Day At Sea

Woke up to the most beautiful day.

Today we would be cruising from Italy to the Greece Islands.

We just hung out on the balcony and took our time.  We didnt have anywhere to be so a very relaxing day ahead.

We had breakfast with this view.

The good ole belly flop contest.

There was one rather large girl wearing a yellow bikini that participated.  I of course was rooting for her.

These contest are so silly but fun to watch.

Our fellow cruisers.

If you ever want to feel a little better about your body just hang out on the deck of a cruise.

Thats exactly what we did.  Spent much of the morning and afternoon reading, sleeping, laughing, talking.  So excited to have so much uninterrupted time with my sister.

I had never seen water this color before.

It got so hot up on the deck that we decided to go and cool off.  We went to the 3:00 ice skating show.

This was legit.  It was so great!  Our Mom and Dad would have loved this.  Amazing to think that we were sitting here and actually cruising the Meditteranean.  We loved the ice show.

Tonights dinner was formal so we did our best to get cleaned up and make it to dinner on time.

Tonights show was called Now and Forever.  It was the Royal Carribean singers and dancers featuring broadway numbers.

Pretty good and entertaining.

 The glass flowers were all over the ship.  Reminds of the Bellagio in Vegas.

This is looking up at the elevators from the promenade.

Char and I only got on one elevator the entire time.  We did the stairs on purpose.

Tried to make up for all the running that I did not do.

I'm afraid that I fit in a little too much with the chick beside me.

Just needed a more colorful dress on.

The casino floor was glass and all of this cajun style stuff was underneath.

I will say that it felt kind of weird not having Tom by my side.

We came back to this cute little guy in our cabin.

What a very fun day this has been.

I dont often have an entire day where I can choice to do just about anything that I want to do and have no schedule to adhere to.

I am having such a great time.  I had no idea what was in store for me!

Messina (Sicily), Italy

These are not the best pictures and I dont even know the name of these mountains but I just loved that there were active volcanoes almost every day that we would just sail past.

(Ok,  I had to go back in here and add that I did know what volcano this was.  It was Mt. Edna!)

Arriving into port in Sicily, Italy.

You can only see little parts of the highways.  Most of the highway is actually tunneled through the mountains.

In America when buildings get old like this they are torn down and newer is better.

I love the old world feeling of Europe.

Char and I got off the boat and walked through the downtown area just exploring.

Fountains are everywhere but this one in particular is really really scary to me.

This was a park close to the port with these beautiful trees.  Lots of locals hanging out here.  There was also a well that they were bringing their buckets to and filling up for their families water supply for the day.

After walking around for a while, we found a train that took us down the road a little way to a beach.

 This beach was pretty small and only a few other people out there.  We were certainly the only tourist there.  All the others actually lived right across the street.  It was funny to hear the old Italian women yell out the window to their husband or kids that were down at this beach.

Water was so beautiful, clear, and blue.

This water was also soooooo cold.  Just wasnt expecting that.  You could not stay in very long at all.

Across the bay you could see smoke coming out of the mountains.

 This was so relaxing and exactly what Char and I were looking for.  Basically just us and a few locals and the scenery around us was perfect.

 Love this picture.

It kind of looks like old abandoned boats but these are boats that belong to the families that live right above here.  Close to dinner and they all come out, push their boats in the water, and go out to catch that nights dinner!

We saw a lot of these boats going out to fish. 

It took us a while to figure out that there are 2 men sitting way  way up high on this crows nest.  They are the fish spotters.

We took the train back into the port.

This is the thing about every train that we have been on.

We dont see anyone buying tickets and there certainly was not anyone checking any of our tickets.

We were very confused by this.

 Our ship was huge.

When we would come back to the port we could always see the ship hovering over all the buildings.

With a ship this big you could not feel the movement of the ocean at all.  Not to mention that the seas were almost completely flat for the entire cruise.  Huge difference from being in the swells of the Atlantic.

I wasnt even going to risk having motion sickness as I am prone to it so I had a patch on the entire time.

I didnt need them and lesson learned as I had 24 hours of withdrawals from taking the patch off when I got home.

 If anyone has a chance to go on a cruise:  Navigator of the Seas is highly recommended by us!!!!!

Hard to describe the size of this ship, the inside was decorated with art and sculptures.

It had all your normal stuff but also a full size theatre, ice skating rink, full shopping promenade, night clubs like Las Vegas,  rock climbing, top deck was an entire sports deck with full courts, 18 hole miniature golf.  Even had a Johnny Rockets.  I was completely blown away with this ship.

Dinner at the Chops Steak House

Great dinner and yes that is Creme Brule in front of us.

After dinner we went to the theatre and saw a great Beetles show.

These guys were actually in Las Vegas the week before and their agent booked them for the cruise this week.  They were only on the ship for that one show and then fly out of the next port.

It was so much fun!

 Its a good thing that most days we got a late afternoon nap because the night life on the ship goes late into the night.  Not that we ever did the late late night but it was certainly past my bed time every night.

After the Beetles show, the entertainment crew did a 70's party in the Promenade.

It was totally fun and filled with high energy.

