Trip of a Lifetime

Well, it’s been a decent week at work, considering I spent all of the previous week in the Mediterranean islands! Although I’d much rather be back there enjoying fun in the island sun, seeing beautiful places I’d only ever imagined, it was sort of nice getting back into a routine. I bet Dublin Airport will be calling me over the next few weeks, since I won’t be there again until November 20th. They’ll be wondering if something is wrong.

The trip was beyond my wildest dreams. First it was Venice, with its beautiful old buildings and endless charm, and the canal snaking through it. The first night, Friday the 10th I stayed in a hotel pretty close to the airport and it was adorable and the staff was very helpful, friendly and spoke English!! I ate pizza and drank a beer and fell asleep watching the only English channel I had – MTV, although I did watch a few minutes of Bruce Almighty in Italian. It was pretty funny.

The next morning after eating breakfast, I was on the bus to Venice. Getting that giant suitcase around was not my favorite thing, let me tell you, especially on and off of a crowded bus. I stepped off of the bus and into Piazzale Roma and made my way to the nearby information center. I was advised to take a water bus to Giudecca, where the Hilton was. This was where I was meeting Julie later. I thought €6.50 was a little steep for a little ride to the next island down, but whatever. The ride was nice and I got to see a lot of Venice from the canal and the lagoon between Venice city and Giudecca. When I got off the bus, I had quite a long walk to the hotel, and it included two bridges… with steps! So, I made it over the first bridge but I had to stop and rest twice. My suitcase was monstrous! When I got to the next bridge, I set the suitcase down and prepared to heft it over and this guy says, “Let me give you a hand with that.” I almost cried with appreciation and said, “Thanks so much – you’re my hero!” That was Mike, of Mike and Carol, probably one of the nicest couples I’ve ever met. I spent the whole hour I waited for Julie sitting with them in the lobby and chatting away. They are from Pennsylvania and were actually going on a cruise too! They had been on many cruises and just knew I would love my first cruise experience. They were interested in hearing all about my move to Dublin and my recent travels. They were so sweet!

Julie finally arrived at the hotel around 1:30 or 2 on Saturday. She had a rough time getting to the hotel from the airport – public transportation nightmare, which made me thankful I found my way so easily. Anyway, after she freshened up, we headed over to Venice on the free shuttle boat from the hotel. We stopped for gelatos immediately. YUM! I had forgotten how great it is to be in Italy with the pizza and gelato. I swear I could live on those two things alone! We spent the afternoon wandering the streets of Venice. We passed by countless glass shops and souvenir shops and stores with Venetian masks. The glass shops were beautiful. We found St. Mark’s Square (Piazza di San Marco) and went to the top of the Campanile, a huge tower that dominates the square (height-wise, anyway). The view was beautiful. After taking bunches of photos from our bird’s eye view of Venice, we went to Harry’s, where the Bellini was invented. We squeezed our way in and got yelled at by the waiters to wait until they wiped the table down to sit. We sat down and opened the menu to find the most expensive drinks I have ever seen. We ordered €15 Bellinis that were only about 8 ounces each, then abruptly left – after being yelled at again for trying to take a picture in the bar. We ended up eating full meals that cost less than the Bellinis at a restaurant in Rialto. I had pasta and Julie had pizza. It was good and fun to people watch while we ate and drank our wine. We found a complimentary bottle of Bellini in our room that night when we got back to the Hilton. We enjoyed it far more than our Bellinis at Harry’s, and no one even yelled at us!

The next day we wandered some more, enjoying the sights and great weather in Venice. We ate lunch at a little café on the sidewalk in a piazza and drank good Italian beer with our food. After lunch we went back to St. Mark’s Square and toured the Palazzo Ducale. It was a great time. We goofed around in the courtyard taking funny pictures of each other. The tour was great, too. We saw some courtrooms and a prison and the “Bridge of Sighs,” where they would walk prisoners to their execution. The day ended with slices of pizza and being a little lost getting back to the boat pickup, but we found our way eventually without too much aggravation and made our way back to the hotel. We had some wine at the rooftop bar of the Hilton before retiring for the evening.

Oh, and the whole time we walked around these guys were selling counterfeit bags on the streets, and kept asking us, “You know how much?!” We loved it and joked about it the whole rest of the trip. At one point, Julie answered the guys “One euro?” They didn’t think that was too funny.

On Monday morning, we walked around Giudecca, which we discovered was not too exciting, but we found a nice little bakery and had a sugary breakfast and a cappuccino, which is another thing the Italians have the prize for – their cappuccinos, no matter where you get them, are amazing.

