travels, races, and other musings

Travel Home and Final Thoughts It was an early morning. We got up and got ourselves ready and down the curb for our pickup for our taxi ride to the airport. Our driver was actually running about 5 minutes late but we had enough time built in. Apparently he decided to make up for it with probably one of the craziest taxi rides I’ve ever been on: lane lines were a mere suggestion, as were speed limit signs. At one point I looked at the speedometer and we were going over 130 kph (around 80 mph). Thankfully, we made it in one piece and in record time. The airport was packed even though it was only 5 AM.  However, we were able to get checked in, drop our bags, go through security and find our gate with no issues and in plenty of time. Our flight to Heathrow was on time and we had enough time in Heathrow to go through their whole leave-and-come-back-in-through-security song and dance. We bought around $35 worth of coffee and muffins from the Starbucks in our terminal (I’m not even kiddin...

Disembarkation and Rome We had early seating for dinner on this cruise but had arranged ahead of time to come to second seating for breakfast since we didn’t need to be anywhere. Our server had an open table in his section (often families don’t go to final morning breakfast in the main dining room) so after getting ready and finishing our packing, we went down to Enchanted Garden around 8 AM for breakfast. We finished with breakfast around 9, said our goodbyes to our amazing serving team and went up to the atrium to get in line to get off the ship. The line wasn’t too bad and we were able to walk right off, grab our bags and head outside. There were no customs or passport control. When we walked outside there were people there asking where we were going and I said “train station” and they had us get in line. Last time we were debarking in Civitavecchia , we had to take a shuttle to the front of the port, then walk to a bus stop, then take a city bus to the train station. It wasn’t a bi...

Naples This was our second time coming to Naples so we were looking for something completely different for this port than what we did previously (Pompeii and Herculaneum). Another family posted on our cruise meet group that they were looking for another family to split a private Amalfi coast tour with them so we jumped on board. I actually didn’t really pay that much attention to the itinerary because we had already talked about finding an Amalfi coast tour and this one looked like it hit all the highlights.  The Amalfi coast is beautiful and our driver was great, however, I think we didn’t need as much time at each location (and perhaps one fewer locations) than we were allotted. It was a long day and it started early. We were up at 6:15 AM, ate breakfast and were off the ship for our 8 AM pickup. It was about a 90 minute windy drive to our first stop, Positano. We stopped for some photos just before the town and then the driver took us into town, parked and set us loose for an ho...

At Sea Thank goodness for this sea day. I think we all just needed a day to chill and reset after the heat and crowds of the previous couple of days. We also gained an hour as we switched back to the Italy time zone from the one Greece was on. Consequently, I woke up early so I went up to the gym and was able to hop on the Peloton bike they have. Actually, they have two but one was out of order and the other had been in use each time I was there. It was really easy to log into my account and connect my Bluetooth headphones, selecting a ride I had previously bookmarked in my account. By the time I was leaving the gym at 7:15 AM the place was a madhouse. If you want a chill gym experience on the ship, get there before 6:15 because after that is when people really start to trickle in steadily.  I found a lounger in Quiet Cove and relaxed until everyone else was up and then we went to Cabanas together for breakfast. After that, we returned to the room where we all got ready for the day...

Santorini At the beginning of our trip I was scrolling through my Facebook feed and saw that a longtime friend of ours who lives in Chicago and we hadn’t seen in person in a long time had posted a picture from the Acropolis in Athens. So we sent him a message and asked if he was in Greece. He was! Their family was taking a DIY Greek island hopping vacation (mostly using ferries). We compared itineraries and realized we were going to be in Santorini on the same day so we arranged to meet up. We got up around 7:30, got ourselves ready, ate breakfast, and made our way to the Walt Disney Theatre a little after 9 AM to get set for the process to go ashore, which is a little complicated in Santorini. First we waited in the theatre for about 30 minutes for our turn for a tender. Once we arrived at the island and disembarked from the tender we went straight for the gondola to take us to the top of the island to the town of Fira. There are actually three methods for getting to the top: the gond...