Janna's Big Birthday Cruise: Summer 20006
We'll spare you endless details of what was a memorable trip, but included here are some highlights and pictures of our two-week trip to Italy and the Eastern Mediterranean.
First stop: Roma! How wonderful to rediscover the Eternal City with Janna (we'd both been here before, but in previous incarnations). A luxury hotel (Lord Byron), leisurely walks through the old piles of rubble and the new shops, great food (of course! we were in Italy!), and stunning art made the three days the perfect first-step to our ten-day cruise. One great moment included dinner from the top of the Hassler Hotel, with sweeping views over Rome (St. Peter's Basilica in the background) as the sun went down.
Rome was hot, but not terribly crowded, or at least it didn't feel like it. In fact, the morning we went to see the Excavations beneath St. Peter's, the square was virtually empty!
Another highlight was dinner at a colleague's apartment -- extravagantly delicious food, lovely view, fun dog!
We got on the enormous Holland American Noordam on Sunday, then promptly lost track of all time. One could get used to the Room Service Life. I was amazed that even though the ship is huge, we never had a sense of crowding, lines, waits, or herding. They really have this down to a science, and we are quite impressed. The Noordam is like a horizontal five-star hotel.
After a 1 1/2 day cruise down the Italian coast, through the Straits of Messina, and around the boot, we docked in Dubrovnik, the walled city that has been reconstructed since the devastating civil war of 1991-1992.
From there on to Corfu, a lovely island snuggled off the coast of northern Greece, near Albania. We hired a cab (Mercedes!) to take us out to a monastery on the other side of the island, did a small-boat tour through beautiful grottoes and caves, had lunch on the beach, and enjoyed the stunning views of the Mediterranean.
I worked out a lot on ship, so by the time I got to Corfu, I was back in pretty good shape.
Olympia, the birthplace of the Olympic Games, was next. We did one of the ship's organized excursions, since Olympia is an hour's ride from the shore. It was all well done, informative, and easy. Olympia itself is beautiful, and one can easily fantasize about life in the ancient empires.
On to Santorini, an island that reminded us very much of Capri. It's perched dramatically on top of a volcanic formation, full of shops and restaurants, and the views from lunch make you want to sit there forever.
Life on the ship couldn't have been more pleasant. The list of daily activities could tire you out, and anyone trying to do them all would be exhausted by the end of the voyage. We were rather lame in that department, ordering room-service breakfast every morning, sometimes not surfacing until noon.
But a wide variety of games, pools, jacuzzis (5!), dancing, dance lessons, meals, gambling, bridge, live shows, a comedian, movies, etc., kept folks entertained. We read a lot, luxuriating on the balcony watching the Mediterranean float by. Our dinner companions were first-rate, interesting and charming people from New Jersey and California. We looked forward to arriving each evening, diving into the delicious food and sharing anecdotes, tales, and laughs from the day's adventures.
On to Turkey and another guided excursion to the extraordinary ruins at Ephesus. Only 1/7th of this huge city has been excavated. The library struck us as particularly iimpressive.
Another sea day enabled us to relax, float, dream, and read. The meals, as everyone had promised us, were excellent; there are so many restaurants and feeding choices, however, that we only made it to about half of them. It took all the willpower we had to avoid the evening Dessert Buffet; we failed (we will be spending the rest of August in the gym).
The biggest surprise for us was Valetta, Malta. Who knew? It's a monumental town, built over centuries in the crossroads of Mediterranean disputes, fortified heavily by one civilization after another, and built with beautiful gold-bathed stone. We had lunch on the top of a hotel overlooking the entire city center and harbor.
In Messina, Sicily, we were met by my wonderful friend and colleague Antonietta Calderone, professor at the U of Messina, who whirled us around the city and out to the narrowest point of the Straits, where Sicily practically touches Calabria. She plied us with granita (a sinful sherbet-like substance piled high with stick-a-spoon-straight-up-in-it whipped cream), local marzipan cakes, and brioche.
Even though we missed a connection in Frankfurt due to a delayed flight out of Rome, we managed to make it out of Europe and home to C'ville hours before the recently-uncovered bomb plots in London.
