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| Montjuic Cemetery |
As promised we will continue with part two of our wonderful European cruise. On May 29th we caught an early flight out of London, Heathrow to Barcelona. We arrived to very warm sunny weather. After getting to our hotel we catch a city bus downtown. We pass by a terraced hillside covered with gravestones and glassed-in crypts. This is the Montjuic Cemetery which contains over a million burials and cremation ashes in a 150,000 plots. Once downtown we walk around the port area which is a huge shopping and entertainment district. The centre piece is the Port Cable Car which travels up to the Parc del Miramar on Montjuic Mountain.
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| Narrow Streets in Old Barcelona |
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| Port Authority Building |
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| Sagrada Familia |
The next morning we take the the bus downtown again and take the HoHo. Barcelona is a fabulous city with a mix of old and new and many architectural marvels. This city is home to the famous architect Gaudi and he has left a huge foot print here. Two of his most famous buildings are he Casa Mila and the Sagrada Familia the later of which was unfinished upon his death in 1926. They have been working on it ever since and it still has a ways to go to completion. It is a totally unbelievable structure. Barcelona also has many art galleries and theaters. We checked out several of the narrow streets in the old city and then dined on the famed Las Ramblas. This is a busy very long ‘walking only’ street loaded with restaurants and bars. There are fantastic mime characters and artists everywhere.
May 31st is our departure date on the Royal Caribbean ship the Grandeur of the Seas. This is her first cruise since a total refurbishment. We board about 1pm and spend the rest of the day checking out the ship and viewing Barcelona from the waterfront. We dine in the Great Gatsby Dining room and meet two other Canadian couples, Soren and Janice from Abbotsford, BC, and Jack and Debbie from Calgary. Our waiter and assistant waiter were Ronald from the Philippines and Kendra from the West Indies. We would dine every night with this group and it was a total blast with jokes and laughter every evening. A couple of days later we would invite Rhonda from Australia to join our table. She was at a table of German people who basically ignored her.
We arrive in Marseilles early on June 1st but we have been super busy for the past couple of weeks so decide to skip this stop and stay aboard the ship. We book three excursions on this day and get settled in to the shipboard routine.
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| Fortress Villefranche-sur-Mar |
On June 2nd our stop is Villefranche just to east of Nice France. This will be our first excursion. The ship is at anchor so we are tendered to shore. We walk from the tender into an old fort called Villefranche-sur-Mar where our bus is located. Our first stop is the Flower Market in Nice, then a walk along he famed Cote d’ Azur. It is overcast today so there are not many beach goers. Then the bus takes us on a mountain road through many tunnels to Monaco. There are many beautiful villas and hotels and cliff sides. The Grand Prix of Monaco was just over on the weekend so they are still removing the temporary grandstands. We go see where Princess Grace was married and where she lived. We are amazed at the skill of our bus driver. Many roads and streets are extremely narrow but he handles it with aplomb. Our return to the ship is via a coastal road.
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| Some of Thousand Bouquets in Nice Flower Market |
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| Castle where Princess Grace Lived |
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| Monaco with Grandstands Still Standing |
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| Leaning Tower of Pisa |
Our next stop is Livorno, Italy and our next excursion will take us to Pisa and Florence. The leaning tower of Pisa is pretty incredible. It is actually a bell tower for the Cathedral of Pisa. It has a lean of 4 degrees. The lean is caused by poor soil conditions. The Baptistry which is behind the Cathedral also has a slight lean. From Pisa we continued on to Florence. This is a marvelous old city with statues galore and several piazzas or plazas. The Florence Cathedral is stunning in design and is one of the largest in Italy. And interesting place to visit is the Ponte Vecchio which is the only Florence bridge across the Arno river to survive WWII bombing. It now is a thriving 4 level shopping area with hi-end jewelry and souvenir shops.
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| Pisa Cathedral |
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| Florence's Cathedral |
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| Yes 'David' Lives in Florence |
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| Ponte Vecchio |
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| St Peters Cathedral in the Vatican |
Day 5 puts us into Civitacecchia which is the cruise terminal for Rome. This will be our last excursion. It is an hour and half bus ride into Rome. We are dropped at the Vatican but after seeing the huge lineups to get into the Vatican we opt out of that idea. We take the HoHo. This is the sixth and by far the worst HoHo that we have used. The messages on the audio system are very poorly done, missing many wonderful sights as we pass by. At one point the bus stopped for 25 minutes. We wondered what was going on and so went down the the lower level to find both the driver and guide gone from their posts with no explanation. Our crew finally arrives and we take this bus back to the Vatican and get on a second HoHo. We get off at the Coliseum and walk around there for an hour. We are very disappointed with Rome. Locals refuse to or can’t speak English and are very arrogant and unhelpful. It is an over-crowded, polluted city. Scooters, stinky diesel cars and people everywhere and huge traffic jams. We are glad to get back on the bus and head for the ship.
