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The night of Oct 2, 2006 started the dozen days of fun on my Europe Vacation with my family in the North Western Mediterranean.
That evening I headed to the airport to hop on a connecting flight to Chicago and then on to Europe. When I arrived I was told the flight was so delayed I wouldn’t make it to Europe on time, so they rerouted me to a stop over in Miami instead of Chicago. This is coincidental only in that my friend who was traveling with us was flying out of Miami and - who knew it – my departure gate was right next to him so I literally stumbled into him at the airport, even given we were on different flights. Good way to start.
Well, a red-eye flight has us landing in good old England. A very speedy run through customs was nice and then I met up with my traveling companions - my parents, brother David and Kathy, and my long time friend Victor. After collecting luggage we connected up with our bus transport for a little over an hour ride to our departure point where the trip really begins!
Getting to Southampton, England we got off our bus and had our first glimpse of the fine Legendary Liner, the Queen Elizabeth II operated by Cunard (Formerly White Star Line). She was a little difficult to see, tucked behind the cruise terminal, but we would get our fair share of her shortly. We had a fairly short and very civilized wait and got to see that most of the folks on this particular ship were... well... let's just say it is safe to assume most of them are retired from the work force... Then we climbed aboard and were promptly shown to our quarters for the next 10 days - which in my case was state room 4171.
Wow... I'm really aboard arguably the most well known cruise liner still afloat. And what a ship... And what a cruise! The itinerary for the cruise had us visiting:
Lisbon, Portugal
Alghero, Sardinia, Italy
Cannes, France
Barcelona, Spain
Gibraltar
and 4 days at sea.
Day 1 Departure, Day 2 At Sea
That night we departed old Blighty and headed out to sea where we cruised the ocean blue for the next day or so. We quickly got acquainted with the ship, but it took a good long while to really get to know her. Quite a ship, no doubt the very definition of a luxury liner. If this ship were a house it would be like an "old money" mansion. Heck, what am I saying, it is a house. There is one person who legally and literally lives on board the ship. She has been on the last 150+ sailings, uses the ship as her postal address and legal residence. She literally lives on board ship. There are actually a lot of people who board the vessel and stay on for months and months. That's not uncommon on the Around The World cruise portions, but even on these little round trips you meet them. We also had 2 people on board celebrating their 100th cruise on the ship. Wow.... That probably takes at least a quarter million bucks to pull that off - not to mention a little bit of time! Yikes! Bet a typical Carnival ship can't say that!
We got introduced to the daily life aboard ship in the next day or so. We had a little program - printed daily aboard ship - talking about the schedule, activities, next port of call, maps, shows, etc. The first one was there waiting for us when we arrived. Then, time to consider which excursions we might want to take at the ports of call and sign up for them. A bite to eat for lunch. Wander the ship and see some of the shopping in the mall, poke around the casino, dwell in the half dozen plus bars, and take in some afternoon tea. Listen to some lectures, play golf, shuffle board, float in the pool, etc. Each day the ship's captain gave an update over the loud speaker which was always interesting. At 6pm the evening dress code kicked in. Have a little dinner, and then perhaps catch the show.
I mentioned afternoon tea. Actually, that's really "High Tea". More of meal really. Served up by the waiters in "white glove" service. A nice touch of sophistication. Since I brought up their dress, I should mention ours. Every day at 6pm the ship's dress code changes. We had 4 "formal" nights, 5 "informal" nights, and one "casual" night. Formal, in this instance, means Tux. Informal means Suit and Tie and Casual means you can loose the tie but still keep the jacket. Ladies can imagine they had to match that. The days at sea were all Tux dinners. The wait staff, of course, was always dressed to the max. And they took excellent care of us and soon anticipated our needs and learned our habits and we didn't have to ask for anything, it just showed up. Nice...
And food, food, food... We had a fantastic selection of food from the menus. It became routine at dinner to take in 2, 3, sometimes 4 appetizers. Then the Entrée, or two, or three. Followed by desserts. Several of them - of course. I think we all learned our true capacity to over-eat. Dinner was fantastic, no doubt, as were all the meals. And the presentation of food was spectacular, especially the desserts. To the point that we found ourselves unabashedly taking pictures of our food before we devoured it..
