Last night we had the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to view an erupting volcano off the coast of Italy, at Stromboli. We passed by it around 12:30am, the captain (bless his little Italian heart), detoured the ship so we could see it. I hope I got some great pictures, but night pictures are difficult, even with a tripod and a remote shutter release, both of which I used tonight. The volcano was incredible, though. Red glowing lava was flowing down its side in three distinct trails, and a plume of glowing red smoke hung above it in the air just the way that rocks don't.
Stromboli Volcano erupting at night
The captain also took a short detour by his home town and blew the horn about a dozen times just to let everyone know he "made it". The lights on the shore are always pretty, but we missed most of them tonight as we were purchasing some beautiful artwork from Park West auctions. I think we stretched ourselves out a little, but we got some amazing stuff, and we'll be very happy with it.
Off the coast of Italy at night:
We also visited Naples, Pompeii, Sorrento, and Positano. I'll have more to write about them later, but for now, enjoy these pictures.
Positano art shot
Pompeii from outside
A Street in Pompeii
Rome is tomorrow, talk to you again soon!
Well, if the hotel I'm staying in has free Internet access, anyway. We're flying home in two days and can hardly believe it's almost over. But once again, there's a point in every vacation where you start to wish you were back at home, and we're certainly approaching that point now. As fun as it's been, we'll be glad to be home and back in the every day rut of our miserably boring lives.
Croatia was nice, Dubrovnik wasn't so stellar that I'd recommend going there, but if your ship happens to pass through, it's worth paying the $10 for a round-trip bus ride to the old town. You won't be able to walk it—it's something like 10km from the dock. We checked things out and sent off some postcards, had some ice cream, that's about it. I thought the gelatto in Venice was better than the ice cream in Dubrovnik, but others disagree.
Old Town Dubrovnik
The old town of Dubrovnik has some crazy alleys and stairs:
Katakolon was nice, although we got there about an hour late (they adjusted the departure time appropriately). The best part about this port is the 30 minute trip to Olympia, the site of the original Olympics. We got to walk around the ruins (there were a lot of them, the place was buried for some 1300 years). There was one picture I really wanted but just couldn't get because there were so many people just wandering around (I prefer my shots to not have people in them). But anyway, most of them will be okay, I'm importing them now, I'll try to have some ready for when I post this online. We picked up some sand from the running track for Lorien's mom, she asked us to bring her back sand from places we go. Typically that means beaches, but I think she won't mind this exception.
Olympian Columns
Alexander the Great's monument to his father Philip of Macedon for his winning the Olympics in the chariot racing games:
Lorien bought me a cake for my birthday, and the wait-staff at the restaurant (on the ship) sang happy birthday with the rest of our table. It was an excellent chocolate cake.
Athens was fun, but a very crowded city. We didn't have time to do much, just hop on the bus, drive to the sites, get out and take pictures, get back on the bus and head back to the cruise ship. Seeing the Parthenon was impressive, those columns are big, and the temples around the area are a joy to see, but a couple of hours just doesn't do this city justice. We probably spent more time in traffic than we did sightseeing.
Parthenon
Blacksmith Temple (the only one with a surviving roof)
Next was Izmir, Turkey. This place was a definite surprise. I was pretty wishy-washy about going to Turkey. I figured there was enough other stuff in the area to see, why bother with a stop in Turkey? Well boy was I wrong. Turkey, and more specifically Ephesus was one of the highlights of this cruise! I certainly enjoyed seeing Ephesus more than I did seeing the Parthenon. We got to walk in the same places that the apostle Paul did. We saw the amphitheatre he spoke to the Roman citizens in. It was stunning. And the library was the best of the best. We also got to see a carpet cooperative, where young women weave Turkish carpets to sell to rich tourists. I say rich because I couldn't afford them. There were some extremely beautiful carpets, but well out of my price range. Even small ones were several hundred dollars. The larger 10 foot ones were $8k US. And that was for the wool carpets. I didn't bother to ask about the silk carpets. They were truly amazing. Some of the carpets (especially the silk ones) take two girls two years to make. The cooperative also made their own threads from wool and silk, and we got to see the silk thread-making process, it was really interesting. The only bad thing about Turkey was the pushy guys that sold tourist crap, and the store owners, they were very confrontational, to the point of coming up to you and putting things in your hands to get you to buy them.
The Great Library at Ephesus
Another shot, with columns in the foreground
Then we visited Rhodes (or Rodos), and drove to Lindos to see an ancient castle and the ruins of an older Roman temple. The Colossus, one of the original seven wonders of the world, was located at Rhodes. Unfortunately, nothing remains of it now. The castle and temple we saw at Lindos was neat, but it was a long drive from the port of Rhodes, and quite a climb up steep steps and through a lot of shops. The views were spectactacular, though, and I got some great scenery shots.
Today was a full day at sea, it's late in the evening and I've been getting something of a nasty cold. We're about to pass through a strait, between the Italian mainland and Sicily. We should also be passing by Stromboli, where an active volcano is currently erupting. It will be late when we pass by (well after midnight), but I'll be staying up for some good pictures (hopefully). I've taken so many pictures and video that I've quite nearly filled up my hard drive, and can't archive everything off to the small pack of DVDs that I brought with me. Yeah, I have that much data.
Well, as you can see we've made it. Although our trip has not been without its perils. First off, when we left for Spokane at 4am Saturday morning, it was just starting to snow. I managed to sleep for about 2 hours while Lorien powered through the night and packed (she still forgot her swimsuit, though). We got to Spokane and boarded the plane for Salt Lake City, our first connection. Everything went fine, and we switched to a flight to New York's JFK airport. We got to JFK about an hour and a half early. Everything was fine there, except when we got out on the tarmac, they held the plane for around 45 minutes while they "loaded more luggage on board". You can guess why I quoted that… They were down to one runway when we finally took off for Venice.
