Today is the second time that we’ve all visited Mykonos.  The first time, we really didn’t like it at all.  We had tried to just get a taxi to visit a beach, and we waited nearly an hour and were still unsuccessful.  That time, we ended up taking the public bus, which was a terrible […]

Read more "Mykonos and the 4th of July"

Many of the cruise ships that used to call on Kusadasi, Turkey (Ephesus) changed itineraries after all the turmoil in the country to call on Valletta, Malta instead.  We weren’t entirely sure what to expect from this port of call as we hadn’t been here before. We had been told that that sail in was […]

Read more "Magical Malta"

Ah, Sicily…you have such a reputation from The Godfather and other mob stories over the years.  Whether this reputation is deserved or not is unclear…but the Sicily we saw today was so beautiful, so perfect, so charming that we didn’t want to leave.  Any of you that are as old as we are may recognize […]

Read more "Picture it…Sicily, 2017…"

Today was a beach day in Ibiza, Spain.  We simply drove to a beach and spent a couple of hours lounging in the Spanish sun before heading back to the ship.  The day was quite windy, however, so the surf was quite a bit rougher than it likely would have been otherwise. Ibiza is a […]

Read more "I took a pill in Ibiza…(don’t worry, it was just a vitamin)…"

We arrived in the port of Cartagena today, planning to explore the city on our own.  We’d seen online prior to arriving that there was another Moorish fortress castle here…Castillo Concepcion…so we planned to find that.  We’d also read that there was a Spanish Civil War museum, and we thought it’d be cool for the […]

Read more "An Educational Day in Cartagena"

We were back in Spain today, visiting the beautiful seaside city of Malaga, which is situated on the famous Costa del Sol.  The beaches along this area are considered some of the best in Europe, but we chose to do a little sightseeing instead (had we realized how close a beach was to our ship, […]

Read more "Malaga: Picasso and Palaces"

We spent today touring the territory of Gibraltar…a part of the United Kingdom at the very tip of the Spanish peninsula.  From this port of call, we were able to see both Spain and Africa as this is the point of Europe that is believed to have been connected to Africa millions of years ago. […]

Read more "Monkeys, monkeys, monkeys…and a very big rock!"

We were fortunate to find a cruise itinerary that spent two full days (and an overnight) in Barcelona.  My goodness, are we glad we did!  (Warning: long post with a lot of photos ahead!) First, we went up the mountain to Montserrat to visit the monastery and see the shrine to the Black Madonna.  If […]

Read more "Gaudi, Paella, and a Madonna…Hola, Barcelona!"

Yesterday, we visited our only French port of our cruise…Villefranche, which is a gateway to Nice. We really just wanted to spend time exploring the city on our own, but it’s kind of far from the port, so we booked a shore excursion that would basically drive us into Vieux Nice and drop us off […]

Read more "Bonjour, Nice!"

Yesterday we said “arrividerci, Roma” as we boarded the Celebrity Reflection to begin our Mediterranean tour.  Because the kids were a bit tired after we ran them all over Rome, we had a low key day of lounging by the ship’s pool. Today, our ship stopped in La Spezia, Italy, which is a jumping off […]

Read more "Under the Tuscan Sun"