 These pictures look as if we are at a Chip N Dales male review.  I can promise that we are not.  If I were going to do that I am sure I would rather see Thunder Down Under.  Just joking! Just Joking!

This 70's party had people that were age 1 to 90's.  It was all good clean fun.  There was a dance train that came through and these were the guys from the entertainment crew that had just finished dancing to  YMCA.  They were taking pictures with everyone.  

Ok, was nite nite time for the Foss girls.

Day 2- Civitavecchia, Italy

Today we needed to travel about 1 1/2 hours to the port city of Civitavecchia.

The easiest way would be to hire a driver to pick us up at the hotel or even get a taxi to take us there.

I shot down both of those options.  I think it is part of the adventure to take the trains in Europe.  Of course to get to the train we first need to take the subway.

Charlene agreed with my plan and we headed out with our luggage for the cruise.

This is one of my favorite pictures of Char on the trip.

It didnt take long for Char to start disagreeing with my adventure way of getting around.  She was carrying 2 times the weight in her suitcase and backpack.  I could see why she was struggling. 

Anyway, we made it through the subway no problems and onto the train station.

We had a little confusion there only because the machine would not accept our trip.  We figured out that train was full.

A woman asked us if we needed help and Char said NO!  This lady followed us all the way to the very last train on the platform and it was a very long way.  We would try to lose her and she would catch back up.  She tried to help Char with her luggage and Char was ready to hit this lady if she would not leave her alone.  It was unbelievable!  She would not stop.  Char was yelling at her:  NO NO NO!!!!

I was already on the train and sitting back to watch this show.

I was laughing so hard because this lady did not have a chance up against my sister.  Everyone was laughing around me.  I guess you had to be there but it was just comical.  The lady finally gave my sister the crazy loco sign and Char said :  Thats right lady, I am crazy and you dont want to mess with me.  Hysterical!!!  Like I said, no one else beside our gladiator guy was going to rip us off!

So here we are on our way on a train with NO air conditioning.  

I really think Char was going to kill me and no more decisions made by me.

I  was loving her free entertainment she was giving me.

We met a cool family from Argentina traveling with their 3 kids.  They did a capital tour of the major countries.  It was a cool experience talking with the Mom whom spoke English.  Interestingly enough, the family had never been to the United States.  I guess I just assume that everyone has been to the U.S.

The savvy travelers that we are, we made it with no other fights,  did get some more entertainment from a drunk guy on the train though.

Now we had to walk a few more blocks to get to the ship.

The ship was enormous!!!  I could not believe how big it was.  I didnt take pictures until later in the week of the ship.  Embarkation was so easy.  We were on the ship in no time and our luggage was at our cabin!

This was our room for the next 7 days

Little baby tug boat to help very large ship get on her way.

Leaving Civitavecchia

out to sea!

sailing in the Mediterranean

We went to lunch at our first buffet of the week.

Not too bad as the salad bar was pretty good.

Then onto the upper deck for a sail away party and some much needed relaxation.

There was live music but not the Caribbean type that I would be use to.

This was all Italian.  It took us a few more hours before we started to figure out just how Italian this ship was.

2 very happy girls

This is the track that I can say I never ran on once!

I guess that should have made me sad but just too much fun to even care.

This was the adult only pool and weird enough we never went to that one.

After an incredible late afternoon nap, we went back to our cabin.

This was the view from our balcony.

Enjoying a nice dinner in a beautiful dinning room.

I wasnt a fan of the food that night but I really enjoyed my Diet Coke!

An art structure at one end of the promenade.

The inside of the ship had a 12 story promenade.  It looked like a mall with an art gallery, stores, restaurants, bars.

I could not believe how big it was.  Just totally blew me away.

My pictures inside dont turn out very well because I just dont know how to use the lighting on my camera.

After dinner, we went to a variety show in this huge theatre.

We had already fell in love with our cruise director Simona.

She was from Naples and spoke 11 languages fluently.

She would speak in English and then interpret everything in Italian.

She spoke sooooo fast and clear that we were just amazed at her.  It wasnt just this night that she did this but every single day for the entire cruise.

We are not sure when this girl ever slept.  She was in charge of everything.  Besides the captain, the crew jokes that she is 2nd in charge!

She was amazing.

We were told the stats of the ship that night.

There were 3,500 passengers, 1,500 crew.  61 nations represented,  only 268 total from the United States.  most represented of course, the Italians.

Dont know why this shocked me so much.  We were in Italy but I just thought that most passengers would be from the U.S.  I was very wrong and Char and I were certainly a minority.

There was a ballroom dance couple, Royal Caribbean singers and Dancers, a contortionist (could have gone without seeing her mangle her body into all kinds of positions) and a bubble art guy.  Char and I really wanted to get up and leave when this guy came out.  His performance was quite painful but glad to say that he was the only entertainment that was horrible on the ship for the entire week.

It was getting late.  Shows dont start until 11:15.

We took a stroll through the casino to just check it out.  

We were going to play one game but this was the only place that took money on the whole ship and of course we only had Euros with us.  The casino only took U.S. dollars.

It was time for us to go to sleep anyway.

Such a fun first day!