Where to next???

I was thinking today about what direction I’d like to take this blog now that we’ve pretty much exhausted the “what we did, what we saw” portion of our summer 2013 adventure.  I’ve been putting together our photo book at Shutterfly, and while there, I paused to look through our photos from 2010 when we spent several days pre-cruise in London before sailing from Dover.  I’ve posted before about how important it is to have some pre-cruise days when traveling a far distance to allow for adjusting to the new time zone as well as giving your luggage time to catch up with you if there were delays.  But I haven’t written about spending some days either pre- or post-cruise somewhere besides the departure port.  Because we were already spending a month on vacation, staying in Barcelona pre- and post-sailing made the most sense for us, but for some of our fellow passengers, they extended their 12-night cruise and spent several days in places such as London, Paris, and Venice.

 

Because we have been to London and Venice, and even though we would like to go back, if you all are in agreement, I’d like to turn our attention to planning some days in Paris.  We don’t have a date in mind, but we do know we want to make it over there at some point in the not-too-distant future.  We have some local area friends that we’ve talked about taking a river cruise with in Europe and think that when we do that, would be a great time to spend several days in Paris either before or after.  And because I like to have time to research places, now seems as good a time as any to start!

 

 

Jusqu'à la prochaine fois…

Raising the Costa Concordia

We booked our Mediterranean cruises just days after the Costa Concordia was wrecked in January 2012.  The night of the tragic event, I stayed up entirely too late watching the online coverage of the breaking story and following along on various cruise boards to read reports as they came in from passengers who had been on board.  We thought about what we might do differently than usual when taking our next cruise so that we would be better prepared in the unlikely event that we would have to abandon ship in a hurry.  And when we sailed, we did change things up from how we've sailed before - things like making sure our passports were gathered and ready to grab in a hurry along with cash and other important documents we had with us.  We kept our belongings organized in such a way that if we lost light, we could still get what we would need. And for the first time, I took a flashlight with us.  Thankfully we didn't need quick access to anything, but I slept better each night knowing we were better prepared.

This week, the Costa Concordia was raised from where she laid on her side for these long months.  Reuters captured the raising in a time-lapse video, shared here.

Clocks

We noticed that many of the clocks in the parts of Europe we visited had Roman numerals for the hour and regular numbers for the minutes, displayed every five minutes. And the face of the clocks were more for the phases of the moon and the seasons.

DCL Summer 2014 itineraries

When we decided to sail with Disney Cruise Line for their Mediterranean itineraries in summer 2013, we did so thinking that there might be a chance they didn’t return to the Med for the 2014 season.  We needn’t have worried because there are a variety of cruises available next summer, ranging from 4 nights to 12 nights with departures from Barcelona and from Venice.  And her ship will be stopping at some new ports including Catania, Italy (Sicily), Katakolon, Greece (the gateway to Olympia) and Corfu, Rhodes, Crete, and Santorini in the Greek Isles. 

 

So if you’ve been thinking about a Disney Mediterranean cruise, particularly with stops in Greece, you might want to see what they have available.  And if you don’t already have a travel agent, we’re happy to recommend the ones we have used for years now.

The Pantheon

Today's site from Rome is the ancient building, the Pantheon. 

The open dome allows sunlight to stream in, creating a beautiful view.  Unfortunately, it also allows the rain, so beware of slippery floors in inclement weather.

Trevi Fountain

Today’s photo is of the Trevi Fountain where legend has it if you toss a coin into the fountain, you will one day return to Roma.

In 2007, we did just that.

 

Romulus and Remus

The boy’s AP Art History class begins a unit on Rome next week.  One of the pieces they will be learning about is this one featuring Remus and Romulus which is found at the Pallazio Del Conservatori.  There are several versions of the legend of these twin brothers.  If you want to learn about them, here are a few sites we found that might satisfy your interest.

 

 

http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Romulus_and_Remus.html

 

http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/romulus_and_remus.htm

 

For the younger set:  http://rome.mrdonn.org/romulusandremus.html

 

And if you want to see this statue for yourself but won’t be in Rome, Italy, no worries – you can see a bronze replica that was presented to Rome, Georgia, in 1929.