Naples was our port of the day, though we saw nothing of it. Our guide informed us as soon as we met him that we made a good choice to choose a tour that didn't really go into the city as Naples isn't a very safe place and is choked with thieves and organized crime. I was a little disappointed to hear this as Naples is one of the few ports we've been to where you could literally walk into the city from the pier and I had wanted to do a little solo exploring after the tour was over with, but his warnings nixed my plan.

Today's itinerary included Pompeii, Positano and Sorrento.  We only spent two hours in Pompeii so we didn't see everything, but what we did see was pretty cool.  We saw the inside of  the brothel which made me think of Deirdre.  ;)   They had erotic frescoes above each of the doors to serve as a sort of "menu" so that foreigners in Pompeii could choose what they wanted even if they couldn't speak the language.  I found that amusing.  The frescoes were a bit too faded though to figure out what exactly the difference was between the different "options."  It all looked like two people having sex to me.  I mean sometimes the woman was on top, but I would have thought you could just have just worked out those details with the whore once you paid for her.  We got to Pompeii fairly early (just after 9am) and it was fairly empty when we arrived, but it was packed by the time we left.   It got to be pretty obnoxious.  Another odd thing about Pompeii was the number of stray dogs wandering around the ruined city.  I know I saw at least 10 different dogs there, and I'm sure there were more.  Some were just running around, while others slept in the various buildings.  It almost looked like Pompeii had turned into a colony of dogs.  Fortunately they all seem unbothered by the humans wandering about and were pretty friendly.

While seeing Pompeii was a dream come true, it was really seeing the Amalfi coast that ended up stealing my heart.  Our guide (a native of Sorrento) told us that the Amalfi Coast was considered the second most beautiful coastline in the world, but I don't see how anyone could think it's second to any place. I thought it was much lovelier than the coast of California (which holds first place). Maybe my memory just doesn't serve me well, but while I remember it being beautiful, I don't remember California being half as lush and picturesque as that. The mountains that sloped into the sea were just so green and the houses built into the mountain were so brightly colored and charming. So much of the landscape was littered with beautiful bushes of oleander, morning glory vines, and bougainvillea that added luscious pops of color to the green landscape. Positano was filled with cute little shops and galleries, and its black sand beach was worth the hike up and down the mountain to get to. We had a really great lunch in a little restaurant that was suggested to us by the guide.  For 25 euro per person, they gave us a ridiculous amount of delicious food made with incredibly fresh produce and cheeses. And with all the wine (both red and white) and water (after this trip, I'll never take free water for granted again!) we could drink. We even were given lemoncello with dessert (I had both mine, dad's and most of Holli's, so I was feeling no pain after lunch). The restaurant was very quaint and attractive, with an amazing view of the town below. And apparently TomKat eat there when they're in the area. I tried not to hold it against them. ;)

Sorrento, though not technically a part of the Amalfi coast, was also very beautiful and very clean. I was thoroughly charmed by the lemon and orange trees (bearing tasty looking fruit) that lined the streets. Orchards were found through much of the town, tucked between houses and cafes. We didn't spend much time here, but I could definitely see why it's so popular with tourists. It's the perfect Mediterranean beach resort.

We had a really good day, more time in the car than usual, but the views made it hard to mind. I was disappointed previously that we weren't scheduled to see Herculaneum and the Naples archaeological museum while in the area, but after seeing the coastline, I don't regret the choice!

                       

Today was our day in Rome, and it was every bit as exhausting as it was amazing. It probably didn't help that I started out the day tired and inexplicably grouchy. The whole ride into Rome (made longer by unexpected traffic) I felt irrationally irritated by everything that was going on in the car, be it people talking, fidgeting and what have you. It only got worse when I started to feel carsick once we got closer to Rome as the roads started getting tight and twisty. Fortunately, my bad mood evaporated by midday after we started taking in the sights. I was still exhausted (and hot and sweaty) but all we got to see made the discomfort more bearable. Our driver for the day was much more hard nosed and schedule orientated than the one we had for Florence, which was a blessing as there's no way we could have seen as much as we did if someone didn't have an eye on the clock.

