesuvius and Pompeii.

Our stop at a traditional cameo factory was a pleasant surprise. We learned how the craftsmen make cameos out of seashells and were compelled to purchase a couple of those treasures to keep.

Pompeii is the settlement that was founded in about 700 BC and wiped out in 79 AD after Mount Vesuvius erupted. The village was frozen in time and excavations have been done to three fifths of the city, revealing a sophisticated culture where they had bakeries, gymnasiums, several theatres, restaurants, plumbing, and, YES, 20 brothel houses. The pictures - frescos on the walls tell quite a story! We will post the pictures when we have internet with our own computer. It´s truly amazing!

Erik made friends with a lovely lady Susie´and despite the magnificent history that we witnessed, he reported that the best part of his day was meeting Susie. This only proves that the travelling is really about the people you meet and not so much the things you see. I guess we knew it but Erik articulated it for us. Our whole family was quite taken with Susie and were all a little sad when she disembarked the ship a few days before we did. Erik was especially sad. He also was THRILLED to learn that Susie´s brother is John Hyatt (sings Slow Turnin). This is a favorite musician of both Georg and Erik so somehow Susie has been elevated to sainthood for Erik and we will never hear the end of this great story.

Our next stop was Florence, Italy. We took a full day tour so we could see Florence in the morning and Pisa in the afternoon. Florence is as wonderful as we thought it would be. We had fun shopping at the markets and enjoyed all the sights and sounds of the city.We´re still in a state of disbelief that we have actually seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa! We learned about Galileo (this was his hometown where he went to school and discovered the earth was round - using a pendulum). We have great pictures to add to our blog when we get a chance!

The stop in St. Tropez, France included a tour of a few villages in Provence. The countryside is full of vineyards and olive groves and the bay in St. Tropez is home to yachts with lovely ladies onboard (of course). We walked through the narrowest street in the world and toured a lovely castle and old romantic town where life seems untouched by modern influences. Oh, this is also where Brigitte Bardot was proposed to (maybe her third marriage?)

Barcelona was our final stop on the cruise and although we were glad to be back we were sad to say goodbye to our new friends, the Jones family - Pete, Pauline, William and Peter Jr. from Manchester. We said goodbye and promised to see them again in Saskatchewan or somewhere. Again, it´s who you meet that makes you really love a place!

We also hope to meet up with Emma, from South Africa in South Africa in the new year. Perhaps in the spring, and we hope she will come see us in Saskatchewan too!

We will be in Barcelona October 29 and 30th and then leave for Cannes where we stay for 5 days (‘til November 4th) and use it as home base to travel around to some of the other sites.... Venice etc.

Then it’s on to Civitavecchia, Italy where we will take tours of Rome and area and then, after two days, we will go on to catch our cruise leaving from Rome.

Here’s the itinerary:
Nov 6 Rome
Nov 7 Cruising
Nov 8 Mykonos
Nov 9 (Our anniversary) Ephesus and Kusadasi Turkey
Nov 10 Rhodes
Nov 11 Limassol
Nov 12 Cruising
Nov 13 Alexandria Egypt
Nov 14 Cruising
Nov 15 Athens Greece
Nov 16 Cruising
Nov 17 Naples and Capri
Nov 18 Back to Rome

We are planning to go skiing in the Alps after the cruise and we´ll be in Portugal from Dec 1 - 7 and then near London Dec 8 - 10 to see Stonehenge and a few other sites.

Last days in the Algarve

We're looking forward to our last few days here. Sunday we leave for Barcelona to catch the MSC Melody for a seven day cruise. The following is our itinerary:




October 22 Depart Barcelona
October 22 Arrive Ibiza
October 24 Tunis, Tunisia
October 25 Sicily (Georg's birthday!)
October 26 Naples
October 27 Florence
October 28 St. Tropez, France
October 29 Return to Barcelona

We've really enjoyed our stay in the Algarve. Dieter has adjusted to spelling in the sand and using seashells to do work on his multiplication and division skills >mathematics with a twist!

Ladies - my feet have never looked or felt this good! All the visible signs of running are gone from my poor old feet. Walking on the beach is a workout and gentle on those feet. I highly recommend it!

If possible we would like to work the Algarve into our return leg of our European vacation.

Another day in paradise

We have enjoyed settling into and becoming familiar with this place. It has given us a moment to reflect about the past year that brought us to this place and the routines we have left behind. The boys have adapted well and are now more trusting of the logistics of us moving them around.

We do look forward to hearing from you particularly if works sucks or if the weather is miserable.
This brings us more joy!!

Sorry.

Spain is Next.

Monte Gordo Portugal (Eastern Algarve)

Our NIRVANA!