On each of the ports of call, the family members went our own way and we had our own experiences. The following is the rest of the trip from my point of view, but I am including pictures from all the cameras as there were some fantastic sights to see on the trip for each of us. I've culled out the best of the bunch, a mere 10% of the well over 5000 pictures we all combined to take.
See the pictures of and from The Queen Elizabeth II
See the pictures of the food!!!
Day 3, Lisbon
Our first port of call was Lisbon - a nice little Atlantic port city in the middle of the coast of Portugal. We decided to take a bus tour that took us to the cities of Sintra and Cascais. Sintra is a nice old classic mountain city known for its inspiration of poets while Cascais is a more modernized coastal city with a history in fishing and lots of tourism. I learned a bit about cork trees, got dizzy just looking at the sidewalk, and had the good fortune to meet some other folks from the ship who turned out to be marvelous companions for the remainder of the journey. Lisbon was beautiful but only the beginning of better things to come.
Day 4, At Sea in the Mediterranean Sea
The Mediterranean Sea was spectacularly flat and smooth. Like glass. The air temperature was about 75 degrees while the water was about 81. Learned there is always strong current flowing from the Atlantic into the Mediterranean because the Med evaporates to fast. Huh...
Day 5, Alghero
Our second port of call was the city of Alghero on the Island of Sardinia in Italy. Turns out it is the second largest island in the Med after Sicily. It has a history of being a war zone and so the city was once a walled city. Ownership/occupation went back and forth between Spanish and Italian. Interesting tidbit, the king of the Island at one point grew in power and decided to try and attack and take over the nearby kingdoms on the mainland. He was successful and unified a number of kingdoms creating what is now known as Italy. It is safe to say that Sardinia is responsible for the shape of Italy as we know it today. But that wasn't the end of the war for them. WWII saw the place being pounded into the ground. To this day there are many machinegun bunkers visible, and obvious places that the city was bombed and the walls destroyed. But that didn't deter them. They simply rebuilt the city around the damage and expanded it around the walls. So the walls no longer encircle the city, rather the city encircles the walls.
We hopped on a bus in Alghero and went to check out the prehistoric ruins of Nuraghe Palmavera. This was a town dating back to between 1200BC and 1500BC, talk about old! And in surprisingly good condition. Had a nice little trip to Cape Caccia which was a good view of the sea. Then, back to the city and start a walking tour of the inner walled city and a number of churches, including The Church of San Francesco. Being Saturday, I guess it was a good day there, since we saw three different weddings taking place. The Italian people were all extremely nice folks and very comfortable to be around. They even went out of their way to invite us in to take pictures of the insides of the churches while the weddings were in progress. Open and friendly folks. Made me wonder if I could live there...
I think walking around the city on our own afterwards was the best part of our time there. Enough so, that we cancelled the remainder of any excursions we scheduled on the ship in favor of hoofing it on our own in the next ports of call. As it turns out, that was an excellent idea...
Day 6, Cannes
Next up was Cannes in France, legendary home of film festivals. Determined to see it on our own we decided to head out first thing in the morning and we left the ship on tender in time to see the sun rise on our short trip into port. "We", in this case, means Victor and our friends we met in Lisbon. Early Sunday morning the city was pretty much vacant. First up we wandered around the port area in the city and then moved to the film festival area. Of course, there was yet another film festival in progress. We wandered around there for perhaps 15 minutes before a sleepy and somewhat pushy security guard found us and ushered us off the grounds and back onto the street.
We wandered around Cannes and quickly discovered it was not all that interesting a city, all said and done. It was small, neat, cute, and boring. We did have one Frenchman approach us on the street and say hello. When he found out we were tourists he started speaking English and was really nice and friendly. He pointed us to some good sites to see and things to do in the area. I began to think perhaps all the stories I'd heard about French people being rude were just stories.
A quick discussion and we decided to find the train station and take a trip to Monte Carlo in Monaco and see the sights there. It was a fun little train ride and got to see some nice sights, some sights of Nice and even Nice-ville. That train ride was pretty funny; Victor was in fine form...