First stop: Roma! How wonderful to rediscover the Eternal City with Janna (we'd both been here before, but in previous incarnations). A luxury hotel (Lord Byron), leisurely walks through the old piles of rubble and the new shops, great food (of course! we were in Italy!), and stunning art made the three days the perfect first-step to our ten-day cruise. One great moment included dinner from the top of the Hassler Hotel, with sweeping views over Rome (St. Peter's Basilica in the background) as the sun went down.
Rome was hot, but not terribly crowded, or at least it didn't feel like it. In fact, the morning we went to see the Excavations beneath St. Peter's, the square was virtually empty!
Another highlight was dinner at a colleague's apartment -- extravagantly delicious food, lovely view, fun dog!
We got on the enormous Holland American Noordam on Sunday, then promptly lost track of all time. One could get used to the Room Service Life. I was amazed that even though the ship is huge, we never had a sense of crowding, lines, waits, or herding. They really have this down to a science, and we are quite impressed. The Noordam is like a horizontal five-star hotel.
After a 1 1/2 day cruise down the Italian coast, through the Straits of Messina, and around the boot, we docked in Dubrovnik, the walled city that has been reconstructed since the devastating civil war of 1991-1992.
From there on to Corfu, a lovely island snuggled off the coast of northern Greece, near Albania. We hired a cab (Mercedes!) to take us out to a monastery on the other side of the island, did a small-boat tour through beautiful grottoes and caves, had lunch on the beach, and enjoyed the stunning views of the Mediterranean.
I worked out a lot on ship, so by the time I got to Corfu, I was back in pretty good shape.
Olympia, the birthplace of the Olympic Games, was next. We did one of the ship's organized excursions, since Olympia is an hour's ride from the shore. It was all well done, informative, and easy. Olympia itself is beautiful, and one can easily fantasize about life in the ancient empires.
On to Santorini, an island that reminded us very much of Capri. It's perched dramatically on top of a volcanic formation, full of shops and restaurants, and the views from lunch make you want to sit there forever.
Life on the ship couldn't have been more pleasant. The list of daily activities could tire you out, and anyone trying to do them all would be exhausted by the end of the voyage. We were rather lame in that department, ordering room-service breakfast every morning, sometimes not surfacing until noon.
But a wide variety of games, pools, jacuzzis (5!), dancing, dance lessons, meals, gambling, bridge, live shows, a comedian, movies, etc., kept folks entertained. We read a lot, luxuriating on the balcony watching the Mediterranean float by. Our dinner companions were first-rate, interesting and charming people from New Jersey and California. We looked forward to arriving each evening, diving into the delicious food and sharing anecdotes, tales, and laughs from the day's adventures.
On to Turkey and another guided excursion to the extraordinary ruins at Ephesus. Only 1/7th of this huge city has been excavated. The library struck us as particularly iimpressive.
Another sea day enabled us to relax, float, dream, and read. The meals, as everyone had promised us, were excellent; there are so many restaurants and feeding choices, however, that we only made it to about half of them. It took all the willpower we had to avoid the evening Dessert Buffet; we failed (we will be spending the rest of August in the gym).
The biggest surprise for us was Valetta, Malta. Who knew? It's a monumental town, built over centuries in the crossroads of Mediterranean disputes, fortified heavily by one civilization after another, and built with beautiful gold-bathed stone. We had lunch on the top of a hotel overlooking the entire city center and harbor.
In Messina, Sicily, we were met by my wonderful friend and colleague Antonietta Calderone, professor at the U of Messina, who whirled us around the city and out to the narrowest point of the Straits, where Sicily practically touches Calabria. She plied us with granita (a sinful sherbet-like substance piled high with stick-a-spoon-straight-up-in-it whipped cream), local marzipan cakes, and brioche.
Even though we missed a connection in Frankfurt due to a delayed flight out of Rome, we managed to make it out of Europe and home to C'ville hours before the recently-uncovered bomb plots in London.
posted by Admiral David at 4:50 AM
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