travels, races, and other musings

Disembarkation in Civitavecchia and Rome Disembarkation day dawned and nobody was in a very good mood. We really didn’t want to get off that ship! The only good news was that the night before, our head server offered to find us a table if we wanted to come for second seating breakfast at 8 AM. Otherwise, we could have gone to Cabanas (early seating dinner means early seating breakfast on the final morning which is…early). We got to see our server one last time even though he wasn’t really the server for the table we were seated at. Breakfast was nice and we finished up, used the restrooms and walked off the ship around 9 AM. We made our way to the shuttle bus that would take us to the entryway of the port (the port in Civitavecchia is really long). After getting off that bus we found the bus that goes to the train station for 2 Euros. We could have walked, but with our suitcases and knowing we would have some walking on the other side we sprung for the bus to the train station. We ...

Naples This was another big day of sightseeing! Earlier I mentioned that Emmaline had been corresponding with a girl her same age from our cruise meet group. For our excursion today we would be sharing a private excursion with her and her family. We actually did something similar in Alaska, which is how we met Heather and her wonderful family. It worked great to share the cost of a private excursion, but still keep it small and do what we wanted to do. For Naples, I couldn’t choose between Pompeii and Herculaneum so I set out to find an excursion that would do both. We ended up booking with a company called Pompeiin for a private tour of both with a licensed guide (they’re very strict about tour guides in Italy) and a wine tasting lunch. After breakfast in Cabanas, we disembarked with the Bush family at 8:30 and met up with our driver to start the morning at Herculaneum. Our guide met us there and took us in just as they opened at 9, which was great because there were hardly any...

At Sea Aaaah, a relaxing day at sea! Sort of. I feel like we had a nice mix of activities and down time on our sea day. It was a really fun day and honestly, I could have done with another sea day on the cruise. In the future, I think I’ll look for cruises that have more than just one day at sea. I woke up, as per usual, before everyone else. It was 7:30 so I tossed on my workout clothes and headed for deck four. My preferred ship workout is a run around deck four. It’s so peaceful in the mornings, especially on sea days and I’ve never missed a deck four run (well, except on our first cruise, but it was only a 3-day). In an earlier entry, I briefly mentioned my broken foot. 7 weeks prior to our cruise, I landed badly from a jump and broke my foot. I was in a boot for nearly 5 weeks and was worried about how it would be during the cruise. I hadn’t run since the injury and there are still a lot of things that hurt it. It had mostly behaved during the cruise, but it was definitely a l...

Livorno (Florence and Pisa) This day proved to be exhausting and perhaps not well planned but was also marred by traffic delays, hot temperatures and some scheduling problems. It isn’t that I didn’t plan, but I think ultimately we bit off more than we could chew. The problem was that Emmaline wanted to go to Pisa and while I was curious to see the tower, ultimately, I thought that Florence was more intriguing, even if we’ve been there before (well, Roger and I had been there). We got up, ate breakfast at Cabanas and made our way off the ship at around 8:40. In Livorno cruise ships dock in the industrial area of town so we took a 15 minute shuttle ride to the center of town to meet up with the bus service we had booked (Tuscany Bus) that would take us first to Florence and then Pisa. We arrived early and waited for the bus to arrive. When the bus arrived, there was some kind of issue with some ladies who I think had five people but had only booked for four or something and they were...

Genoa Our tour wasn’t until 9:30 so we got to sleep in! Well, two of the three of us did anyway. I got up and headed to the gym. I wrote myself a workout the night before which I did in a little bit of space I staked out in the busy gym. After I finished I went up to deck 10 to take in the views and get some photos. I went back to the room and showered then we all went to Cabana’s for breakfast before disembarking to meet our guide. Michela was born and raised in Genoa and from 9:30 - 12 she walked us around 5 attractions of the city. We started by getting on the underground for a quick trip to the Ancient port which is now a sort of promenade area and Michela gave us some information about Genoa as an important port city. Then we walked to the Cathedral of San Lorenzo. The beautiful cathedral has a really interesting striped pattern and two incredible lions on either side of it’s steps. In order to go inside, I needed to have my knees covered (I was wearing shorts). Michela ...