Wherever We Go

Wow,  things sure do happen fast when you get to Europe.  There is a lot to see and do and not much time to do it.  No sooner are you in one country seeing what you can see in a day, then you sail away and the next morning you are in a whole new country with much to see and do there.  Because of that I am going to have to combine some stops as I try to tell you about all the great sights we have come across.  For now, I will tell you about Barcelona, Spain.  Vialula and I got to spend two and a half days there because we met up with our daughter, Melba Jean.  We disembarked the ship for a few days and got to share some time there with her.  Melba Jean came over for the week and got to explore the city before we got there so it was helpful as she could guide us to the things she enjoyed.   Barcelona is a city renowned for its fantastic art nouveau buildings, tapas, and Catalan culture!  We walked up and down Las Ramblas, the most ...

Welcome to Naples Italy, and more aptly, Capri.   It is impossible to take a bad picture.   The land of the living postcard.  Everywhere you look is the quintessential Mediterranean city or town or barrow.  Terraced houses lining narrow streets and alleys where people's lives and work are so closely related.  Painted doors and steps lined with pots of flowers or herbs.  Lemon and orange trees grow freely in the garden settings behind the white stucco homes that climb up the mountain sides and overlook the blue blue waters of the Mediterranean.  A beautiful sunny day awaits us. Castle Nuevo circa 1279, Naples Welcome to the Isle of Capri Naples or Napoli is the port city we come into where the Castle Nuovo greeted us.  The city that first mixed up tomatoes, cheese and dough and baked it to the delight of people all over the world.  The term pizza was first used way back in the 10th century.   Naples...

The Suez Canal If you recall, a couple of months ago I wrote about the Panama Canal and our transit of it.  It is a miracle of engineering and design with its system of locks and machinery.  Today we are traveling thru the Suez Canal and while it is a longer stretch of water (193.3 km) it is much different than its first cousin, Panama.  First and foremost it has not one lock.   It is a continuous channel from end to end, and the water flow actually changes from winter to summer but it works either way.  On the north end of the canal is the city of Suez and Port Said guards the south entrance.  In between the two ends lie the Great Bitters Lake and the Little Bitters.  Back in 1859 the first symbolic swing of the pick-axe in Port Said signaled the beginning of construction although it took a couple of years to really get it going. Military ships waiting to go through the Canal Cargo ships waiting, too. Both canals accompl...