Africa 2024

 Today. In the last day of the first half of our voyage.  It's also the first sea day after 7 straight port days, which tend to get tiring.  After breakfast and our interdenominational devotional, we attended Nick's coffee chat with Florin, our Hotel General Manager.  We've sailed with Fortin many times including last year on the Grand South America.  He's our favorite person in this role.  Besides answering the typical questions about his role onboard, he spoke extensively about the recent dry dock and showed a number of pictures.  We also learned a number of interesting things that happened during the dry dock.   First, 100+ containers for the dry dock got offloaded in Europe because the shipping company did not want to sail to America and face having the ship unable to unload due to a projected east coastdock workers strike.  So HAL had to get them loaded them on another ship and they arrived one week after the dry dock started.  Seco...

 As we sailed into the port of Catania, Mt. Etna was in full view with a little smoke cloud above it.  As in Naples, our projected arrival was 10am and we were safely secured at our berth by then.  Across the dock was a an Israeli cruise ship, Crown Iris which is a former Norwegian Cruise Line ship, Majestic. Our little group of 6 met in the 3rd floor atrium just before 10 and when the ship was cleared we joined the hordes trying to exit the ship.  This disembarkation was the most crowded that we have experienced this cruise.  Outside the terminal we walked to the port gate and met our new guide, Manuel, who replaced our booked guide, Roberto, who had become sick.  Manuel was really a licensed driver, and not skilled in guiding although he was a nice enough person.   He drove us first a short distance to a parking lot by McDonald's and the entry to the Christmas market.  We did check out the menu for the McDonald's and there were a few unique item...

 With a scheduled arrival of 10am into Naples, Italy, we took the opportunity to sleep in until 7:30am.  After breakfast, I went up to the Crow's Nest to watch the final hour of the sail into the Naples harbor and nestle up against the cruise ship terminal pier.  Once the ship was berthed and the mooring lines attached and the ship was cleared, our little group of 8 was among the first off of the ship.  In this port, the gangway was set up on deck 2 instead of A deck, and it connected with the upper level of the cruise terminal.  Inside the terminal were a large number of shops, but most were not open,  We took the escalator down to the street level and exited the port gate and found our driver for the day, Ciro or Mister Taxi. Evie, the leader of our group had found him after reviewing internet and Facebook posts indicating a very positive experience with him.  Our group of 8 filled every seat in the white van and we were soon off headed for Sorrento ...

 After a big day yesterday, today was intended to be a much slower paced day.  4 of our group met at the appointed 8:30am meeting place and scanned off the ship.  The other two were lagging so we used the time to find a Siena bank for Alson to get some Euros.  Back at the shuttle drop off point, the others joined us and we headed off to Ostia Antica which is a very old ancient city about an hour away from the port.  Andreas had a bit of difficulty finding the place due to some road closures, but I assisted with my online mapping and routing program on my phone.   At the site, we purchased tickets and since we had some time to spare before taking the shuttle to the far end of the ruins (I HIGHLY recommend this!), we toured the nearby castle which is currently under renovation.  It was used for the laborers and later prisoners who were used to mine the salt from the nearby salt pools.  Ostia, Antica was active from 600BC and 600AD (1200 years) befor...

 After an easy overnight sail, we docked in Civitavecchia, Italy which is the port city for Rome.  I remember the vibration and sound of the propellers and the thruster around 6am but that wasn't enough to cause me to get out of bed.  We ate our customary breakfast and met up with our small group of 2 other couples.  Alson and Martha were the leaders and Lynne (her husband Ross couldn't make it as he needed to rest up after a couple of strenuous days in Livorno. Russ and Lynne are Alson and Martha's  long time friends.  I met them over the internet through Cruise Critic and we ended up joining them on a number of independent excursions on this voyage.   We scanned off the ship and then waited for a shuttle bus to take us outside the port to the parking lot just outside the port gate.  Since all of us had been to Rome previously, our excursions. In this two day stop, would not visit Rome.  At the parking lot we soon met our guide, Susanna and ...

 For our second day in Livorno, Italy, we were able to sleep in a bit longer as we did not need to  meeti our group until 8:45am.  We scanned off the ship and found our guide Rossella who was our guide yesterday.  We did an about an hour drive to San Miniato which is holding a Trufflefest over three weekends in November.  This weekend is the middle one.  There were all kinds of booths selling all kinds of food products including the namesake item:  Truffles.  I was not very aware of truffles before this visit, but the other two couples were very keen on them.  Truffles are a mushroom type item that is prized as a delicacy seasoning item for various dishes.  They purchased a truffle (70E).  The group shared in the cost.  I was also able to purchase a couple of watch batteries for Angela's fitness tracker which went dead the day before. Leaving the Trufflefest, we did a short drive to the Ristorante Venanzio in Piazza Palestro wh...

 Livorno is the port that ship passengers typically use to travel to Florence or Pisa.  And we've done that before.  So this time we joined two other couples (the Kemps and the Kleins) and did something different, really different.  It was so different that it truly amazed me and I'm super glad we did it. Today's account is of that journey. I should start out by sharing that we couldn't get to sleep until after midnight as our stateroom smoke alarm kept beeping indicating a low battery.  A call to Guest Services brought a repairman to change the battery. After breakfast we met up with our group on deck 4 in the Atrium and exited the ship.  It was a short walk the length of the ship to the small terminal which had a number of vendor booths but many were not staffed.  After a short wait, we met our guide for the day, Rosella, and we followed her to her very nice diesel Mercedes van which unbelievably has 400,000 km's on it (240,000 miles).  She brie...