When we close our eyes and picture our paradise............................... it's always a beautiful beach, soft white sand a never-ending sunset and the sound of waves crashing against the shore.

The Dunamar aparthotel is right on the beach at Monte Gordo. We are one hour away from Seville Spain.

We've walked for hours and still haven't arrived at the end of the beach so it's a very very large coastline.

Each day we sit on our balcony and watch the sun rise and each evening the sunsets are truly amazing.

We will be here until October 21st then it will be off to Barcelona Spain.

Lisboa and Lagos

We stayed in Lisbon for a couple of days - just long enough to rent a car and check out a few sights. Lisbon was a nice change from the huge metropolis of London and Paris. What struck us about Lisbon was the old and the new seem to coexist in one place. The temperatures seemed almost tropical after Paris' 18 - 20 degrees.

We left Lisbon behind and traveled to the Algarve along the coastline to Lagos (pronounced Lagosh). In Lagos we rented a large apartment which was situated in the oldest part of the little fishing village. There were opportunities to walk through the narrow cobblestone alleys and experience life as the Portugese live it. The house we were living in consisted of four levels, each built on the other to accommodate the added generations. Our host Donetelia was a lovely woman who won our hearts with her charms and hospitality. The language barrier wasn't a problem and we relied on arm gestures (our physical activity) and smiles to communicate.

We walked along some rugged shoreline to reach the beach and the boys (now known as the BEACH BOYS) played in the surf for several hours a day.

We appreciate the NO SMOKING bylaws of Saskatchewan as we seem to be the only non-smokers here. We've also noticed that dogs roam at will so you need to watch your step or .......

We're trying to download pictures but the internet is very slow here so this may not be successful today.

Lisboa Portugal

We arrived in Lisbon today. The temperature is around 25 degrees. The scenery is beautiful with hills, ocean and even palm trees!

Below is the link for the photo album we've created so far. I'm not sure if the London photos are posted yet, but this should include Disney and Paris.


http://web.mac.com/betterthan_nothing/Site/Photos.html

Oui! Oui! Paris!

This was our second full day in the city of Love and Romance with our kids! They hate it when we get amorous. We spent the day visiting the Louvre, the Cathedral and walking along the Champs Elysees.
What a treasure the Parisians have in the musee. I can only imagine how enriched the students of Paris are by having this at their disposal. The treasures from the ancient Greeks/Romans/and Egyptians were fabulous to see. I had been told of the realism the ancient greeks were able to carve into stone, but to actually see it was something else. We all felt privileged to see the Mona Lisa, but what moved me most was David's painting of Naploean's inaugeration as France's Emperor. Standing infront of it you felt as if you were there as a spectator of the event.
Notre Dame was very busy today! We were told that in the past the village would have come up to and surrounded it, but today there is an open market where people can gather and admire its enormity. Though I do not consider myself religious I did find myself "moved" by the grandeur of the Cathedral and could only imagine how it would have affected the peasantry of the day. We spent some time listening to a service in progress and for such an expansive building the acoustics were fantastic!
To end our day we strolled along the boulevard. Paris at night does truely "capture your heart".
We sat down at one of the small bistro's and ate while Paris strolled by. Our kids look forward to the adventure which is the subway. Once you get the idea behind it it really is an efficient way to move around. Au revoir Paris!

We'll post the pictures tomorrow.

Vive la France!

Ah Paris!

We love this place. It's amazing. Unlike London, the city is well laid out so it's very easy to find your way around here. The people are friendly and there are so many sites to see we'll need to stay here a long time to absorb all the details.

Today we took an OpenTour bus and travelled around to many sites including the Arc de Triomphe, the Tour Eiffel and the Louvre. Since our internet connection is almost depleted this evening, we'll save the details for a later blog.

Georg's background as a History minor has certainly come in handy and we're all benefitting from his background.

We went up the Arc de Triomphe and stood in awe looking over the magnificent city.

Later, at the base Georg told us the story of when his Dad was in the German Navy stationed off Cherbourg. He had a 5 day leave and went to Paris. During that time he and some friends went to a palm reader (mystic) and he was told that he would meet someone he loved in Paris. Later he was sitting on a bench in some park in Paris and heard someone playing a familiar tune from his homeland on a harmonica. He went to see who it was and it turned out to be his older brother Georg who had also been on leave from the eastern front. The two met by chance and as it turned out it was the last time they saw each other. Georg was later killed in the forest of Finland.

We all imagined Opa being in the same Arc de Triomphe as an 18 year old and here we were 70 years later. Isn't history - family or otherwise wonderful!

Tomorrow we will go to meet the lovely Mona Lisa. We've been told it can be a shock to see how small and apparently insignificant the picture is in real life. We'll let you know tomorrow.

