Saturday 26 May 2012 Livorno

Livorno isn’t much of an attraction of its own, but it is the jumping off point for Florence/Firenze, Pisa, and the rest of Tuscany. We did a six-hour tour to Firenze, returning just before 3 PM. It was a 1.5 hour bus ride each way. It wasn’t terribly scenic due to development along the way. We had 1.5 hours to explore Firenze on our own, and the other 1.5 hours was spent visiting a leather factory (and store) and just getting around. Because it was Saturday, the factory was not in operation, but we got a tour with some explanations anyway. We took in the big three sights in Firenze: the Ponte Vecchio Bridge, the Duomo, and Michaelangelo’s statue of David. (The original is in a museum with long lineups, so we satisfied ourselves with the copy in the square.)

Our timing in the city was impeccable. Eat your heart out Carla!

Back at the ship, we grabbed a late light lunch then took in the Tom Hanks suspense thriller movie “Angels and Demons” in the theatre. There are thirty-six leather recliners and FREE! Popcorn, but only nine people showed up, including us.

After the movie we changed clothes and went to dinner. As we were finishing up, the ship was leaving port, so we hung out on deck for a while, watching the world go by. We returned to our cabin for some blog writing, and then headed out for a quick sample of the pool party before returning to post some accumulated blog.

Weather: temperature 20 degrees this morning on the display in the bus, rising to 26 degrees on the way home; sky was overcast this morning, clearing in the afternoon, then becoming a high thin overcast; wind light.

Friday 25 May 2012 At sea

We are at sea all day today. The ride is remarkably smooth. This ship is only two years old, so it is bigger than some many of the older ships and has the latest stabilizing technology. It helps that the water is very calm. All you can feel is a bit of vibration from the engines.

Celeste slept in a bit this morning, so we went for breakfast at 10. We then went to a lecture about getting maximum value when booking your next cruise. We’ll see. We sat in the deck chairs for a while and had a light lunch at 1. At 2:30 we went to another lecture, this time about what to expect in the ports we will visit in the next few days. Celeste had a nap while I read my book and lined up internet service. Not cheap! And, apparently kind of slow. Tonight was a formal night in the dining room. Celeste had a spinach in filo appetizer, strawberry soup (very good - like melted ice cream), Alaska king crab legs, and Crème Brule.  I had a shrimp appetizer, carrot and ginger soup, duck breast a l’orange, and chocolate torte. After dinner, we listened to the string quartet for a while and then went to the Showroom for the Captain’s toast and a glass of free champagne. As the MC joked, “Enjoy it, it’s the last free drink you will get!” The toast was followed by the four man singing group Cantare. They were very, very good, singing a wide range of music from various styles, including many popular songs of the last forty years. The grey hairs ate it up. What do you mean…?

As I write this, we are enjoying an encore performance, as our room is directly above the Showroom. A harbinger of much entertainment to come!

Weather: warm and sunny with a light wind

Thursday 24 May 2012 At sea in the Mediterranean

I went to bed at 10:30 last night and woke up at 7 this morning. Celeste was asleep a half hour earlier, but was awake for a couple of hours overnight and woke up at 8. After breakfast at 8:30 we killed some time in our room, took a short walk, had a snack, and repacked our bags, checking out at noon.

About our hotel:

It has a little golf practice area on the roof, adjacent to a seating/lounge area that doubles as the breakfast area.

I think our taxi driver may have taken us for a ride, in more ways than one. I know that he did not take the most direct route. Maybe there was a good reason, but I doubt it. The check-in was similar to an airline check-in, except that all the passengers were for one “flight.” We were on board by about 1 PM and took a tour of the ship with the cruise director. It helped to get our bearings, but was mostly a tour of the areas where you can purchase additional services. We then grabbed a late lunch at the buffet and returned to our cabin to settle in and study all the information they gave us about the ship. There was a safety drill just before we left port. It was very clear that the rule was women and children first.

We had dinner with a couple from Indianapolis and then took in the evening entertainment in the Showroom. The show combined all the entertainers that perform in all the various lounges on the ship and the main stage group. There was a folk guitar guy, a piano lounge guy, a three piece jazz combo, a four piece string quartet, several dancers, a four man singing group, a couple of female singers, and a pop music band. It was a very good show that really had those grey hairs rocking. What do you mean I are one?

Apparently we are very full with, at most, a handful of empty cabins. Capacity is 2,106, so we are close to that. We have only seen a couple of handfuls of kids and a few dozen young adults. The vast majority is our age or older.

To help us old folks keep track of what day it is, they put the day of the week on the elevator carpets and change them every day.

Weather: warm and sunny with a light wind

Wednesday 23 May 2012 Barcelona

We went for breakfast at 9, and then wandered off to the nearest stop for our hop on, hop off bus, catching it at 10:30. Yesterday, we just rode the bus. Today, we got off and toured some of the attractions. The first one we took in was the main pavilion from the 1929 International Exhibition, which is now an art museum. We weren’t really interested in the art museum but there are some great views of the city from here.

