Eastern Mediterranean Cruise

August 14-26, 2008

When you have the travel bug, the possibilities are endless! Unfortunately, our supply of money and time is not endless! In order to see a lot of places on a budget (and considering the exchange rate) a cruise was definitely the way to go for our last summer in Europe!


Rome, Trevi Fountain
The first day we got there, we decided to take a casual walk through Rome. We were here last year during our Eurail trip over the Christmas Holidays. Since we had already seen everything it was nice to go and visit some of our favorite places again.


Our first stop on the cruise was Naples, Italy. The thing to see at this port was Pompeii. Pompeii was an ancient Roman city that was burned when the volcano, Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D. The city was buried under ash until 1748, when it was accidentally rediscovered.
In order to get there decided to take the public transportation. We got on a bus (that was when I knew we weren’t in Kansas anymore, as we were the only whites on the bus. Additionally, I was the only female) right at the port that took us to the train station. During the one hour train ride out there we met a nice German girl, Katharina, who was an intern at the German Embassy in Naples. We ended up spending the rest of the day with her. We had a great time!

This was a cast of one of the bodies that was recovered.


A beautiful town square in downtown Naples.


Chris really liked this statue that was placed at the top of the big square. He had me pose next to it because apparently that is one the poses I regularly use when I am talking to him.


During the first day at sea the cruise ship offered some afternoon entertainment. One of the activities was the hairy chest contest. When the entertainment staff tried to get people to participate there were only a few people who were willing to participate. Chris being the good sport that he is (and under the pressure of me and some of our cruise friends), decided to enter the contest despite knowing he had absolutely no chance of winning to help the activity forward.
When Chris entered the contest little did he know that he would have to do a dance down the stairs of the ship, and that there would also be a bum shaking contest (I decided to spare everybody by not putting that video up). Chris said he got nervous during his dance and since he didn’t know what to do he attempted to break dance! (The four girls in the front are the judges.) In the end, he was surprisingly a finalist (2nd place)!


The most amazing chocolate cake ever! And it was only $2 for this humongous slice! We couldn’t even eat half of it!


Our ship docked at our second stop, Marmais, Turkey.


Marmais, the city. There wasn’t much to see there, just a small beach community.


Our third stop, Izmir, Turkey. The thing to do at this port was to go see the house of the Virgin Mary, and Ephesus. This is in front of the claimed Virgin Mary’s House. Supposedly, this is where she lived during the last years of her life.


This is the “holy water” that seeps out from under the Virgin Mary’s house. There are three fountains representing fertility, health, and wealth. We filled up on fertility, but hopefully the effects weren't instantaneous!


This is the prayer wall, where people put their prayers on anything that they can find.


This is the front of the library at Ancient Ephesus.


The tour guide told us that this rock with the angel was actually the inspiration for the symbol of Nike. The founder of the company was there during the 1970s, and saw this angel. He took the idea home with him and it became a huge success.


Ephesus Arena


Our fifth port was Istanbul! This was definitely one of the neatest places that we have ever been in any of our travels. Istanbul is the only city in the world that is on two continents, Europe and Asia! So, this was our first official time in Asia! The city was beautiful, clean (way cleaner than Rome!) and the people were really nice as well.
We decided to take an all day tour with the ship for the day. The tour included a short river cruise on the Bosphurus River, which divides the city in half.


The Blue Mosque


The Topeki Palace


Istanbul at dusk.


Our 6th stop was Athens, Greece. We spent the day at the Parthenon, and wandering the city.


The Parthenon


We spent the day with our table friends, Arus and Arman, who were on their honeymoon.


These are the guards at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier. I really liked their goofy shoes!


Our 7th stop was Olympia, Greece. We took the train from the port. Here I am shading myself from the hot sun with a cheap Chinese umbrella. Chris thought it was dorky, but I like it! Oh! And on the train we met this really nice Australian couple who had been on a 66 day cruise! It started in Tampa, Florida, Carribean, east coast of South America, ANARTICA, up the Amazon river, back out to the ocean, up the west coast of South America, through the Panama Canal and finally back to Florida! Wow! Talk about a cruise!


Chris trying to blend in as a statue in the Olympia ruins.


Now we are both trying to blend in.


Our last destination of the cruise was Livorno, Italy. We decided to try and make it to church before we went to go see the Leaning Tower of Pisa. We thought our best bet would be to go to church in Pisa, but we weren’t sure if we would make it in time. We were torn if we should stay in Livorno and go to church there or if we should go to Pisa. Lost and praying to find a church, we eventually ended up at the train station, which was also the terminal for the buses as well. When we got there we had missed the first train going to Pisa, so we decided that maybe we should just try Livorno for church. While Chris was in the bathroom I decided to go bug the bus drivers about the address that I had for the church. As I walked out in front of the train station I noticed a group of people waiting for a bus. They were all dressed up. I stood there scared to ask them if they were LDS and going to church because they were all speaking Italian. Finally, the bus came and my final moment to ask was upon me. I followed them to the bus and caught the last girl getting on, she asked one of her friends that was in the group to talk to me since she didn’t know English. He was American and had served his mission there and was visiting some of his Italian friends for a vacation. And of course they were headed to church.
When we got to church everyone was so friendly, and disappointed to learn that we were only there for vacation. It was definitely an experience that we will never forget, and a great way to end our cruise. What an answer to a prayer!