Our first stop of the day was to see a fountain (can't remember the name!) on a top of a hill overlooking Rome. The fountain was pretty, but it was the view from the hill that was truly spectacular. Next we zipped down to see the Trevi fountain which was bigger and grander than expected. Its position in a tiny little alley way made it seem all the more huge. We did the requisite coin toss, of course and snapped a lot of pictures, and then had to race off to see the Pantheon. This might have been my favorite stop of the day. It was a Roman temple built to honor all gods somewhere around 30 BC. On the outside it looks exactly what you'd picture a Roman temple to look like, but once you go inside, the space becomes circular and the dome in the ceiling has an opening in the ceiling to let in an abundance of natural light. I loved all of the statues, frescoes and architectural details. The only thing I didn't like were the Catholic altars and other paraphernalia thrust in. Rationally, I think there's no reason Jesus/Yahweh/Whatever shouldn't have some representation in a monument devoted to all gods, but the purist in me doesn't like that there's an altar devoted just to the Christian Trinity in a monument that's from pre-Constantine Rome. Plus its presence seems to violate the spirit of the temple, as it's not like the priests would welcome someone wanting to use their altar to worship Jupiter or Apollo.

Then it was off the Vatican City where a private guide gave us a tour of part of the Vatican Museum, the Sistine Chapel and St. Peter's Basilica. We didn't even get to see a fraction of what's available to the public in the museum, but what we saw was awesome enough to convince me that if I ever return to Rome, I need to set aside 2-4 full days just to explore the Vatican. Most of what we saw was Roman statuary, but we also saw some incredible tapestries (they looked 3D) and the rooms that housed the works were often even more impressive than the art itself. One room had the ceilings painted as if there were detailed plaster moldings on them, but it was all fresco. I could hardly believe it, the effect was just that perfect. It felt like I sound have been able to reach out and touch the curves and lines of the painted figures. The Sistine chapel was yet another place where an artist's ability to make a 2D work pop out of its medium left me awed. I'd seen prints of all of the paintings before, but they didn't do the work justice. It's just so well done. I didn't remember to think profane thoughts while inside the chapel, but I did break the rules and snap a few pictures. Something the monitors combing the chapel's crowd constantly reminded us was prohibited. Didn't use the flash of course because I wouldn't contribute to the damage of a famous work of art, but I did join the small legion of rebels inside the chapel who dared to defy Vatican rules.

After we left the Chapel, we headed to the Basilica which was beautiful and huge to the point of being visually AND emotionally overwhelming. I'm sure everyone appreciates pretty churches, but St. Peter's is so grand and moving that I imagine it inspires moments of awed piety in even in most of its most stubbornly lapsed Catholic visitors (we can't help it, we've got that ingrained response to gilded iconography). With its high ceilings flushed with ornamentation, its exquisite frescoes and statues (especially the Pieta), multiple domes, and its sheer size, St. Peter's had me even closer to tears than St. Paul's in London, which previously held the title as the most beautiful church I'd ever seen.

Next up was the Colosseum, which was awesome but we were sort of eager to get done with it as at that point in the day Rome was colossally hot. Same for our quite viewing of the Forum and the Arch of Constantine.  Oddly enough, as eager as I was to see the Colosseum (I'm a nut for Greek & Roman archaeological sites), the best part of this stop were the cheesy street performers dressed in Gladiator outfits prowling around outside.  We'd seen guys like these all over Rome, but one of the two at the Colosseum took a particular interest in razzing my brother Paul and it was hysterical.  Even Paul loved it.  The guy referred to him as a "china doll" (my brother's got the classic pink-and-pale Irish complexion that fries under the sun so he stuck him under a red Japanese style parasol we bought from a street vender), as Holli's "mozzarella boyfriend" who he thought she should ditch, and said he had a pasta penis.  All of this was done in a waaay over the top Italian accent, with him prancing around like a raging queen in his little Gladiator outfit.  It was a riot.  Paul said he'd never enjoyed being picked on as much as he did then.

