Europe Trip! April - May 2013

It's been a while since I could post so I thought I would give you all a picture show of our Europe trip!  We had such an amazing time on our Mediterranean cruise!  I wish I had time to tell you all about every detail but I'll do my best to give you the gist.

In April of 2013, Jordan and I started our trip in Barcelona, Spain.  We planned to stay a few nights in Spain before catching our ship and beginning the cruise.

This picture is a little fuzzy but it is a good map of the different ports we stopped at while on our cruise.

This is a picture of the itinerary we followed at each port.  Excuse all my notes/chicken scratch!

Our ship was aboard the Serenade of the Seas by Royal Caribean.

Our flight was long with a layover in Atlanta, GA.  We surprisingly had very little trouble adjusting to the time change (they are ahead by 7 hours).  After getting settled in our hotel we headed out to see the sites!

At the top of our list was the Sagrada Familia.  It is incredible and worth the visit.  You can find oodles of information and pictures online of this amazing church.  It was designed by Gaudi and construction began in 1882 and continues today.  It is truly an amazing church designed by generations for generations.

This is a picture we took from a distance of the Passion side.  The Passion facade was my favorite.  You can read up on the bronze figure (weighing at 2 tons) suspended between the towers HERE.  We thought it was pretty cool that this figure represented the ascension of Jesus.  

After a morning of running around Barcelona, we stopped at a restaurant recommended by a friend.  This little place was called 4 Cats. I just loved this restaurant.  The food and service was amazing and it was such a great treat after all the travel we'd been through.

This is a picture of the water, wine, and olives they served us.  All were delicious!  Jordan doesn't like olives so I enjoyed them on my own!  We kept that little blue glass bottle as a souvenir.

After 4 cats, we headed to see the Cathedral of Barcelona.  Again, this was another Gaudi creation (his earlier years) and we thought it was beautiful!  We arrived at just the right moment and didn't have to wait in any line at all!

Next up was Cannes, France.  The locals pronounce it "Con."  We enjoyed the general feel of the city by walking around and stopping at a little tent market where we bought some antique skeleton keys and crystals.  We also went by the Cannes Film Festival.  The city was on a holiday (their version of our Labor Day) so unfortunately, there were very few shops open.  Still, the atmosphere was really fun and light.

This is a picture of us on the tender boat with the city of Cannes behind us.

After a quick overnight ride, we stopped at the port of Livorno, Italy.  We didn't spend any time in Livorno because we caught a taxi to Florence and Pisa that day.  We met some new friends from Puerto Rico and Canada on that little day trip by sharing a group taxi.  We ended up spending a big chunk of the day with them and realized that one of them was the absent couple that had been missing from our dinner table!  Don't be afraid to sit at a group table on a cruise!  You really do make good friends!

Here Jordan and I are in Florence overlooking the city.

Next up was Pisa!  I was actually pretty excited about seeing the leaning tower (worlds most famous construction catastrophy).

We both loved Pisa!  The leaning tower is in a square with a cathedral and baptistery, so there is plenty to see within walking distance.  We met some hilariously funny Scottish men who were backpacking across Europe on motorcycles.  Being a gal from Texas I picture "bikers" to be tatooed, rough, perhaps a tad chubby, and smelly.  These were quite the opposite and were full of flattery.

Our next port was Civitaveccia, Italy.  This port is about a 1hr train ride from Rome where we met up with our friend, Father James.  Father James was such a kind person and spent the day showing us around Rome and teaching us about all the history!  That city is history built on top of history around the corner from history (it's crazy).  It's so much to take in, but helped a lot to have a friend from the area!  Plus, he was a Ranger's fan!  

Here we are with Father James on the Spanish steps.  It's rare that they have flowers on the steps so that was a nice treat!

Jordan and me on the Spanish steps!

In front of Trevi Fountatin.  We saw tons and tons of great sites in Rome!  The ship gave us a list of 25 suggested sites and we saw more than half of that list plus several sites not very well known to the public!  This is all because of the time we got with Father James!  He really knows his stuff!

Here we are in front of the Roman Coliseum!  We didn't have time to tour the inside, but really enjoyed the amazing structure! We learned that those holes in the side of the building are from where all the marble used to be attached by brass fasteners.  Almost everything in the Roman Forum used to be covered with marble right down the streets.  Today, that marble is stripped away and used elsewhere.

Our day in Rome was so exciting that we got back on the ship and still felt full of energy.  We decide to climb the rock wall on the top deck of our ship while we waited to leave the port.  It surprised me how much I enjoyed the rock climbing so we'll have to do that again. 

That evening at dinner, I couldn't help but gush about our wonderful day to our new dinner friends!  About mid-way through our meal, Jordan had to nudge me to let me know that I was missing some very important social cues.  Every other couple at our table seemed to have had a bad day in Rome (flat tire, almost missed the ship, got hopelessly lost, non-relaxing honeymooners on a bus, etc. etc.) and there I was, energetically talking about all that we'd seen and done (let alone the rock climbing).  Jordan helped me realize, it was time to keep the excitement to myself. At least until after dinner.

This is a picture of us in front of Pompeii, Italy.  This is a city that was perfectly preserved from the volcanic eruption in 79AD.  It was totally cool to see how people lived back then.  Mount Vesuvius is in the background of this picture.  If you've never been, you might want to prepare yourself mentally for the sites.  It can be tragic but interesting.  Most notably, we found the Pompeii brothel to be very colorful.  Instead of words, imagine a picture version of the "menu" painted on all the walls.  Wow.  They also had "shaply arrows" throughout the entire city so that no matter where you were, you could easily find your way to the brothel.

This is one of our favorite photos.  We enjoyed a day at sea and spent a good chunk of the day eating desserts, fruit, and coffee on the balcony off our room.  We had a room in the aft (back) of the ship and loved it!  We will definitely have an aft room on our next cruise!  It had a great view no matter which side was facing land and our balcony was a little larger than your average room.

Next we went to Venice, Italy.  If you're planning a trip to Venice, you really don't need to plan events.  This is a great city to get lost and just enjoy walking around.  Well, we did actually get lost a few times.  While curving through the tight alleyways we hit a deadend and literally hit a stairway to the ocean and had to turn around.  Still, it is great to say we got lost in Venice.

This is us in front of Rialto Bridge.

This is a fairly typical picture from Venice.  Almost all the bildings and walk ways look like this but I really love this shot because the water is so still and the sun is perfect on the buildings.  I might have to paint this picture some day.

 This is us across the ocean with the Doges Palace and Bell Tower behind us. 

Again we had a day at sea and soaked up the rest since we'd been walking around forever!  The weather was perfect so we tried to enjoy the perks of the ship! 

This is the view of the ocean from our balcony just before dinner.  It was breath taking.

We took several videos while we were on our trip so we posted them to our YouTube channel.  You can subscribe to view our videos HERE or search for the channel titled viperwlf16.  You can start with a beautiful video from a bell tower in Split, Croatia.  The link to that video is HERE.

And that concludes my summary of our trip!  Despite the length of this post, I've hardly scratched the surface!  We worked very hard to save for this trip and it's always been my dream to travel overseas.  It was such a blessing to be able to do that this year with my best friend.