We flew to Rome two days early so to have some tour of our own before the cruise started.
With a little pre-planning, a Google phone and Google maps at hand, and no hurry-up pressure from a group, we managed to stroll through the city for a few interesting places that we hadn't visited before or we did but had had little time to linger about.
We even took a day trip outside Rome to a UNESCO World Heritage Site villa where the grand views from its hill side palace and a stylish garden with over 500 fountains were eye-wide-open amazing.
And the contrast between the bucolic "Godfather country" villages in Sicily and the boisterous hot town Naples which literally sits on 22 live volcanoes, and the quaint little seaside resort Sorrento, all in southern Italy, showed just how multifaceted we human civilizations have become today.
I got an image of a tough little island country Malta through the fortress-like harbor I saw, and stories of centuries of fighting against foreign powers I heard, while so taken by the operatic, mesmerizing speaking of our local tour guide lady. Some people should never worry about their job being replaced by an AI machine, no matter how repetitive and routine it is.
Life on a cruise ship is supposed to be pampered and easy, and it was. Other than the almost daily excursions we took outside the ship, we split our time on board between the gym, the library, the swimming pool, the nightly shows..., and the eateries. We tried eating only once at the no-holds-barred buffet cafeteria at day, and went to one of those formal dining places for dinner and many times skipping the main dishes and desserts, to keep our weight on check. It sort of worked, I gained only a pound and a half after the trip. Damage contained!
Enough of words said, the following are links to albums I compiled for the trip. Click on any of them if you are interested, and you'll find photos and narrations for the places we'd been to. Hope you'd enjoy them as much as we did!
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