Leaning Tower of Pisa

Here are some more pics!

THE END

Bastille Day, July 14

So to go back in time a bit…July 14th is France’s national holiday, known as Bastille Day. It commemorates the storming of the Bastille prison and the beginning of the end for the aristocracy. Paris celebrates by holding a huge military parade as well as fireworks all over the city. Our friends Ashton and Alaina stayed with us between ending their vacation and moving back to Canadia and we decided to attack the festivities together. We hit the parade late and ended up being like 20 rows of people back from being able to see anything. I don’t want to say we overcompensated, but since we missed the parade we decided to camp out on the Champ de Mars (park in front of the Eiffel tower) so as not to miss the fireworks or night concerts. We ended up being there from 12:30 to about midnight. Ashton and Alaina stayed the whole time, while we ventured home to get food and supplies and stuff (which is why they fried in the sun and we didn’t).

The night concerts were fun. Some of the most famous acts in France were there-so famous in fact that the majority only went by one name, like Jenifer, Christoph, and a few others I choose not to remember. Christoph Mae was also there (he’s a big deal in France, like a French Jack Johnson) as well as James Blunt. We entertained ourselves by making fun of James Blunt’s singing for quite some time. The fireworks were pretty cool, but the most intense part of the evening came with the end-of-event crowd control. Parisian cops set up RIDICULOUSLY unnecessary perimeters. In this case, instead of leaving the park open so that the 500,000 people could clear out in like 10 minutes as would be LOGICAL, they closed the park so there were only two small exit points, creating this massive funnel effect. We were misdirected and then followed by about 50,000 people. We soon found ourselves at a barrier staring a line of cops in the face with the 50k people at our back, leaving us no escape route. The said 50k were unable to move and so it turned out to be a stand off between about 5 cops and our 50k people. I may need to remind you that July 14th commemorates a REVOLUTION, so when some people started chanting “Vive la Revolution” we had our concerns. Luckily we made it home alive and luckily the cars on the street we were on remained unburned, despite French riot custom.

This was the mob at the parade. All we saw were people and no parade. Some ingenius retailer sold periscope looking things so you could see over the crowd to see the marching.

Here's Ashton and Alaina before the masses arrived.

Britt under the umbrella.

Eleventy billion people behind us, and this wasn't even the most crowded part.

Gettin' crazy to James Blunt.

Rognon de Veau

So we had some friends who were nice enough to take us out to dinner with Ashton and Alaina. It was a nice, fancy French restaurant right across the street from their apartment. Normally, Britt's the picky eater, so I devote most of my energy to helping her pick out her meal so that I won't have to harass the waiter later to take it back. Despite previous bad experiences, she chose a steak, and we insisted that it be as near burnt as possible (which translates to a French chef as "not bleeding as much as normal"). Since I'll eat anything, I haphazardly picked the 'rognon de veau' at the bottom of the menu, not knowing what rognon was, but knowing that veau (veal) was pretty good. When the meals came out, sure enough, Britt's steak was still mooing, and I noticed that I was definitely being served an internal organ of some sort. Not wanting to appear rude our ungrateful to our dinner hosts who were picking up the tab, I began eating, despite the meal's appearance, something akin to charred feces that still managed to be bleeding on the interior. I discovered a dish whose texture and taste were both completely foreign to me. Not only foreign, but well, GROSS. Every bite became more and more difficult, until I decided that I would chew with my mouth open so as to minimize my tongue's contact with the food, while shielding my open mouth from Richard, who had invited us there. Now, I'd like to note that I've been through two survival trainings, I've eaten bugs, grass, dirt, and even rotten walrus among the Inuit, but even my aversion tactics of imagining I was eating a cheeseburger weren't enough to keep me from eventually gagging. I couldn't hide that from Richard and he finally said, "hey you don't have to eat that if you don't like it!". "No, no, it's fine," I assured him. I couldn't keep up the charade for long, and eventually the cat was out of the bag. Luckily, Ashton was brave enough to try a bit and confirmed that it was, in fact, disgusting. I asked the waiter later (who had conveniently disappeared for an hour, preventing me from complaining and from sending Britt's steak back) and he had no idea what rognon was, but knows that he would never ever order it. Wow, jerk, thanks for sharing that tid-bit AFTER I choked down 3/4 of it. So, Britt ate as much of the bloody beef as she could choke down, and I ate a bleeding/burnt internal organ. It was still nice of our friends to buy, though, and we burned it all off later playing wii. What was the mystery organ? KIDNEY.
a;klj

Notice the burnt-feces quality of the dish

This is the bloody interior