April 30

And so the journey ends...thought I would end it the way it began with the Statue of Liberty and sunrise over NYC!  We were really glad to get home.  It has been a wonderful adventure and we enjoyed everything we saw.  Now we just have to sit back and absorb all of it!  Hope you enjoyed it also.  That's all.

April 24

We are now on the Queen Mary 2 headed back to the good old USA!  We are happy to be on this last leg of the journey finally!  The QM2 is an amazing ship - about twice the size of the QE2!  It woould take more than 6 days to learn your way around!  But we have found a favorite bar and our dining room and our room and the library (which is where I am now) - what else could we need.  Yesterday in Southhampton, between ships, we went to this fantastic hotel/spa out in the country for lunch.  It was fabulous.  Don't think I will be staying there any time soon though - their cheapest room was 290 pounds a night!  Almost 2 dollars to the pound!  It was nice and, as I said, we are glad to be on the QM2 headed home.  The BLOG is nearing an end too - may take some pictures of this ship and hopefully the Statue of Liberty on Saturday morning to end this journey.  Hope you have enjoyed.

April 22

Our program this morning said those who were doing the World Cruise from Southampton to Southampton will have traveled 40312 miles tomorrow when we arrive in Southampton! Hard to believe that a week from today when we get back to New York we will have covered 40312 miles on the seas! Our stop in Lisbon yesterday was wonderful - it is a really beautiful place and our tour was great. We left in the morning and headed to a couple of seaside towns - one of which was quite a resort. It would be a nice place to come spend some time. We passed one beach which our guide said was favored by wind surfers the world over - the wind was very strong - the beach sand had formed large dunes on the other side of the road. Our guide said the road was often closed in the winter because of sand. Then we went into the hills to the town of Sintra which was the summer residence of the king back in the 14th century. It was a beautiful drive and a wonderful small town. The roads were steep and narrow. A lot of the houses had beautiful tile work on them - our guide said that at one point tile was cheaper than paint - sure made for some beautiful houses! The town itself is divided into the old section - where we wandered - full of cafes and small shops and the new section where people actually live and eat at places like McDonalds and Pizza Hut. The Americanization of the world continues. On the way back we came the inland route - freeway and all which was not as pretty to say the least. We got back to the ship in time for lunch and then packed some more. At 4 we pulled out of Lisbon - it was very cold and windy on deck but we got some good pictures. There is a statue on the banks of the Tagus River (which is where the port for Lisbon is) that is in honor of the explorers - it was Portugal who first did a lot of the exploration what with Vasco da Gama finding the route around Africa and all. It looks like the bow of a ship with statues of each of the explorers along the side - it was impressive to sail by. They also have a huge statue of Christ the King like the one in Rio de Janeiro that was given to the city by the Catholic Church in exchange for their neutrality in WWII. All in all Portugal was a beautiful place - clean and scenic and friendly.

April 20

Today we left the Mediterranean and entered the Atlantic - must be headed home! Thought you would enjoy the pictures of the Rock of Gibraltar. It was beautiful sunny weather BUT the wind was blowing and it felt awfully cold! Great to be able to see Europe and Africa at the same time - too far apart for a picture that shows both though. Tomorrow Lisbon.

April 19

Today we are in Valencia, Spain. It is a wonderful small city. However, our tour was AWFUL! Absolutely horrid. Our guide was the pits. Our tour went to the Lladro factory which was really neat - amazing how they make all of the porcelain statues - really interesting. No wonder Lladro costs so much - it is very labor intensive! The woman who makes all of those tiny flowers is just amazing - no way my clumsy hands could work with something that small. And the women who painted the statues’ faces were amazing! Such delicate work. And the way the make parasols out of porcelain was too fascinating! Then of course they gave us time to browse in the Lladro shop. But our STUPID guide never even mentioned when we should be back at the bus so at 12:30 or so she finally comes back and we head off to our next stop - mind you we were supposed to be back on the ship by 1:30! By the time we got to the next stop it is 12:55 and she tells us only half the group at a time can go through the Ceramics Museum! That gives each group approximately 10 minutes since it is still a 5 minute walk away! Ginnie and I - even though she was really looking forward to it - opted to sit in a café and watch the people! It was a beautiful day and the town was great. We drove by a wonderful beach - very long and very wide. There were some beautiful buildings and the iron work on the balconies was fantastic - no two buildings had the same design. It looked great - had it all - a nice beach, beautiful buildings, wonderful weather. It was just the tour that was the pits! I think Valencia is a place I would like to visit again - just on my own - no tour!

April 18

Even the ship ride from Greece to Rome was great - we passed close enough to Sicily to see Mt. Etna covered in snow and then we passed very close to Stromboli which is an island that is an active volcano - just kind of burps all the time but there are villages on a couple sides of the island. But one side had smoke and steam rising from it because of the lava and hot rocks falling down the side. It was great. Then the real treat - ROME! Definitely a place I want to come back to explore! We took a tour that took us the 90 minutes into Rome from the port and dropped us off in Piazza del Popolo and turned us loose for 3 and a half hours! What a wonderful tour! It was Easter Monday which is a major holiday in Rome so all the stores were closed and there really weren’t very many people around - all the Romans take advantage of the holiday to go to the shore. Ginnie and I walked down to the Spanish Steps and then over to the Trevi Fountain! Great googly-wooglies! It was so fantastic! I was absolutely amazed. So beautiful - and so huge! Words really can’t describe. We did manage to find a couple of open shops and browsed for a while and bought a few things even though we have already packed our “junque” in the new suitcase we bought in Kusadasi! Then we took a cab back to Piazza del Popolo and had lunch in a sidewalk café - 5 Euros for a 200ml Coke!! The little tiny Coke cost more than the sandwiches! After lunch we got back on the bus and went to the Coliseum - it too was fantastic. Amazing to imagine what it may have been like with 70,000 Romans cheering on the gladiators! After the Coliseum we went to St. Peter’s Basilica. The crowds were huge - we had to stand in a ling line to get into the church. BUT good gravy - I was absolutely stunned speechless. It is so huge and so absolutely beautiful - it just takes your breath away! Amazing - absolutely amazing. No good pictures from inside though - too immense for a flash and too dark to take pictures without - I can’t keep a camera still enough. Another coffee table book to buy. But it was so beautiful and so grand! Then the drive back to the ship though the Italian countryside which is green and lush - even have redbud trees (at least they sure looked like them) in bloom everywhere so even though I missed them at home I got to see some! All in all it was a fantastic day. Now just 2 more stops until we get to England and change ships for the trip to NY.

April 15

4-15: Today was Greece! Amazing - just one country after another. We took a tour called Highlights of Athens - we went to the original Olympic Stadium that has been restored and they still use it. Then we went to the Acropolis which was fantastic. It is a real hike so Ginnie stayed in the café at the bottom. Acropolis literally means “city on a hill” and it was on a hill. The view from there was spectacular. The Parthenon - which was a temple to Athena - was huge - many of the columns are still standing. It was all wonderful to see after having heard about it for so long. There was another temple up there also which was much smaller then the Parthenon. Much of the original is gone - many of the statues are in the British Museum and the large statue of Athena was taken to Constantinople in the 1400s. From the Acropolis we could see the whole city of Athens. We could see another temple - one to Zeus - and two separate theaters. The day was beautiful - cool and sunny. Tomorrow a sea day and then Rome.