We headed over to Venice for the last time on the free shuttle bus to have lunch and board the ship for our cruise. We had a great waiter at another sidewalk café. He asked us how we could leave him and Venice so soon. He was cute. The weather was so perfect, we enjoyed our lunch very much and decided we could have sat there all day. It was not to be – we had a cruise to get to!

We took a water bus to our ship’s port and I soon discovered that neither my ATM nor my credit card worked anymore. This is not a great thing to happen right before you board a cruise ship, especially with no cell phone minutes left. I was stuck making a very expensive ship-to-shore call to America, but got it straightened out eventually and rejoined the world of the financially sound tourists (days later). We checked in at the terminal and dropped off our suitcases.

The ship was amazing and enormous. Being an Italian cruise line, the cruisers were mostly Italian and Americans seemed to be a minority. Each time an announcement was made or entertainment was about to begin, it came to us in five languages. You can imagine how long things seemed to take sometimes. It was interesting, though. We explored the ship and got our bearings. Our cabin was on the 8th floor, and there were 11 floors all together. We put our stuff in our room and waited for our luggage to arrive. The cabin wasn’t as tiny as we thought it would be. The bathroom wasn’t even too bad. Soon our luggage arrived with Lowell, our cabin porter. After Lowell had shown us how everything worked, we headed up to the 11th floor and top deck of the ship to watch the departure from Venice. Everyone else was there, too. The sun was setting and the departure was pretty cool to witness. A tug boat took us out of the harbor and off we sailed into the sunset!

At dinner, we had been assigned to a table of six. One of the couples was there when we arrived – newlyweds from Fort Lauderdale. The other couple joined us a bit after we arrived and they were from Dallas. We all got along famously. We felt very lucky, considering we could have been stuck with a bunch of yahoos that we couldn’t stand. The dinners – every single night – were five courses. First an appetizer, then soup, then pasta, then the main course, then dessert. Salad and a cheese plate were options you could add if you wanted. YIKES! Most of the meals were delicious. It was most often Italian, and there was seafood and steak available nearly every night. Good stuff. After dinner, there was a show in the theatre. Some of them were good, others were TRAGIC. We went to the first one but walked out after the woman sang three songs. She looked like a drag queen but wasn’t a drag queen. It would have been better if she was a drag queen. So we played air hockey and wandered around some more until it was bed time.

The next morning, we were off on our excursion, having docked at Bari, Italy. Our tour guide was Francesca, and we decided that we loved her. All of her words ended with “–a.” For example, “in-a the village-a, the roofs-a were-a painted-a with-a symbols. Why? Because-a the residents-a wanted-a to feel-a closer-a to God-a.” She also said “Why?” after everything she told us before she gave us an explanation. It was so cute. We loved her. The excursion took us on a long bus ride to Alberobello, a beautiful old place filled with Trullo houses, which are white-washed stone with cobble cone-shaped roofs. There was a little bit of step climbing involved, so it was a bit warm, but absolutely gorgeous. We took lots of pictures in the village, then headed to the town square for a light pasta lunch with complimentary wine. It was mouth-watering pasta – perhaps the best I have ever had. I could have eaten about 20 pounds more of it! After lunch we went back to Bari, stopping at the Basilica of San Nicola (St. Nicholas – AKA, Santa Claus) which houses the grave of St. Nicholas himself. On the way to Bari, some of the people on the bus started singing Santa Claus is Coming to Town. It was pretty fun to laugh at them. The church was beautiful. After leaving the church, we went back toward the port and got back on the ship. Before and after every port, they scanned our cards out and back in. We also had to show our passports.

Wednesday was Katakolon/Olympia, Greece. This time our tour guide was over-informative, we thought. I stood there with my A.D.D., sweating while I waited to be able to walk around and explore the ruins of Olympia, but was glad we listened to him, because we learned a lot about the origin of the Olympic games. Apparently, back when they started, the athletes competed naked!! He mentioned this several times, which was funny. We saw the altar where the torch is lit for the start of all the Olympic games. It was pretty cool. Now I’ll appreciate it more when the Olympics are on TV. I will also appreciate the fact that the athletes are all clothed. After our tour of Olympia, we were taken back to Katakolon for lunch in a Greek restaurant, where we saw Greek dancing and tried some Greek appetizer-type food. It was fun stuff. We also bought some souvenirs at the shops after we finished eating, then we headed back to the ship.

