Wednesday 6 June 2012 Barcelona/Regina

We both woke up about 6:30 and could not go back to sleep, so we got up about 7, cleaned up, and went for breakfast. We returned to our room, watched some English language Russian TV (interesting to see their different perspective), and wrote some blog. Better to spend our free time in the comfort of our hotel room than sitting around the airport.

We rode the hotel shuttle to the airport at 11. At 5 Euros each it was a little better deal than the cab. It turned out that our flight had been moved up, but we were still there in comfortable time. We departed at 1:10 PM and arrived in Montreal just before 3 PM (9 PM Barcelona time). Our B767-300 had recently been renovated with new seating and individual TV screens. We both watched movies most of the way, although we both slept for a while after about 4 PM. I watched Act of Valor, The Debt, and Chronicle. Celeste watched Mirror Mirror, John Carter (although she missed part of it during her nap), This Means War, and The Vow.

With a long time still to go before we arrived home, we decided to get a bite to eat at a deli in the departure area. My order turned out to be quite a bit more than a bite!

Our flight had been moved about three quarters of an hour later than originally advertised and was actually even a little later than that. We finally arrived in Regina at 10:15 PM when Laura picked us up after about fifteen hours of travel and 21.5 hours since we woke up in Barcelona this morning.

Weather: thin overcast and warm with light wind in Barcelona; mostly sunny and 22C in Montreal, but we did not get outside; mostly cloudy in Ottawa, but we again did not get outside; thunderstorms south of us over southern Manitoba – very cool to watch from above; and mild with no wind at Regina.

Tuesday 5 June 2012 Venice/Barcelona

We were up with plenty of time to spare for breakfast, so spent a little time out on the pool deck. We tried out the loungers for the first time!

We were off the ship about 8:30 and went to the place at the cruise ship dock where they had luggage storage. The sign said they opened at 8 AM, but it was all closed up. There was another sign on the door that said “Back in 5 minutes,” but after waiting five minutes with no sign of anyone to open the place, we decided there must be a luggage storage place by the bus plaza and made our way there. It was slightly more expensive, but we saved a round trip on the people mover, so it was almost a wash.

We were on our way through the maze of narrow Venetian streets shortly after 9.

We were able to follow the occasional signs to the famous Rialto Bridge and St. Mark’s Square. We were taking pictures at the bridge

when a fellow speaking heavily accented English asked if we would like him to take our picture. Normally, you say yes, the person takes one or two pictures, and you are on your way. This guy took about six pictures and was directing us where to stand (We chose to stay where we were.) and to take off our glasses (Who are those people?). I was beginning to suspect some kind of con or that he was going to run off with off with my camera, although he was an old guy that I could have easily run down. When he finally quit taking pictures, he began to tell us his life story. We didn’t think he was ever going to quit. We finally saw an opening to escape, whereupon he asked us for a Euro for taking our picture. It was well worth it to escape!

We then went to the square and wandered around for a while.

Celeste was feeling the heat, but we found this cool and shady little park right on the Grand Canal.

We then went for gelato. I had dark chocolate. It tasted kind of like a Jello pudding, but better and with gelato texture. Pretty good!

How does a city function with no streets? Well, with boats that replace every vehicle imaginable. Here is a taxi

and an ambulance

and a fire (boat) truck

and a garbage (boat) truck

and a courier service

and delivery vehicles

and a traffic jam

and, of course, a gondola.

And here is a busy pedestrian intersection of five or more interconnected bridges.

And here is something that I found interesting on several occasions throughout our trip. Was all the effort to miniaturize cameras wasted by the coming of the tablet? They have a heck of a viewing screen though.

We wanted to be sure to be back at the bus plaza in plenty of time and came through with flying colours, returning around noon. We looked around that area for a bit, then settled in for a sandwich and beer at a café.

We caught our bus at 2 and arrived at the airport less than half an hour later. Unfortunately, we learned that we could not check in for another couple of hours, so we explored, downloaded and culled pictures, and wrote blog to kill some time.