Last stop of the day was the Basilica of St. Paul Outside The Walls which was a very lovely Byzantine style church. Then it was back to the ship. Overall Rome was definitely my favorite city I've visited yet, a spot I'll expect it to hold even at the end of the week. It has so much to offer a visitor it's staggering and I know I'll need to go back at some point for a week or more so I can see it all!

Day 6 pictures:

                     

Today was hot, frustrating, but ultimately fairly successful.  It was just a lesson in how much better my family does (from my standpoint anyway) under the whip of a tour guide with an agenda than with more freedom.   While I think Jake and Dad had a better time today than yesterday, we saw less, waited around more and more than once I was fairly seething and near tears with frustration.  Rather than going on a cruiseline led shore excursion, today we had a private driver which more freedom and flexibility.  Unfortunately, that meant more disarray and dawdling with my family members.  It wasn't the fault of our driver, he was great.  It was just that my family didn't seem to understand that the secret to seeing as much as you can on a one day tour and to get your $$'s worth with a $100+ an hour chaffer is to haul some ass rather than wandering around nearly aimlessly for an hour or more for each stop.  The worst was at Santa Croce, where my mom wandered off to get a coffee while she was carrying my wallet in her purse.  I thought she was coming right back, but she ended up disappearing for an hour leaving me stranded in the Piazza, unable to visit the inside of the basilica as it cost 5 euro to get in (Paul reported back that it was awesome.  Grrr), sit down and get a drink or ice cream or do any shopping.  My dad and Jake disappeared for a while too, so I spent like 30 minutes circling the hot square trying to find everyone.  I finally found my dad after half an hour, but my mom didn't reappear for another 20 minutes, and Holli and Paul didn't show for another 30.  By that point I was almost to the point of violence I was so irate.

After lunch was a little better.  We were really rushed and got lost (on foot on our own, not with the driver), but at least I got Jake and my parents to conform to my commando pace so we could visit the Duomo and the Palazzo Vecchio before it was time to head back to the ship.   Still, we didn't make it to the Pitti Palace which I was deeply disappointed over as my mom decided we ought to go to Pisa too as the Academia and Uffizi Gallery were closed that day.  That was a waste of time.  The leaning tower was nice and all and the neighboring cathedral is beautiful, but people weren't kidding when they said there's nothing else to see in Pisa.  That's no lie.  Not only that, Pisa's sort of ugly (the driver thought so too) so I didn't feel the stop was worth our time.

Still, it wasn't all bad.  Florence is gorgeous and I snapped a lot of great pictures and we loved the drive through the Tuscan country side to get to and from the ship.  I'm just hoping tomorrow is better and more disciplined.  Because if it isn't, I'm likely to have a mini meltdown.  It'd just be too much to finally see Rome and not get to see much of it due to people dragging their feet.

Day 5 pictures:

Typing this up from the balcony of our stateroom aboard the Voyager.  Just checked in today and the ship is monstrously huge, though thankfully much easier to navigate than feared.  The room is small but not too bad, but the bathroom is at least as small as my closet at home.  When we were in port we had a great view of Montjuic from the balcony, though once we were out to sea it's just the blue sea for miles.  The Mediterranean was a little less green than I imagined it to be, but I suppose once you get out to a certain depth that's inevitable.  Somehow, the view is even more interesting now that it's dark.  The sky is clear and moonless, and with the exception of a few satellites visible in the sky and the waves breaking against the belly of the ship, only inky blackness exists beyond the balcony.  It's so dark that I can't detect the horizon line at all,  It feels like I'm looking out at a black, seamless drop cloth, one so matte and opaque that I couldn't tell if it was close enough to touch or if it lie miles and miles away. 