And now, the moment we’ve all been waiting for… Santorini! What a gorgeous place. We rode a bus to the highest point on Santorini and took some photos, then headed down to a village called Megalochori where we saw the white-washed houses of the famous photos. We also got to see a vineyard up close. In Santorini, they wind up the grapevines into a sort of basket that sits on the ground. They do this to protect the fruit from the very high winds of the island. We went for a peaceful stroll and our tour guide, Luc, pointed out bell towers and told us about life in the village and showed us the only street sign in town. He said it’s very hard to tell people where you live there. After we walked through the village, we got back on the bus and rode to taste some of the wine. I tried the white, and didn’t even flinch about drinking wine at about 9:30 in the morning! We enjoyed the beautiful view from the winery, then took the bus to a Greek Orthodox church that began our free time. We sat for a while at a restaurant on a terrace overlooking the majority of Santorini, and marveled at the moment. I couldn’t believe we were there. I nearly had to pinch myself, again thinking I could have stayed there forever! Alas, we could not stay. We were due back at the ship at 1:00, and had to take a cable car down the mountain to the boat that would take us back to the ship. We wove our way through the village and before too long discovered that we’d be waiting a while for the cable car. The line was about five people thick and as long as about a quarter of a mile. We nearly saw fights break out while we waited in the line. We experienced boobs and purses and other personal belongings in our backs as well. I guess some people think they’re going to get ahead faster by pushing. Anyway, we finally made it to the cable cars and took a pretty, yet somewhat frightening ride down to the harbor and took the boat back to the ship.

We ate a buffet lunch and rested for a while until it was time to hit Mykonos that night. We had agreed the previous night to meet up with our usual dinner buddies for dinner on the island. We hit the harbor around sunset, and dined at a gorgeous restaurant with bright pink bougainvilleas and lights surrounding us. I had a lamb pastry dish, and it was so tasty I thought I might cry over it. We had a great time at dinner and a nice stroll around the harbor afterward. Then we headed back for the ship and shortly hit the sack.

On Friday our excursion took us from the port at Rhodes to Lindos, a village with narrow cobblestone streets and lots of shops and cafés. We did some shopping and sightseeing and then met back with the tour guide and got back on the bus. On the way back to Rhodes, we stopped at a really nice family-owned ceramics store where everything was hand detailed and painted by the family themselves. Afterward we stopped for lunch at a beautiful resort hotel for a Greek buffet lunch. It was really good food and I enjoyed tasting as many flavors of Greece as I could fit on my plate. Completely stuffed, we wandered around the hotel and its surroundings, including swimming pools and a lazy river where people were floating peacefully in the sun. We even walked down to the seaside for a few minutes and admired the shore, which is nothing like the beaches in Florida. We made our way back to the bus and fought snoozing as we listened to Dimitris, our tour guide, telling stories about his family and Greek heritage and weddings. His humor and storytelling skills were all that kept us awake while we rode to Rhodes that afternoon. We loved him too; he was our favorite. In Rhodes, we toured the Castle and walked the streets for shopping afterward. Then it was back to the ship again. We had dinner and watched a Hercules competition that was absolutely hilarious with men who were nothing like Hercules at all dressed as women in crazy outfits dancing around. We stayed up late for the midnight buffet, which was crowded and poorly organized. We were also disappointed to discover that the only food they had on the buffet were desserts. We went to bed after a very long day.

We spent Saturday at sea, and did a little gambling and some bingo and a little sunbathing until it was time for dinner again. It was kind of a boring day, but we passed it quickly and enjoyed relaxing. That night we had dinner entertainment as it was the farewell gala. The waiters had sparklers and the dinner crowd erupted in a congo line around the dining room. It was fun. After dinner, we saw a variety show and our own dinner table’s Melissa (the newlywed) was pulled onto the stage to participate in the show. She was a star!

Sunday we visited Dubrovnik. Our tour guide was too quiet to be heard effectively over the crowds all over the town. Dubrovnik is small and very pretty, with the cleanest streets I’ve ever seen anywhere. It’s as if they scrub them down every night. Despite the troubles hearing the tour guide, I enjoyed the city very much, and would love to go back someday. We visited monasteries, churches and a palace and all were beautiful. That night we went to dinner and later met with our group in the lounge for the cruise talent show. It was mostly Italian singing, but there were a few silly things the staff did during the show that were pretty funny. After the show, we had to pack and put our luggage in the hallway for disembarkation.

Monday morning we left the ship; Julie left a bit before I did since she had an early flight. We said our goodbyes and I waited for my color code to be called. I picked up my luggage and took the shuttle bus to Venice again. I found a place to leave my heavy luggage, and wandered the streets of Venice until it was time for me to leave. I walked so much that day I thought I might have to take a nap on a park bench. I made it the whole day with no nap and flew back without incident, even got back to Dublin early.

Sorry this was so long, and I can tell you there are even more details I left out but I’ll spare you for now. I had a great time – the trip of a lifetime.