Nice and Palma de Mallorca

  Our last two days on the ship were nicely timed. Garrett and I were both tired of having a list of things to see, and reading out of the Rick Steve's book all the time. Nice had a good walking tour, but we ditched that plan and decided that discovering the streets on our own would be better. We also had Michelle and Jake with us for both of our last days which was really fun. After walking around town and finding the main plaza, we rented bikes and strolled the Promenade des Anglais for a few hours. At the end we hiked a little hill on the shore to an old castle lookout, and then hiked even more to a neat looking waterfall overlooking the city. It was beautiful. We introduced Jake and Michelle to Orangina, and they liked it. Nice was much more pleasant than Marseille for sure. It also contrasted with the last few Italian ports we were at, which had less of a first world feel. Italy kind of reminds me of a Mediterranean Mexico of sorts, just a little dirtier and lawless. I think France would be a more livable place in the long run, and I honestly think it's just as pretty if not more so. Italy is pretty to visit, but I don't think if last there long. 

   At Palma de Mallorca, Spain, we decided to just beach it all day. The small island had a large cathedral that we looked at, and after a few hours of tanning our cheeks on a tops optional beach, we split up and Garrett and I took a walking tour of the city. It was a lot like Barcelona, with La Rambla, but I think the city backstreets seemed older and narrower. It was clean and more populated than I imagined too. I liked Palma because it had a little island feel with the comforts of clean, nice resorts nearby if you want that too. 

   The plane ride home was a drag through the mud as usual. The only difference was I was much more tired this time. I think it slept a solid 10 hours on planes and in the SFO airport, and I don't think I'll have any trouble sleeping tonight. Poor Garrett caught the cold that I had before and was horribly miserable and he still has to go to work tomorrow too. 

Garrett's awesome camera and skills in action

Michelle and I on the beach while we watched the boys "swimming to the buoy"

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Florence and Pisa

Right now I'm looking at the beautiful Italian sun kissed countryside from my train window as we head back to port. It looks like something from wine bottle label. It's interesting how the trees and country look so distinct in different places. Even southern France and northern Italy have their own countryside that's obviously distinguishable from each other. I would say even Rome and Florence are different. 

   Florence ended up feeling a little more rushed than I wanted it to be, but what did I expect with all the stuff I planned? We went to Pisa in the morning, and after an unfortunate misguidance from the cruise staff, ended up on the wrong bus which put us in much later than I wanted to be, but we got where we needed to be in the end. We walked around the Field of Miracles and took pictures of the leaning tower of Pisa for a while, and then headed to Florence. The real David at the Accademia was not a disappointment. Some works of art make me wonder why they are so famous, but David is not one of them. He really is a masterful statue. After that we did the RS renaissance walk down the main drag of Florence, which was really the rush of the day unfortunately. I really liked Piazza Signoria, with its history, fountains, statues, and buildings, but I wish I would've had more time to sit around and eat gelato there or something. The Ponte Vecchio was so picturesque, and we strolled up and down the bridge and stopped to look out on the city, probably my favorite stop of the day. After we squirreled the Uffizi gallery, which was more like a drive by, which I'm totally ok with. We saw the main most famous art pieces, and at this point I'm kind of museumed out. We've seen all of the greatest works of art in the history of the world in the Lourve, Orsay, Accademia, Uffizi, Vatican, and others in castles, churches, and other places in two weeks. I'm excited to just bike around and stroll through the rest of our cities without a hit list or anything. 

   Florence was clean, bright, and exciting and I feel like there could have been a few more days of wandering there for us. Maybe someday well make our way back.

  At the end of  the day Garrett and I take great satisfaction in going over the days expenses and comparing what we paid to the cost of what we would have paid of we'd taken the overpriced ship excursions. We did a little better in Rome, where we paid about 1/8 of what it would've cost to do even the most basic tour, and even got to do and see much more than those offered. For some reason Florence transportation ended up adding up way more, and we only had a 50% savings. Darn. Haha, but I feel really satisfied that even though we did rush it, we saw everything we wanted to and got a surrounding area tour in the back of a taxi in the end which was really nice, and did the whole thing for a great price. 

Fake David!

Favorite picture ever: love locks on Ponte Vecchio

The Rape of the Sabine pictured behind

The Duomo, an architectual masterpiece of it's time

Piazza de Miracoles

The view from Ponte Vecchio, above the Arno River

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Roma

Rome was surprisingly easy to fit into one day. I thought we'd be in a crazy rush, but we ended up having extra time to walk the streets and get a feel for the locals and the city. We started off getting off at Civitavecchia early and walking to the metro station where we took the hour long train into Rome. Our immediate view of the Colloseum from the metro was construction. Bleh. Then we started at Palantine hill where we got our tickets for the day without waiting for a single person in line, and made our way down the hill, listening to our Rick Steve's audiotour both sharing my headphones cause Garrett forgot to download it. It's amazing how much more interesting the forum is when I understand what things are. The first time I saw it I wasn't very impressed with the glorified pile of rubble because I didn't understand the significance of it all. Garrett actually said in the end the forum was his favorite, even better than the Colosseum.

After we headed into the Colosseum, which I must say is much more spectacular at night, and did the RS audiotour in chipmunk.

We finished ahead of schedule, and opted to walk to the Trevi instead of take the metro so we could see the sights along the way.

After eating lunch on the Trevi steps, we strolled over to the Pantheon, and chipmunked half of the RS audio, but by that time I was kind of sick of his voice and the Pantheon is a quick stop anyway.

We opted again to see Rome on foot and skipped the metro to the Vatican, which was worth the bridge crossing across the Tiber, although we did have a rough time finding the actual museum entrance. I still could remember some of my Vatican tour from last year, so I told Garrett about stuff, and he seemed to already know a lot about the pieces from reading up before we came. The Raphael rooms were neat. We saw the Sistine Chapel and picked out the creation scenes, Noah scenes, prophets, and found Michealangelo in the last judgement. After we finished the RS tour with St. Peter's, and the square.













 It was a full and fun day, and we got to see everything we wanted to with time to spare. It brought back fond memories of last year when I went with my friends Sadee and R
achel too.

Trending the man-pri. The Vatican is known for turning people away who are not dressed appropriately. Garrett played it safe with long jeans only to show up and find people in gym shorts.

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Naples and Pompeii

After all the warnings and trash talk about Naples online, I was pleasantly surprised by how good the city actually was. I know there are tons of pickpockets but we didn't run into anything bad so I felt fortunate. We started our day with a Pompeii escavations tour with a nice and knowledgable man who was a little hard to understand. Mt Vesuvius is quite a mountain, even with it's too blown off. I can see why people like to build around it. Pompeii was really interesting and I was surprised how well some of the indoor paintings were preserved. The views from that city must've been spectacular too. After the tour we drove back along the Amalfi coast and went out to Naples to take a look around with Michelle and Jake. We went straight to an authentic pizza shop that Rick Steve's recommends, and we all liked it.

 After we strolled Spaccanapoli and Via Toledo, and shopped for a while. I finally got a new pair of fake Ray Bans cause I broke the Louis Vuitton fakies we got in Mexico, when we were in Marseille. After we ran out of sights, we returned to the ship a little early to play on the water slides, and we sat on the deck overlooking the city and Mt Vesuvius until I fell asleep. Eventually we got up and ate dinner and reviewed our plans for Rome tomorrow. Overall Naples was a great, laid back experience that exceeded my expectations.

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