But we got there all the same, albeit somewhat tired. I have a real hard time sleeping on planes—it just doesn't work for me. So when we arrived at Marco Polo airport in Venice (at 8:45am), we went to the luggage carousel and, lo and behold, no luggage. When the luggage stopped coming out and the display said All luggage has been delivered we were left just sitting and thinking about what were were getting in to. Then a lady comes over and says for everyone that was waiting for their luggage to follow here to the claim area. We immediately followed here, while most people just stood around talking to their families. We were first in line. We were told that our luggage was still in New York (that turned out to be incorrect, though, so Thanks, Delta Airlines for lying to us).
Being the great travelers we are, though (well, not great enough to pack an extra night in our carry-ons), we toughed it out and took the Alilaguna boat to San Marco Square. After wandering around for about an hour and a half and nearly getting hopelessly lost, we purchased a map and found our hotel within seconds. It was, literally, about 100 meters from San Marco Square, the Comfort Hotel Diana. It was cheap (81 Euro) and noisy. I swear I heard every time someone went to the bathroom in the hotel. I think the plumbing went directly through our room. The room was dark, though, which made it easier to get some sleep. After being up for nearly two straight days, it was welcome. We saw a lot of Venice, and even went on a gondola ride (they're expensive, if you were wondering). I got some lovely pictures.
It is now that I must digress and talk about the thing I hate most about Europe—smoking. Everybody, and I mean freaking everybody smokes here. It's disgusting. Even on the ship (which I'll get to later), there are areas you have to walk through to get to certain places (like the Internet room) that are exclusive smoking rooms. It's disgusting, and I can't believe Carnival would do that to us.
Anyway, on with the story. We explored Venice the next day since we didn't have to be at the ship for check-in until at least 12 noon. I think our most memorable part of Venice was feeding the pigeons in Piazza San Marco. There are vendors all over that sell you a bag of dried corn for 1 € and the pigeons go nuts when they see it. Lorien and I both fed the pigeons, and at one point we developed a case of head pigeons.
We took the Alilaguna boat to the cruise boat dock, and got in line for the boarding process. It took quite a while, but went fairly smoothly. As soon as we got on, we went to the Purser's desk and told them about our missing luggage, and they had us identify it and sign a waiver to allow them to pick it up.
We went to our room (it's very nice) and relaxed for a while. We took a walking tour of the ship (we still get lost though) and attended a good part of the orientation talk by our cruise directory, John SomethingOrOther (Heald).
On our way to our first dinner on board, we spotted our luggage on a luggage cart—much to our relief. Dinner was excellent, and so was dessert (Lorien had the Warm Chocolate Melting Cake, it was superb, and I had a wonderful Creme Brulee). The next morning we smelled much better, and shared a private taxi with about 8 other people back to Piazza San Marco to track down a Geocache and drop off our travel bug. We had a brisk 20 minute walk to the park from the square, found it easily, and returned to the boat station, where we found out that the Alilaguna boat didn't go back to the dock that day. So we took the public slow-boat all the way up the Grand Canal to the last stop, where we hopped on a bus and took a short ride back to the ship. Dinner was even better than the night before, and they had some leftover Warm Chocolate Melting Cake for dessert that Lorien and I both had this time.
Which brings us up to today. We just pulled in to Dubrovnik, Croatia (it's beautiful here), and I got up early this morning to catch the sunrise over the ocean. The winds were extremely strong, around 50 mph, and I had to lean in to my tripod just to keep its three legs on the deck.
Dubrovnik was nice, we just got back. It was a bit cool here because of the rain. The temperature is 62° F outside, but the rain and wind makes it feel colder. We took a shuttle bus down into the "old town", where they have about two kilometers of city walls that surround it. During the last war (I think it was around 1992), those walls didn't protect Dubrovnik from the artillery on the mountains nearby. All the homes that have been rebuit because of the damage done now have orange rooves. If you see any pictures of Dubrovnik, most of the buildings have orange rooves.
Since I've been snapping my pictures in RAW format, I run the processing on my laptop, which isn't done yet processing the batch from Dubrovnik. You'll get to see more later anyway.
I'm leaving early tomorrow morning for Venice. Lorien and I are headed out on our Mediterranean Cruise starting on the 5th, going to the 14th. Here's our itinerary:
March 5th: Venice, Italy
March 6th: Venice (early afternoon departure)
March 7th: Dubrovnik, Croatia
March 8th (my birthday!): Katakolon, Greece
March 9th: Athens
March 10th: Izmir, Turkey
March 11th: Rhodes, Greece
March 12th: at sea
March 13th: Naples, Italy
March 14th: Rome, Italy
I'm going to try to get a reasonably-priced internet access package and post a few pictures while we're out, but worst case scenario you won't hear from me until I get back.
It wasn't scaffolding, it was a fence! Now that they've knocked most of the trees down, they're fencing everything in so they can trap and kill any squirrels or chipmunks that lived through the trees falling.
There's a whole truckload of what looked to me like scaffolding parked on Mineral Drive this morning. They're still knocking down more trees, and the entire ground is covered with the stripped-off branches like a giant green carpet, but smelly.
Well, they're out knocking more trees down. Here are some updated pictures:
Thanks go out to CoronaLucas for working on the new header image. It's not done, but it's cool enough to start using!