Europe2011

Silliness in Paris

We were upset that the Eiffel Tower lights show had no music, so we made up our own. Make sure you have your speakers on and the volume turned up, as the silliness is our voice-over.

At the airport in Venice, we discovered that the Star Alliance system apparently lags behind United, and so their system wasn’t showing DH’s gold status. This was unfortunate as we were there for three hours, and we wanted to use the lounge. DH tried for nearly an hour (we had …

Last Day for Venice

Our flight out of Venice wasn’t until 6:30pm, and the ship kicks you off by 10:30am at the latest, usually, so we figured we’d spend some of the last day wandering around Venice. We planned to get off the ship at first opportunity (8:10am), but our alarm didn’t go off …

Random Things from Europe

* Just like every restaurant in the US is likely to have chicken fingers and hamburgers and/or hot dogs somewhere on the menu, every restaurant in Europe will probably include chicken curry on the menu. * UK taxi drivers have to pass a series of examinations providing they know every …

Izmir Wanderings

In Izmir, DH and I decided to skip Ephesus because it was very far away (farther than Athens from Piraeus), and we were kind of on sightseeing-overload at that point. Instead, our cruise ship’s “about the port” board suggested as an option the area called the Kultur-park, which was reported …

Croatia: Surprisingly Awesome

We had two stops in Croatia on our cruise, one in Dubrovnik (our first port) and one in Split (our last port). We had not been particularly looking forward to either one of them, and I had even contemplated just staying on the ship. But, honestly, those two ended up …

The Acropolis (and Athens)

Things which are okay at the Acropolis: Yanni playing a concert, people in all forms of dress, funny faces, wild dogs pissing and pooping everywhere as well as fighting each other, tour guides giving incorrect names of gods/goddesses, children crying and screaming, tons of people taking pictures in various states …

NCL Jade

The Jade is not unlike the Pearl (our Alaskan cruise ship), with a few exceptions. It was originally decorated and built to be a ship for Hawaii cruises. NCL decided to change its purpose when the Hawaii cruises turned out to be unprofitable. There’s lots of Hawaiian and South Pacific …

The Drunk Leading the Blind

After our day in Dubrovnik (which I’ll talk about in a single post about Croatia), DH and I decided to enjoy some late evening hot tubbing. It’s always a good way to meet some other people as well as enjoy the hot bubbly water. After some tub-shuffling (one tub’s bubbles …

Ah, Venice!

Arriving at Venice near sunset proved a beautiful end to a hectic day. The train station lets out right near the vaporetto (water bus, or as DH calls them, Zapateras), and DH went to get us each a 24-hour pass. Following the advice we’d gotten from several sources, we took …