Anxiously waiting!

Any day now we should be getting the cruise documentation. It will include vital information like the hotels in Venice, Florence, and Rome. Then we can seriously start planning where we might want to eat in each of the cities...not that eating in those cities is a priority of mine, or anything.

In a related matter, our niece Samantha Ross arrived in Rome this morning for her semester of schooling, thanks to John Carroll University. Here's Sam and her Dad Randy at the Columbus airport when she was leaving.

We will meet Sam when we get to Rome and have dinner with her. And if she could get us in to see the Pope, that would be fine, too.

New excursion. New laptop. New flights.

Big day today on two fronts. First, we were able to book the Ultimate Ephesus tour that we thought we were too late for. This is a four hour tour (no, not the infamous three hour tour) of the ruins and the terrace houses. I'm excited. This is the stop EVERYBODY raves about on this cruise and we got the excursion we wanted. We also wanted to see the St. John church, but that will have to wait until our next visit.

The other big news was the fact our Dell laptop arrived via FedEx. That will be the computer I keep this blog on during the trip, so if you are reading this you better hope it works. I'll start playing with that tonight and determine what programs, if any, we need to load on it.

Two of our four flights over and back got changed this weekend, but for the better. We actually get home sooner now and will have plenty of time to get to the flight leaving Rome at the end of the cruise. I can't sleep on planes so Philly to Venice and Rome to Chicago should be torture for me. Then again, it IS Venice and Rome. I'll live.

Preparation

We interrupt our normally scheduled blogging for this update on our planning for the trip. I know I said I'd talk about the ports we'll be visiting, but there's news on the preparation front.

I was having difficulty maintaining the blog on my iPad, but had no issues on a PC. Therefore, using our household's logic, we ordered a new Dell laptop for the trip. You can never have too many laptops/PCs/iPads/iPhones/iTouches/iEtc. around. What's five more pounds in my backpack already stuffed with a five pound camera and lens, plus snacks?

Then we tried to reserve a couple excursions, until we got to Ephesus--the only real excursion on the cruise we were excited about--and got a message that seemed to indicate it was full. Di is going to see if our Diamond status with Royal Caribbean will get us in. There are other options but we didn't want to do the seven hour tour when the four hour one was available. Yes, we know we can do private tours. We like the security of a Royal Caribbean-led tour that assures we will be back on the ship in time. I'd still be on St. Maarten (not a bad thing) if it wasn't for that policy.

For those of you interested solely in Di's shopping activities, she took care of shipboard credit, as well. Royal Caribbean might as well invest that money starting today. It's as good as theirs. And I won't mention how I benefit at Portofino's.

I'll get around to previews of the ports eventually.

What to see?

The pre-cruise portion of the trip includes Venice, Florence and Rome. It is a combination of scheduled activities through Royal Caribbean and time on our own. Since we've already been to all three cities once before, we have a good idea of what it is we want to see on our own.

In Venice, we'd like to get to Murano--famous for its glass factories.

 

We also haven't eaten at a traditional Venice restaurant, so we're going to close our eyes to the prices and just do it.



In Florence, I want to get back to Santa Croce church again and see the tombs of Michelangelo (below) and Galileo and all the other famous people there.



In Rome, I didn't get to see the Roman forum last time. That's high on my list, still.



Anyway, we have 2-3 days in each city and if we aren't eating we'll be at all these places. In the next post, I'll start talking about what we want to see on the cruise.

Parlo Italiano un po. Ma non molto bene. Sufficiente per ordinare il cibo spero.

Here's the itinerary for the pre-cruise tour and the cruise itself. The only change is that we arrive in Venice on October 8, but since we scheduled that on our own it does not appear on this list.

PRE-CRUISE PORTION Date City Description 09-Oct Venice, Italy Venice Hotel One. 10-Oct Venice, Italy Venice Hotel One. 11-Oct Venice, Italy / Livorno (Florence), Italy Venice To Florence Transfer. Florence Hotel. 12-Oct Livorno (Florence), Italy / Civitavecchia (Rome), Italy Flornece To Rome Transfer. Rome Hotel 1. 13-Oct Civitavecchia (Rome), Italy Rome Hotel 1. 14-Oct Civitavecchia (Rome), Italy Rome Transfer To Ship. CRUISE PORTION Date Port Arrive Depart Activity 14-Oct Civitavecchia (Rome), Italy 5:00 PM 15-Oct Messina (Sicily), Italy 10:00 AM     7:00 PM                                                           16-Oct Cruising Cruising 17-Oct Kusadasi (Ephesus), Turkey 7:00 AM 6:00 PM                                                                                                                         18-Oct Piraeus (Athens), Greece 6:00 AM 6:00 PM                                                                                                                         19-Oct Chania (Souda), Crete, Greece 6:30 AM 3:00 PM                                                                                                                          20-Oct Cruising Cruising 21-Oct Civitavecchia (Rome), Italy 5:00 AM

Welcome!

This is the first entry in a blog I hope to keep during our trip to Europe in October. Watch for updates soon!