When we arrived at the airport it was not apparent where the counter was for Air One, so we asked at information where we were told it was among a nearby group of generic check-in positions and that we could check in two hours before our 6:05 PM departure. Around 4:30 nothing had happened yet, so I asked one of the girls at the generic counter. She told us which position would be Air One and I thought she said it would be open one hour before departure. Approaching 5 PM there was still no sign of any action. Then I spotted a digital departure schedule. Why didn’t we think of that earlier?! When I looked at the board, there were no Air One flights and no flights to Barcelona!! The girl at information directed us to the Alitalia desk, agents for Air One. The lady there said that our flight had been cancelled!! We were rescheduled on June 7! They did not have any contact information for us, so were unable to advise us. I explained that that would not work, as we had to catch our flight out of Barcelona on June 6. She said there was another flight tonight on another airline. We raced over there and, 400 Euro later, were booked out at 10:25 PM, arriving at 12:15 AM. Let’s hope there are no more surprises! There is practically no seating in the terminal. We have been sitting in the cafeteria for three hours with almost five more to go. Hopefully there will be better seating after we check in and go through security.

Boy, was that an understatement! The check-in area was very plain and old fashioned looking with almost no seating. After security it is like a different world. Modern décor, ample and comfortable seating, good food service, and numerous shops, including high end names like Hugo Boss, Ralph Lauren, Dolce + Gabana, and many more. Our flight was called a little bit late, but that was only the beginning of the delay as we had to board a bus and wait for a second bus to fill before we drove to the aircraft. Then, even though everyone had assigned seating, there was a mad scramble to the boarding stairs. We took off at 11 and arrived at 12:30 AM, arrived in our hotel room by 1, and were settled in to sleep by 1:30. We have the nicest room of our whole trip, including a sitting room and a jet tub, but won’t have much of a chance to use it. The 5-10 minute cab ride was 35 Euros, about $47!

Weather: sunny, temperature 25C on the bus to the Venice airport and on arrival at Barcelona airport, light wind. Thank goodness we rescheduled our touring for today. Other people who joined our cruise in Venice 24 days ago and were now returning said that they had pouring rain here and in Dubrovnik at the beginning of their cruise.

Monday 4 June 2012 Venice

After breakfast this morning we did some preliminary packing before attending the disembarkation briefing at 10. You would be surprised how detailed the procedures are, but I guess it makes sense to get about 1,500 people (about 600 are carrying on to Istanbul) off the ship in a somewhat orderly fashion. We have to have our bags outside our door before 1 AM and leave the ship between 8:15 and 8:30. Our flight to Barcelona doesn’t leave until 6 PM, so we changed our plan a bit. We were going to go into the city today and take our time getting to the airport tomorrow. Instead we are going to finish packing, blogging, use up our internet minutes, and eat our paid-for meals on the ship today, then go ashore to check out our transportation options. Tomorrow we will store our luggage and tour the city before going to the airport.

After the briefing we went back to our room for a bit to download pictures before going topside to observe the sail-in to Venice. The ship sails right by all the sites. Like the onboard tour guy says, it is like floating by on a hot air balloon.

As we started to dock at about 12:30 a few scattered drops of rain began to fall. We killed some more time packing then went for lunch about 2. During lunch it began to rain steadily, so we returned to our room. I started culling the 300 pictures I took yesterday while Celeste watched some TV and had a short nap. At 4:30 I checked and it wasn’t raining, so we decided to go check out the transportation. Of course, as soon as we stepped outside, a light drizzle started, but nothing our umbrella couldn’t handle. We found our way to the main bus transfer point and bought tickets on the airport shuttle.  A bus ride for 5 euros each is a much better deal than a $79 each ship to airport transfer package the cruise line offered or the 50 Euro cab ride! Then we wandered a few blocks into the city to pick up a few souvenirs and take some pictures.

We returned to the ship and made it to dinner about 6:30, sitting with two American couples. Although the menu items changed every day throughout the trip, today they had baked Alaska on for the second consecutive day. If you guessed that we both had it again, you are right. We returned to the room where I tried to use up our last 25 minutes of time. In that entire time I was not able to upload one picture. In the past, I always shrank our pictures before posting, but I thought the extra time spent uploading larger pictures would be offset by the time saved by not having to shrink them. It didn’t work that way in this case where the bandwidth was too small to handle the large pictures.

Celeste had a sore throat this morning and became stuffy in the afternoon. That does not bode well for the air travel and time changes ahead.

Weather: Overcast with occasional light to moderate rain showers in the afternoon, temperature 72F/22C, wind not noticeable.

Sunday 3 June 2012 Dubrovnik

We had a little extra time this morning due to the time change, so we went out on deck to take in the view of the port. We discovered an observation deck that we had not found before.