I got up early this morning as planned to go tour the inside of the Casa Batllo.  It was definitely worth the interruption of my sleep!  The entire building is just so fabulously weird, and the interior is just as eccentric as the front facade.  There were very few straight lines to be found within the house.  All of the windows, doorways and ceilings curved and waved irregularly, and the walls were painted lightly in odd patterns resembling scales.   And on the top floor, there were rooms where the walls and ceiling arched and ridged in such a way that it looked like you were standing inside the ribcage of a great, sleeping beast. There is so much movement in the design, the the whole place looked strangely alive.  I'm guessing that's the intended effect as the exterior of Casa Batllo was built around the theme of St. George slaying the dragon.  The balconies are supposed to be the skulls of its victims, the pillars on the lower floors are bones, and the waved roof with its brightly colored tiles is its scaly back.  It's so beautiful and so strange.  It definitely lived up to its expectations.

After I finished with the Casa Batllo, I had to go back to the hotel to  pack up the room so we could check out and be taken to the pier.  Packing poorly must run in the family as there was a mountain of bags in the lobby after we cleared out of the rooms.  We never could have all fit in a single cab, even one of the bigger minivan ones, so it was fortunate that while at the airport we were somehow found and tagged by a very helpful driver named Richard who drives a giant van.  It was seriously good luck.  He grew up in Barcelona, but his father was British, so his English is perfect.  He was full of information about the city and gave us his card so we could call on him to pick us up whenever we needed to be moved.  We did so to get to the pier, and I think we will at the end of the trip as well.  I don't know how we'd manage otherwise.

Getting on the ship was pretty easy, a relief after what happened on the last time we tried to cruise.  We were on the ship within an hour of arriving at the pier and had our luggage almost immediately after finding our room.  The ship is huge, and I still haven't seen all of it as I ended up taking a nap rather than exploring before the mustering drill.  There's a lot to do on the ship (movies, ice skating, golf, rock climbing, swimming, shopping, etc.) but I think I'm glad our itinerary is so port driven.  The boat is nice, but I don't think bumming around a ship is for me!

                   

Today I learned that Barcelona is a great city with far too much to see in just a few short days.  Especially when those days get off to a very late start!  Due to some sleeping family members (Dad and Jake) and a girl with an upset stomach (Holli), we didn't get out of the hotel until after 3pm.  Then our touring got further postponed by some hungry folk who wanted to eat at the Spanish version of Souper Salad. Much to my chagrin.  In retrospect I know that I should have considered going out on my own more seriously, but when you're without cell phones and you think that people will be ready to go  soon, you're less inclined to abandon people.  I didn't want to set a time to meet up with people only to have them to wait around for me to show.

I suppose, all things considered, we got a lot done.  Barcelona has a bus system for tourists that have three routes that takes you all around the city.  It's not exactly cheap, 20 euro for a day pass (though we had 3 euro off coupons), but you can get on and off as often as you please, and the buses run on a nice constant schedule (they show up every 5-7 minutes) .  They stop basically anywhere a tourist would want to go so they're a good idea if you want to tour the city on your own but are horrible with finding your way around.  Best part is the buses have open air seating on top and had little radios attached to each bench that had multilingual narrations of the sites you passed.  We rode two of the three lines between 4 &9pm (with a stop to see the Sagrada Familia) and was able to see the port, Montjuic, Eixample, the Port area and parts of the Gothic Quarter from the bus.  We spent an hour looking around the Sagrada Familia.  I took plenty of pictures there, but none of them do the church justice.  The facade is so ornate that if you can't see the whole thing at once, it sort of looks like a busy mess.   But it's grand and beautiful.