After a good ride of about an hour and we piled out on to the streets of Monaco. At 0.7 square miles it is the second smallest independent country in the world after Vatican City and with about 32,000 people it's the most densely populated country in the world - just in case you were interested... Definitely had to go find Monte Carlo’s most famous landmark – The Grande Casino. On the way there it because obvious that this place was absolutely loaded with money. The buildings, the cars... All the cars... all the disgustingly expensive cars... all over the place. The casino grounds were spectacular, absolutely beautiful. The casino itself and the adjoining Hotel De Paris were opulent the max. Did I mention the cars? Visitors are not allowed in the casino. In fact, players are only allowed by invitation. If you showed up wearing a tux with $100,000 in cash you would be turned away. Really? Yup - my brother knows someone who personally had that happen to them!
OK, time to nab some food. We head down to the port area and find a nice little place to have a bite. Remember that first chap we met who was so nice and helpful? Well, up to now, I have to admit, the people were making him seem like the exception. Lunch and the remainder of the time on shore proved that the stories were not, in fact, stories, but examples of reality. Gotta admit, I've never traveled anywhere in the world where I felt less welcome by the natives than I did that day. (Mind you, I haven't been to Iraq, so I'm sure it can get marginally worse). Ordering food was a serious chore and the concept of customer service is, perhaps, a little different where I come from.
After the bite to eat, it was time to hustle up to the top of the hill and check out the palace for the Prince of Monaco. The raised flag indicated he was at home, which was a nice touch, him making himself available for us. But the armed guards left the suggestion I wouldn't be able to meet him after all. Pressed for time to catch the train back I had to make quick work of the time there with a few pictures. If you want to see what the view from there looks like in 3-D check out this very cool link: http://www.panoramas.dk/fullscreen5/f15_monaco.html
A quick hustle back to the train station with only a few minutes left. Note: Do not attempt to sit down in a seat anywhere near a store there without buying something. You can get seriously yelled at for taking a 1 minute rest. See afore mentioned comment about the nice polite local folk. Back on the train for the trip back. I encountered a few things I wasn't used to on the train... Dogs. Bicycles. Yeah, no kidding, 5 guys got on and literally dragged up three motorcycles on the train. It was cramped for a while but it thinned out and we were able to nab a seat in first class for most of the trip back.
Day 7, Barcelona
Ah... The fine city of Barcelona in Spain. I think I was perhaps looking forward to this stop the most. I have a friend who lives in Barcelona and I had not seen her for several years. We had coordinated to meet shortly after the ship put to port. When I disembarked I found that there were no taxi cabs or buses around, it was too early. So I had to walk into town which was about 40 minutes. Having only 30 minutes to meet, well, I jogged. Needed to work off some of that food anyway! We met each other at the Columbus Column monument. Easy. Oh yeah, and sufficiently symbolic, being Columbus Day and all that!
We pushed our way through swarms of flies to a nice little courtyard place and had some breakfast and caught up on old times. I learned all about the battle between the Castilian and Catalan languages, the politics, history, and lots of other good stuff from my friend. She then generously played the role of (a quite excellent) tour guide for me from an insiders point of view. Got to see some great bits of the city. I am still awe struck with the architecture I saw there and the history that was made there (some of which is only recently being made public by the government).
We stopped off at the 4 Cats. A beautiful little centenarian restaurant that gained notoriety as being the place where Picasso had his first art exhibit at age 17. This was popular meeting place for him, musicians, and architects like Gaudi.
Next up was an absolutely stunning building called the Palau de la Musica Catalana. Or the "Palace of Music". I took lots of pictures outside and when I started taking pictures inside, well, the security guard came running up and told me I was not allowed to take pictures inside. So, well, oops... but I guess it's alright if you look at them anyway :-)
We walked the city streets for a while and stopped through a few city squares. Then we hopped the Metro de Barcelona and went to see the most memorable thing on my trip. Coming up from the Metro my friend said something like "prepare yourself, take three steps forward and then turn around". Ah...ohh....woooow..... I was struck motionless and speechless for a good half minute at least. I've never seen a building quite like this one before. It was the Temple Sagrada Familia. The ultimate basilica designed by the extraordinary Antonio Gaudi. Pictures can't begin to do this building justice. It was originally designed in the late 1800s and has been under construction pretty much continuously ever since. Every time a piece of it gets done another piece is started, and usually with a different architectural style. I'm really not kidding when I say you can walk 20 feet around the building and it will look like a different building from the new point of view. I'm sure every time you visit it, it will look different.