I was looking forward to this stop as one of the highlights and I was not disappointed. Every time you turn around you are looking at a postcard. Our tour this morning first took us to the cable car that runs to the top of the small mountain overlooking the city. What a view! They fed us some juice and tasty cake at the top.

Then it was back down to the old town for a walking tour.  After showing us around for a while, our guide turned us loose to explore on our own. He was about the best guide we have had yet. His English was very good, the speakers on the bus were good, and he was very knowledgeable on ancient and recent history. The other guides have also been very knowledgeable, but their English was more accented and sometimes the bus speakers have been somewhat muffled.

I wanted to walk the town wall, but Celeste was not keen on the walk, the sun, or the heat, so she returned to the ship with our bus at 12:30. Walking the walls took about 1.5 hours and I arrived back at the ship on the shuttle bus by 2:30. It was quite a hike in the heat with lots of stairs, but the views were worth it.

Back at the ship we cleaned up from our day in the heat. On TV we watched a bit of the flotilla on the Thames celebrating the Queen’s diamond jubilee. We had eaten nothing but snacks since our early breakfast, so we went down for some sail-away snacks at the main pool, then some salads from the buffet to tide us over. Then it was back to our room to dress for dinner. The itinerary called for two formal nights on our At Sea days and we thought we were done, but they snuck another one in on us. Celeste went 4 for 4 on her menu picks. Escargots for an appetizer, asparagus soup, steak and lobster, and baked Alaska. But I did even better! I had the same except I had a cold grape and cranberry soup. It was like melted ice cream. Mmm! We took pictures of everything but the steak and lobster. We were so excited to see it that we dug right in without hesitation. This might have been the best meal of the trip.

We finished up just in time to race off to the 7 PM movie in the theatre: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. It was a bit hard to follow, but pretty good. Then back to the room to write blog and manage pictures while Celeste caught a few Zz’s. We took in the 10:15 performance in the Showroom, and then called it a night.

Weather: Sunny and hot with light wind. While I looked at the display on the ship after my return, it changed from 86F/30C to 88F/31C.

Saturday 2 June 2012 Kerkira (Corfu)

This morning’s tour first took us to the Achillion Palace, built by Empress Elizabeth of Austria as a summer home and later owned by Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany. It was an interesting place with an interesting story. At the gift shop we bought a 1.5 ounce bottle of the local kumquat liqueur that we drank on the bus because we did not want to bother with transporting it home. It was pretty good – sort of like Hungarian pear liqueur except orangy flavoured.

Next stop was a photo op for some scenic shots, including a view of the airport runway. The stop was on a hairpin turn of a narrow road. There were buses parked everywhere with cars, buses and pedestrians all jostling for position on the road.

We then went to the old town for a short tour before being turned loose on our own. We wandered around for a while looking for souvenirs and absorbing the ambiance. We stopped for some kumquat ice cream and a delicious baklava dripping with honey. The ice cream itself had some kumquat flavour, plus there were pieces of dried kumquat blended in along with tiny chocolate chunks and bits of almond. It was so good!! Would have liked to go back for another sample, but it did not work out. We walked back to the ship, about half an hour, and were back in our cabin by about 2:30.

We went for afternoon tea in the dining room at 3 and I went to a Microsoft class at 3:30. We took in the movie at 4, but it wasn’t really grabbing us and we were pretty hungry, so we left and went up to the sail-away party around the pool where they were serving Greek treats, including baklava and other sweet and buttery morsels. We watched the departure manoeuvres from the railing on the deck above the pool.

We then changed and went for dinner about 6 with two American couples. We took in the 8 PM show in the Showroom. Tonight they had an American gymnast who had won some Olympic gold medals and world championships. One day he woke up and realized that all he knew how to do was gymnastics, so he had to figure out how to make a career of it. He worked up a Cirque de Soleil type routine using long strips of cloth hanging from the ceiling. He throws jokes in throughout and adds juggling and a couple of numbers at the piano. Overall, very different, but pretty entertaining.

We went back to our room for a while where I wrote the blog and managed the pictures while Celeste had a little snooze. We went to the Dessert Extravaganza at 10:30, just to have a look. And we succeeded! Just took some pictures and went to bed. Here is only a very a small sample.

Time change tonight. We gain an hour. Lost one between Italy and Greece if I did not mention it previously.

Weather: sunny, temperature 77F/24C, light wind.