Transatlantic Cruise and Europe on Sumner Evans

Day 29: Civitavecchia (Rome), Italy - End of Cruise

Mon, 28 May 2012 12:39:00 -0600

Sumner

Today was a sad day we had to get off the boat. We got up and packed the last few items. I went down to the front desk to tell then that we wanted to donate some clothes, they were really nice and said that they would come and pick them up later. After that we went up to the Lido Restaurant for our last breakfast :( We saw Gede, I unfortunately have neglected to tell you any about him but he as been such a neat guy. He always says hi to us every day and he always has a huge smile on his face. He lives in Indonesia (most of the crew/staff is from there except most of the bar people are from the Philippines). He also has a daughter back home that is about the same age as Hannah. I think that Hannah reminds him of his daughter back home. I just can’t explain it besides that I think that he has become almost family to us. He said himself that he feels like we (Hannah and I) are his sister and brother. He is just a great guy. We thanked him profusely for all that he had done and for being like a brother to us. We also saw Jeff’s assistant waiter, Weda and thanked him for being so nice to us and also having a smile on his face at all times. After that we went to our room and packed all the last minute stuff and got ready for our number to be called for disembarkation. It was so sad to leave behind all of our friends but we still have a grand adventure ahead of us. It is a different kind of adventure but at least we don’t have to think about “oh! Am I going to be late for the boat?” I am really exited about being able to see all of the sites that I have read about and see pictures of for myself. When we got off the boat and found our luggage we went outside of the terminal and looked for our taxi driver/guide. He was waiting for us at the other exit but we found him easily. Because we were actually in Civitavecchia we had a hour or so drive to Rome and then we were going to tour around Rome with him until three when we were to check into our apartment. I slept on the way to Rome but as the driver said nothing all the way, I didn’t miss anything. We went first to see the Colosseum. It was raining but the places that we went where mostly inside. I will not bore you on exactly where we went, instead I will tell you a bit about the Colosseum and my thoughts on it. First of all it is huge! In the best preserved parts of the Colosseum the entire thing is not there but even so it is as big as the Pepsi center at least. It’s just plain massive. It was the beginning of modern stadiums, there are walkways around a central seating area that used to hold shops and I bet t-shirts with the best gladiators (just kidding, they didn’t have t-shirts then). The thing about the gladiator stuff is not false though. It was the center of gladiatorial fights. It is awful to think about what occurred in the Colosseum but if all you think about is the marvel of the construction with which it was built it is spectacular. In ways its splendor has never again been matched because though some of our modern stadiums can hold more people they are not made of all stone. And just think, they built all of that with all the heavy stones without cranes or modern building equipment. there was another thing that was interesting about the building and that was that there were holes in between some of the stones and some in the stones. This is because in those places there was iron that had been used in the Colosseum were taken during the middle ages to create weapons. Though in ruins now, it would have been a grand achievement in architecture for its time.

Day 28: Messina, Italy

Sun, 27 May 2012 06:55:00 -0600

Sumner

Today’s port of call was Messina, on Sicily in Italy. We did get to see a neat church and a large bell tower. The bell tower was really neat because it showed the date, time, and the phase of the moon. But the most interesting part of it was the bronze figures that moved. There were some that were set up on circular platforms that went round and round and there were some other figures as well. Unfortunately we were not there for a big display, all that we got to see was one of the figures move their arm. It was really cool. We then walked down a street and ended up at this circular square. I know you are probably thinking “what’s happened to Sumner, has he gone insane? There is no such thing as a square that is a circle!?” yes that is true but it was an intersection that was circular and there were buildings around it. All the facades were curved to the shape of the square. One of the buildings on this square was a shopping mall that had been deserted because of the economic crisis. It seemed recently deserted too, there was a store whose clock was still accurate and running, if that tells you anything about the recentness if the closure you’re doing well. There was a lot of graffiti everywhere but before the crisis I could see it as a nice shopping mall. Well that was about all, we went back to the boat and started to pack :( At dinner we had to say goodbye to Mrs. Anne and Mr. Peter. Let me back up just a bit, I told you before that we have a table that is ours for the whole cruise, well this table is right next to the window above the port (left) motor. It is oriented so that the chairs are perpendicular to the end of the boat. There is another table for two that is only about two feet from the end of our table on the inside (if they were on the other side, they would be in the ocean). At this table Mrs. Anne and Mr. Peter sat on the first or second night of the second part if the cruise and they liked us so much that they too asked to have that table for the whole cruise. We became friends with them and we were sad to say goodbye. They even tried some of the tricks that Jeff gave us which I will show you if you want when we get home. We also thanked Jeff because he was so nice to us all and knew what we wanted for drinks and such. Well, we have to have our bags outside the door by midnight so I should probably get busy.