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| Arch of Constantino |
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| The Coleseum |
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| Castel St. Angelo |
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| Il Vittoriano |
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| Mt. Vesuvius |
Our next stop is at Napoli or Naples. We decide to hire a cab and tour around this way instead of taking excursions. Generali is our driver and we are astounded that we know more Italian that he knows English. We finally persuade him to take us for 5 hours over to Sorrento for 150 €s. He is driving like crazy doing 120 and 130 kph in a 60 zone all the while yattering in Italian and playing Dean Martin songs on the stereo very loudly. Pompeii is on the way to Sorrento so we ask him to pull in there. He almost refuses and then says this will cost us 50 € more. As we approach downtown he finds a cab supervisor who speaks English and explains the situation. He says he wants 50 € more and we tell him we have him for 5 hours no matter where we go. Again he is stubborn. I tell the super that we will pay him 50 € and he can take us back to the ship. He doesn’t like that idea and so agrees to our terms. We spend an hour at the Pompeii viewing the ruins from the outside. The fees to go in for an hour are exorbitant.
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| Pompeii Ruins |
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| WW One War Memorial in Sorrento |
Then we find him and continue on to Sorrento. Again he is driving like crazy through some of the mile or longer 2 lane tunnels. Sorrento is a very pretty city. We have two hours here before he will pick us up again. We have lunch and take a HoHo train this time. Generali is still in a hurry on the way back and arrives 5 minutes over the 5 hours. At the cruise terminal, Audrey needed some medication for cold sores. They stopped at a pharmacy, but couldn’t believe that the Pharmacist couldn’t speak a word of English. They couldn’t even get him to understand sign language. Who does he think comes off on cruise ships? Unbelievable! Our overall experiences in Italy have definitely knocked a return there to the bottom of our bucket list. Onto Athens, Greece tomorrow.
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| At the Parthenon |
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| Herodes Theatre |
Our port is about 10 miles from downtown and we had heard that they had a train going from the cruise terminal. We walk up the hill and are greeted by a cabbie named Demitri. He says he will take us to all the highlights for 160 € and he even speaks good English. This is a good deal so we take him up on this. He first takes us via several back roads to the Acropolis and the Parthenon explaining that taking the main roads takes much longer because of heavy traffic. Once there he explains that if you buy an 8 € ticket there it is good for all of the main attractions in Athens. Such a deal! The Acropolis sits atop a mountain in the middle of the city of 4 million. The scene from up here is absolutely incredible. The columns of the Parthenon and the Herodes Theatre below are marvelous to witness. This has stood here for more than 3,000 years. Through the years they have been several attempts to maintain the status quo with these structures. These have failed because they have used steel rods and fasteners to hold everything together. They are currently into another retrofit and this time are using titanium instead of steel. The columns are very interesting. They look like a solid piece of marble but each column is actually composed of several smaller pieces connected together.
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| Athens is in a Huge Bowl |
Demitri then takes us to see Hadrian’s arch and Library and he temple of Zeus. The Romans over-run Athens in the second century and so the arch was built. From here we see the Panatghenaic Stadium. It is in a natural bowl and seats 60,000 people. It is from here that the Olympic Flame is taken to all of the participating countries each Olympics. Then we go to the Greek Parliament to witness the changing of the guard. This quite a unique undertaking which happens hourly. The guards are all selected for their height. They have a kilt like uniform and have unusual leather clog shoes with black pompoms at the toes. Then we go to a hugh archeological dig area called the Agoranomeion. Much of this dig is 20 to 40 feet below street level. From here we go to for a late lunch and cold beers at a sidewalk cafe. It is very hot but we are cooled by fans with water mists blown at us. This is a very pleasant lunch. Then we take pictures at Afrides or the Tower of the Winds. Then Demitri takes us back to the ship. What a pleasant change from Italy. Helpful people speaking good English and venues at reasonable prices.
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| Panatghenaic Stadium |
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| Agoranomeion |
Day 8 we have arrived at Mykonis for a shortened day. What a scene. It is hot and sunny. All the houses and businesses are whitewashed and extend up the hillside. Everything here is super clean. There are several of the famous windmills here. They were used for grind grain but are no longer used so do not have the blades installed. We first spent an hour walking almost to the top of the hill. Going down was much nicer. The shopping area down by the port has very narrow cobblestone streets. There is a lot of unique shops pedaling such things as hats, dresses, shirts, olive wood carvings and jewelry. The harbor has many nice yachts and a couple of tall ships at anchor. The water is crystal clear. We must return to the ship by 4pm as our next stop will be Katacolan on the west side of the Peloponnese.