At home in London

We arrived in London (a city of 15 million) and felt very much at home in this area: Gloucester Road. Our hotel was right across the street from this picture.

It was quite an ordeal hauling 8 bags from the airport to the hotel via the train and the tube. Nothing could have ever prepared us for this experience!

We went on a double decker tour of the area and were amazed at the history.

The kids favorite stories were about Sir Winston Churchill: One was when he arrived at session drunk and a woman said "You sir, are drunk" to which he replied "Madame, you are ugly but I will be sober in the morning." Another story they particularly liked was one where a lady said to Sir Winston Churchill "If you were my husband I would put poison in your drink" to which he replied, "Madame, if you were my wife, I'd drink it."

They also were amazed to learn the origin of the phrase "laughing one's head off."

We also learned that Big Ben doesn't refer to the clock, but rather the bell within the clock. That bell weighs over 13 tonnes and was made by the same company that made the Liberty Bell. Incidently both bells are cracked. (They should have spent more!)

We went by the school where Daniel Radcliff (the actor in Harry Potter) went to school and we saw one of the buildings they used to film Gringotts Bank in the movie. These details were very significant for the boys.

We saw many things including Hyde Park which is 5 miles around- (and people were riding horseback there!).

We saw the Tower of London, Buckingham Palace, the Marble Arch, Westminster Abby, Kensington Palace, London Bridge, Princess Diana Memorial Fountain, Peter Pan statue, Bruce Willis' house and Madonna's house to name a few sites.

We enjoyed hearing about where Sir Isaac Newton is buried, Geoffry Chaucer, and Charles Dickens. We do plan to go back to Westminster Abby in December.

Leg #2 of the journey

Waiting at the airport in Orlando.........

Here's Dieter playing webkins at the Orlando airport. I'm noticing a big difference between the ease-of-use with the Mac and the PC. It took less than a minute for the Mac to locate the wireless network at the airport and connect itself. It took much longer than that for me to get the settings changed (manually) with this PC. In the end, we're both online and everything seems to be going well.

We're learning all about travelling from trial and error. Today our driver with the "Happy Limo" was a half hour late picking us up from our hotel (Buena Vista Suites). The driver was grumpy and made the seventh dwarf (that would be Grumpy) look like one of Santa's helpers. We learned that you don't have to be happy or even remotely cheerful to work for the Happy Limo folks.

We also learned that heavy textbook-laden bags will cost $25 more each to send on the plane.

Other important details which most travellers will know but we didn't:

• There's a reason they don't recommend you wear white to travel.
• Sleep is best done while in the horizontal position.
• The reason your travel bags are called "luggage" becomes more obvious the more you travel with heavy bags
• "Shoving" articles of clothing into bags does not equal "packing"
• That trick of ROLLING your clothes to prevent wrinkling only works when you're in the military and your clothes are either 100% wool or 100% polyester.

Well, off to London to visit the queen 'er maybe just to ride a double Decker bus.

Castaway Cay

The seven-day Disney Cruise included visits to Key West, The Grand Cayman Island, Cozumel and Castaway Cay. In Key West we had a catamaran sail followed by snorkeling. Unfortunately it was a rough day at sea and the snorkeling wasn't as good as it might have been otherwise. We did see some bright fish and many jellyfish. Dieter kind of panicked when he found himself in the middle of four of those sea creatures and consequently he ended up with 12 stings and a not-so-good attitude towards jellyfish. The seven-mile beach at Grand Cayman was fun and the kids enjoyed the water and sand. In Cozumel we introduced Erik to the art of bartering. He was, as usual, embarrassed by our actions, but quite pleased with his new chain and Aztec calendar piece. Our excursion of touring the Mayan ruins was cancelled due to poor weather (thunder and lightning). The highlight of the island hops was Castaway Cay, Disney's private island. Dieter met his hero (above) and took a photo of the Flying Dutchman which is anchored at the island. All this sparked even more interest in pirates. He was delighted to participate in the pirate event on board the ship. Georg even got dressed up but we think he looked more like a wrestler than a pirate. Erik tried very hard to avoid any contact with "that dude."

After 5 days of Disney World and one day at Universal Studios Georg and I are ready to say goodbye to the Disney "endurance tests." The kids could go another week but we're done. We leave for London England tomorrow, stopping over in Detroit along the way. I guess we will fly all night and arrive on October 3 in the morning. We only plan to stay one night in London so we'll miss seeing our friend Stan (who arrives on the 5th). We then fly to Paris where we plan to buy a car to test our nerves abroad. We are hoping to meet up with our friend and former neighbor Jorge Antunes and his family in Paris or Lisbon. Thank heavens for technology so we can keep in touch!