Scheduled for completion in 2026, the local residents think it will be under construction forever. At approx $10 per visitor to enter the building, and about 2.5M visitors per year, it is a self-funding project which probably could continue far, far into the future. This place has it all. Snails, lizards, turtles and snakes, nativity scenes, crusaders, Christmas trees and icicles, stained glass and fruit baskets. You can't begin to describe it in words... While I stood and stared my friend ducked into a shop and bought me a book on the place (thanks!). I didn't go into the building, but I spent probably over an hour outside before we had to move on.
And move on we did - around the town seeing the sites. Indeed, we ran into two more of Gaudi's architectural works of art in the form of the Casamila and the Casa Batlló. This was a city I most definitely wanted to spend a lot more time in. A casual walk back toward our starting point and several goodbyes later I realized that once again I was pressed for time. No local currency was a drawback, but I couldn't even find an available taxi cab so I burned off a few more calories with another jog back to the ship arriving a little too close to departure time for my tastes but at least I was onboard when the ship set sail. And, off we go once again.
See the pictures from Barcelona
Day 8, Gibraltar
Our last port of call in the Mediterranean was Gibraltar, a dependent territory of Her Majesty's Royal British Empire. Locally known as "Gib" or "The Rock". We Americans of course know it so well as the centerpiece of the logo for Prudential. In our case, we didn't quite get to see the perfect picture as it was very overcast and cloudy when we arrived. Which was too bad, since we didn't get the classic shot of the rock, and we couldn't see Morocco across the straights. But otherwise it kept it a pleasant temperature on what might have otherwise been a very warm day.
Tour-free again, we wandered straight into the old city. It has a beautiful and very crowded shopping area which has a little bit of everything. And the prices might seem good but if you pay them, you got ripped off. Haggle... that's the name of the game there and you can knock a good 50% off the price if you try hard enough. The Moroccan influence is strong there in the architecture and there is a close relationship with Morocco both historically as well as more recently.
Spain ceded Gibraltar to England in perpetuity in the early 1700s. They keep trying to get it back and the locals keep telling them to buzz off. So in the 1960's Spain decided to make life miserable for the rock and they shut down the port and the land access, effectively isolating the rock - which is not exactly self-sufficient. They closed the boarder as well, reasoning that the majority of the domestic help in Gib was provided by the Spanish who crossed in and out each day. Spain figured they could basically starve them out. Well, that went on for something like 16 years. The UK put full support behind their territory and Gibraltar installed a daily ferry route to Morocco to bring domestic workers over in the morning and back and night and they settled into a new routine. Meanwhile Spain managed to un-employ a bunch of their own people, loose an income stream, and generally piss people off. It didn't work out so well for them. They eventually quit being such a nuisance. OK, enough boring history...
After wandering around town we nabbed a cab and got a great tour from the driver. He took us around town and filled us in on history and happenings. Then we went up the rock on the very steep and narrow roads. Most of the roads just recently opened, and many are still closed to all but the military. There is a long military history with Gibraltar, as is evident from all the canons. But even more so you have the famous Siege Tunnels - tens of miles of tunnels carved in the rock for military use with only a couple open to the public. We stopped off at various sightseeing points and then went into some limestone caves that were very beautiful. From there we headed up and met some of the famed Barbary Apes. OK, so they ain't really apes, but they are the only native primates to Europe outside of us people. Entertaining critters. There are not many of them and in Europe they are only present on the rock. Further, while they roam free, Her Majesty's government takes very good care of them, feeding them and protecting them. There is a prophecy that says when the apes are gone, the British Government will go with them. Prophecy or realty, they protect them quite well none the less...
Day 9 and 10 At Sea
OK, out from Gibraltar and we leave the Med behind and head into the Atlantic. We are again met with fantastically smooth sailing on day 1. Day 2 the seas definitely started to pick up quite a bit but still, the QEII is a ship built for Atlantic crossings. It has frequently crossed the North Atlantic at its worst. The captain told the story of the ship hitting a wave head-on that was estimated to be over 100 feet high and ship cut right through it. This ship has a hull more than twice as thick as a typical cruise ship and remains the fastest public cruise ship with a cruising speed of over 32 knots.