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| Mykonis |
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| Columns at Olympus |
Katacolan looks nothing like Mykonis. It is a small town with most of the buildings along the shoreline. We walked about town for a while and then wanted to rent scooters but there are none left that have trunks. So instead we rent a Fiat Panda for 40€ for the day. This is much cheaper than taking the ship sponsored tours. We drove to Olympia home of the first Olympic site about 40 km's away. This ruins is very large with English signage and is loaded with huge trees which is good because it is very hot today. So we walked from photo-op to photo-op and caught as much shade as possible. There is a natural bowl arena with seating for 40,000 plus on the grassy slopes. At one location their was a large circular gazebo that was made up of 8 columns. This site had been pilfered of stones and columns and three of these columns had been taken to The Berlin Museum. The German government returned these to the site and restored 3 of the columns. We returned to Katacolan along a beach road. Beach front houses were varied with some nice and some not so nice. But all yards had lots of flowering bushes, mostly Bougainvillea. We stopped in at a small sidewalk cafe for lunch and met this very nice couple and their daughter. They talked extensively about the area, which added to our liking of the area. We then took a short drive to the north and seen a goat ranch. We returned the car and headed back to the ship.
The plan was to go back into Venice the next morning as our planned flight time was 4:45 pm back to London, Gatwick. But at our hotel breakfast it started pouring rain, really the first rain we had on the entire trip. Between the threatening weather, 45 minute ride over the bridge and the fact that there were open seats on earlier flights we opted to go to the airport. Our ride would be with EasyJet a discount airline out of Marco Polo airport. I selected this airline because it was almost $400 a seat cheaper than flying BA back to Heathrow. Well "You gets what you pay for." First we paid 30€ each to switch flights to a 12:15 am. Then we stand in a huge lineup for an hour and a half to check our bags at a single kiosk. We are frustrated and afraid we will miss the flight. When we finally reach the counter the gal said we didn't preorder baggage. This will cost us a further 37€ each. We pay it then rush to security. The plane is shown as 'boarding'. This Airport is poorly designed and is much like Edmonton International was 35 years ago. We have to climb stairs to security then go down stairs to the boarding lounge. When we get there there are several people already on a bus to take us out to the plane which had rolling steps out on the tarmac. Then we wait. We wait! We wait! They push departure back an hour with no explanation. People are removed from the bus. Then departure is pushed back another hour again without a reason. Then we are told that a bird had hit the nose cone when the plane landed and had damaged some sensitive equipment. We would go instead on a 55 minute flight to Milan for a further inspection where we would get onto another plane. The question was "why not just go to Gatwick for the inspection?" We finally get airborne at 3:45. In Milan we park 50 yards away from the other plane but we are further delayed because regulations say we must descend the air stair and get on a bus. Ridiculous! We arrive Gatwick around 5pm which is almost the time we paid the 30€ to avoid. Very frustrating indeed. I don't recommend EasyJet or RyanAir, and if you can it would be much better to start your cruise in Venice than finish it there because of the poor airport facilities.
We take the train from Gatwick to London’s Victoria Station. Our hotel is close enough to the station that we can walk. We have basically one and a half more days in London since our flight home doesn’t leave until 4:45pm. We decide to take in Hyde Park and again do a lot of walking this day. Our first stop was the Westminster Cathedral. It has a bell tower with an elevator so we take that to the top 273 feet up. The views from here are incredible. At Hyde Park they are setting up for the Olympics Triathlon. The swim portion will be done on Serpentine Lake which has thousands of waterfowl. There will be a huge cleanup for this event. Once more we walk our butts off. We see the Princess Dianna Memorial Fountain which children are enjoying immensely. Our return and have a very nice supper at St. George’s Tavern. The pubs over here have the best food and drink.
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| The Wellington Arch |
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| Westminster Cathedral Bell Tower |
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| Princess Dianna's Fountain |
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| A Swan on Serpentine Lake Hyde Park |
Our last day we pack up our suitcases and store them at the hotel. We take the tube up to the British Museum. This is a fantastic place but should have been named the World Museum. There are artifacts from all around the world some dating back many centuries. We found the Egypt collection to be very interesting with lots of mummies, statues and other artifacts. The highlight item is the Rosetta Stone that is the key to how scientists were able to decipher the Egyptian hieroglyphic language.
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| The British Museum |
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| Egyptian Mummies |
We have a nice final lunch at the Museum Pub, head back to the hotel, pick up our bags and ride the tube out to Heathrow. Our flight home was uneventful but it took us 5 or 6 days to get over the jet lag.
This was a fabulous trip with great friends. It was kind of whirlwind but we seen and did lots and it gave us a great taste of another world!
Thanks for Reading
Wally Bentt