The city really is gorgeous in general.  Everything is so lush and green, and the nonModernista architecture reminds me a lot of the parts of New Orleans I loved the most.  Which I guess is unsurprising, as while NOLA is often thought of as a French city, it was Spanish at one point and much of the French Quarter architecture was built by them after the fires destroyed much on the city. 

For dinner we ate at a restaurant overlooking La Ramba and the walked down it afterward, which was fun, but less chaotic than expected.  We did see some random British guy (who judging by the big group of guys he was with, was with a bachelor party) wearing a way too short halter dress (and I suspect, going commando) carrying a blowup doll.  But other than that and a handful of street performers, the experience was much less busy than expected.

Our cruise starts tomorrow, something I'm both disappointed over and relieved.  On one hand, I could spend weeks here museum hopping and there's so much that I want to see that i don't have time for.  But on the other, our port days are much more structured and have a set (and EARLY) start time, so no sick/tired travel companion can slow me down! 

Still, I'm getting up early in the AM to tour the Casa Batllo tomorrow.  And by myself this time as I won't risk running out of time waiting on someone else to go with me.  I think I should be able to get it done by checkout time, as it's only a few blocks away.  That'll be one more thing to cross off my list so that I can focus on the sites of the Montjuic area (hopefully some of the parks too) on the day we get off the cruise.

                    

I did indeed crash this afternoon as I predicted in my itinerary.  But in my defense, I only slept 3.5 hours the night before my flight and I actually did try to get some rest on the plane rather than just trying to get all of season 1 of The Blair Waldorf Show watched in a day.  But I was unsuccessful and so no sleep for me.  AND I probably totally could have made it this afternoon had people around me not been crashing.  I fully intended to do touristing this afternoon with Paul and Holli (who DID sleep on the flight), but Paul laid down and crashed, and Holli laid down too.  Figuring that they weren´t moving any time soon, I laid down for a bit....and woke up 7 hours later.    So we didn´t leave the hotel until about 8:30 pm to wander around a bit before finding dinner.   We ended up eating at a charming sidewalk cafe overlooking a city square where there was some demonstration lead by chanting Tibetan monks.  Had a good risotto (though it was a bit TOO al dente for my tastes) and a really yummy Sangria.   Afterward Paul, Holli and I walked up the Passeig de Gracia and saw some of the buildings in the Manzana de la Discordia, including the one I really wanted to see, the Casa Batllo.  Took a few pictures, but they didn´t turm out as well as I liked since it was dark.  Totally gorgeous though, and we have plans to go back when it´s light out.  Had some more Sangria and then went back to the hotel so Paul could crash.  Spain just won their football game against Russia in the semi'finals and we´re situated on a major street. so there´s a lot of cars and scooters racing down the street honking their horns in victory so I can´t sleep just yet.

From what we´ve seen so far, Barcelona is really beautiful.  We love the architecture and even the stones on the sidewalks are beautiful (they´ve been pressed with Art Nouveau designs).  The weather is nice, warm and breezy.  And I love our hotel.  Well situated in terms of being able to get around easily, and it´s very beautiful (though small).  Free internet too, though not in the rooms.  I´m currently at one of the two computers in the Salon.  The room is gorgeous and ornate.  It looks like a very large parlor you´d find in a palace from the early 19th century.  Gilt chairs, chandeliers, molded ceilings, etc.  The rooms are small (though actually larger than I expected), but pretty.  Our has a very small balcony overlooking the mainstreet.  Nice during the day, but a bit of a nuisance at night.

Fortunately the trip has gone well so far since we´ve gotten into Spain.  It was looking pretty ugly when we were en route.  Apparently my expectations for family drama wasn´t just paranoia on my part.  Jake and Paul very nearly came to physical blows not once, but twice during our layover in JFK, and at one point, Jake was sobbing buckets and both were saying the trip was ruined at that point.  I´m really hoping that was just something they needed to get out of their system, but I´ll be surprised if we don´t have at least one or two similar fights before we go home.  :(