Needless to say the days got chillier as we got closer to England, and when we arrived early on Friday it was definitely not the Riviera any more. After we arrived in port we huddled up and said our farewells to the family and went our separate ways.
London
Being Friday the 13th Victor and I decided not to fly on that day and to spend an extra day in London going home on Saturday. No need to travel on Friday the 13th - either that, or Victor just wanted to see London for the first time, could have gone either way.
We picked up a cab to the local train station then nabbed a train and then shot on into
Victoria Station.
We just don't make rail stations like that in the US... We then took one
of those wonderfully famous
London cabs to where we would be staying to see if we could check in early.
It turns out we had a rather difficult time booking the place originally.
All the hotels want to book for both Friday and Saturday so getting a single
night was tough, and then doing that for a reasonably cheap price was nearly
impossible. Victor found a great little place that was nice, clean, cheap
and perfect. I think he must have smiled a bit when he finally committed
to the hotel. The name of the place is
Colliers Hotel. Run by
families from India and Lithuania and they have no idea where it got the name
from - of course.
We unloaded our stuff after a little free breakfast and a delightful chat with the Lithuanians. Then, we set off on foot to find Buckingham Palace and perhaps the see the Changing Of The Guards, since the timing was perfect! Now the formal changing of the guards happens every other day. And this happened to be one of those "other" days so we didn't get to see the hoopla. But they did hustle by on horseback and we got a few shots of them.
From there we went back to Victoria and had some lunch - a typical English meal, which is to say we had Indian food at a place called Spicy World. It was absolutely fantastic, every bit the tasty food we had come to expect from the ship. Very yummy. From there we bummed around a bit and then picked up an all-day pass on those great double-decker London Buses. We cruised around and went over toward one of the best know landmarks in the world, none other than Big Ben. That's one big clock. But Big Ben alone isn't what it is all about. Pretty much attached is the Palace of Westminster which adds another whole dimension to the clock tower. The architecture was amazing, simply amazing around there. Everywhere you looked the buildings were impressive. Lots of statues too. Strangely enough, they even had a statue of Abraham Lincoln there for some undocumented reason. Huh... A newer edition to the local building code, however, seems to include security. There were cameras everywhere you looked, if you looked for them. Including all over the top of Big Ben (the beauty a good telephoto lens... ) as well as most corners and most stop lights. But then again, like I said, being perhaps one of the best known landmarks in the world probably makes it a target.
From there we walked up river and skimmed past Trafalgar Square. It is part of the area, so ya kinda have to see the place. From there we headed over the Thames on a pretty cool suspension bridge to the newest edition to the London skyline, the great British Airways London Eye. The London Eye is the worlds largest Ferris Wheel getting to nearly 450 feet up. After a not-so-bad wait we climbed into one of the cars with a dozen new friends for the 30 minute journey up and around. The view was wonderful, but being late in the day when we looked west toward Big Ben we had to stare into the molten surface of the sun, which had its drawbacks. Otherwise it was definitely a sight (and experience) not to be missed. It's a great piece of work seeing this thing and realizing it is supported on only one side. It seems like it should tip over but indeed, it is quite stable. A real piece of work.
At this point I'm starting to crash a little bit and we head back toward Victoria and find a place to eat. After dinner I decided to head back and call it a day while Victor chose to roam the streets of London late into the night. The next morning came too early at 6am local time. We packed up, nabbed a cab, and headed back to Victoria Station to catch the underground down to the airport. Victor's flight was 11:00am and mine was 2:00pm to Chicago. His check-in took him about 10 minutes beginning to end; my line was over 2 hours, so the timing was pretty much perfect. I chose to stay awake on the trip so I could actually get some sleep when I got back home which eventually turned out to be 11:30pm, or a nice long 24 hour day by the time I climbed into bed...
A few other pictures to amuse you
A trip well worth taking. I had some great and memorable times with my family and friends. Met up with some old friends and made some new friends. Saw fantastic sights and learned a few new things. All in all it was a lot of fun and very relaxing.
Oh yeah, and I think I gained a few pounds too...
The parents cruising QEII style
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