Next stop was the stadium from the 1992 Olympics and the botanical gardens next door.

From there we rode a gondola up to the old fortress at the top of the hill. One interesting feature of the gondola is that it made a 90 degree turn half way to the top!

We had a late lunch at the fortress, rode the gondola back down, and continued with the bus tour.

We got off downtown and strolled La Rambla, a famous tourist walking street. It was interesting for a while, but how many food stands, souvenir stands, portrait artists, and sidewalk restaurants do you have to see before it is enough? Celeste has been noticing that you don't see any fat people here. Well, we found them today on La Rambla. They were all tourists!

We were pretty pooped by the end of this walk, so we hopped back on our bus, and then dragged ourselves to our hotel from the nearest stop, arriving about 5:30. Celeste took a shower to rejuvenate herself and we both took short naps. After resting up for a while, we went out for something to eat at 8. We then returned to our room to blog and relax.

Weather: temperature mid-20s, sky mostly clear and sunny, wind light.

Tuesday 22 May 2012 Barcelona - Happy Anniversary to us!

We arrived at 7:45 AM their time (11:45 PM at home) and planned to meet up later with Palmers for a day of touring in the belief that this would help us adjust to the new time. We were in our hotel room by 9:15 AM. We waited for a while for the Palmers to phone, and then tried calling them. They still did not have a room and had gone out for a walk, so we obtained directions to their hotel and set out on a half hour walk. We succeeded in finding them and agreed to buy one day tickets on the hop on, hop off tourist bus. At the departure point we found a huge line-up, but the buses came frequently and the line moved pretty quickly. We rode around from noon until 4 PM. We were all doing pretty well until we got into a traffic jam. As we inched along for what seemed like an hour, our heads all started to droop and we agreed that we were done for the day.

Celeste kept commenting on how clean the streets were and that there was no gum on the sidewalks. Here is why. They stick their gum on trees! Actually, this collection was at one of the tourist bus stops at the second level.

We returned to our room and slept from 5-9 PM. We thought we probably would not go right back to sleep, so we went for a one hour walk and went back to bed at 11 PM. I woke up feeling pretty good at 5 AM, but Celeste had been unable to get to sleep for quite a while and only got up at almost 9.

Barcelona is a very interesting place. The streets are very wide and easily accommodate pedestrians, bicycles, scooters and motorbikes, cars, trucks, and numerous buses in more or less segregated spaces through the use of tree-lined boulevards. It must be very frustrating to drive here, because the emphasis is on pedestrians, and the pedestrian walk lights are very long, leading to long waits and slow progress for drivers. Not that that is a bad thing, just an observation.

The downtown architecture is mainly the old classical European style, with occasional splashes of more modern design. Local architectural hero, Antoni Gaudi, embellished the old forms with curves and other modern twists to create some quite interesting structures. His Basilica de la Sagrada Familia, begun in the late 19^th century, is still under construction. It takes the ideas of the old European cathedrals and gives them a more modern form. Outside the downtown, the buildings are much more plain and ordinary, although there are still some pretty interesting places. There is a lot of large scale public art. Some of it is pretty cool and some looks like they forgot to move a junk pile.

Weather: temperature low 20s, sky mostly thin overcast with some full sun, wind mostly light, but sometimes quite windy riding in the open second level of the bus.

Monday 21 May 2012 Over the Atlantic

We were up at 4 AM for our taxi pickup and 6 AM flight departure. Celeste took a Gravol and slept most of the way to Toronto while I watched a movie. I was a little surprised that the flight was only about 2/3 full. I was also surprised that Air Canada has become so cheap that they didn’t even offer so much as a cookie on a three hour flight.

We arrived in Toronto at 11 AM and had to kill time until our 6 PM departure. I read magazines and had a nap while Celeste watched movies on her computer. We grabbed a bite to eat, explored a bit, and hiked what seemed like miles over to the international departures area. There we ran into Ron and Laurie Palmer. When they said that they were going to Barcelona to catch a cruise, I thought we might be shipmates. But it turned out they are on a Celebrity cruise, while we are on Holland America. They are stopping in Nice, Dubrovnik, and a few places in Italy, returning to Barcelona, while we miss Nice, have a few stops in Greece, and terminate in Venice.

The flight to Barcelona was very full. I did not see any empty seats. I slept for a couple of hours and Celeste an hour or so longer. Unlike the modern, individual seat-back screens on our flight to Toronto (Embraer 190), this flight (B767-300ER) had older shared screens every few rows, so everyone had the same video. The audio was not very good, so I did not bother to try and watch anything. Celeste watched some of one movie, but with limited success.