Day 27: At Sea

Sat, 26 May 2012 06:54:00 -0600

Sumner

Today I will briefly describe our new room.

Day 26: Athens,Greece

Fri, 25 May 2012 19:23:00 -0600

Sumner

Today started off with breakfast and after we had consumed our food we headed out of the ship and hopped on the shuttle to the terminal. There we met our guide and walked to their car. We then rode to the acropolis and parked at a parking lot that was kinda like a valet parking area. She gave the keys to the guy and then we headed off up the acropolis museum so that we could hopefully avoid some of the crowds by doing is before going to the acropolis. Inside we were able to see the many statues that were found in the acropolis area. On the acropolis is a temple to Athena. This temple has some statues with the form of a lady that are used to make the pillars for the temple facade. On one side of the facade he statues have their left leg forward and on the other side they have he right leg forward. Now on the boat there is a hallway that has a little concave opening with statues that are much like he ones on the temple on the acropolis. While at one of the port talks the speaker pointed out that there was one thing wrong with the statues on the boat, this was that the legs on the statues were not different, they were the same. Later that day we were walking past them and saw that they didn’t even have either leg forward at all. There were also many other statues in the museum including the statue of a boy that, for art historians, marked the begging of truly realistic statues. The third floor of this museum had the same dimensions as the Parthenon and faced in the same way. What I mean by this is that on the east side of the inside of the museum had the same dimensions as the actual Parthenon and faced in the exact same direction. Now that in and of itself was interesting but the most interesting part was that the facades were removed from the Parthenon and moved to the museum. There they are displayed on the third floor of the building and in the same place that they were originally on the Parthenon. The front and rear facades of the building that were on the triangle thing above all of the pillars were displayed to the greatest extent possible. In some places however, because the pieces were totally destroyed, there is nothing on display. Around the whole building was a relief of a scene where people were taking offerings up to the gods. It started in one corner and went in both directions meeting on the opposite side where the gods were receiving the gifts. We then watched a movie about the acropolis we went out on a deck that was in the third floor and had a great view of the acropolis and then proceeded onward to he acropolis. It was a fair trek up to the top of the hill but not too bad. Once there our guide went to get our tickets and then we entered the acropolis area. From the beginning it was very neat, almost overwhelming. At the entrance there was an arch and after going thought the arch on the right side was a wall maybe ten or so metres high (about 11 yards). This wall was like a retaining wall around the acropolis. On the ground that the wall is hiding in is a small temple. It is unique because it is the only temple on the acropolis that has columns on only the front and back, not on the sides as well. Back to the entrance in general; although it is in ruins now in its prime it must have been extremely spectacular. Even now it’s scale is immense. After going through the columns we got our first view of the Parthenon. I was expecting it to be in a very ruinous state but I was pleasantly surprised to find that it wasn’t that bad considering that it is almost two thousand five hundred years old. They have done a good job restoring it and it is now to he point where you can get a good idea of what the Parthenon looked like. Of course all that you can see are the columns on the outside as well as some of the inside wall that held the statue of Athena. Four of the columns are not completely restored but all of the others are. In most places also the blocks of stone over the columns are in place as well. He friezes on the triangular part of the front of the building are gone. They were taken from Athens to Britain by the Earl of Elgin (he is not popular among the Greeks). Only a few parts remained in Athens and are displayed in the acropolis museum. On the left of the Parthenon about fifty to seventy five metres is the Old Temple of Athena. This temple is the one with the ladies that are columns. From the acropolis we were also able to have a great view of the city of Athens. It is a city that is very flat without many big, tall buildings. From this point also we could see the ocean, this is rare because of the pollution cloud normally hovers above the city of Athens and blocks the view of the sea. We then walked back to our car and got the key back from the buy who had parked the car. Now the key was broken to begin with, it was broken when she had tried to get a copy of the key at a shop, she had the copy though. When she tried to put the broken one it it wouldn’t turn. This is because the plastic part of the key was separated from the metal part so she couldn’t get any leverage. She honked for he guy and there was a long discussion, then hey tried the other key. It didn’t work because it had not been made exactly correctly or something because the car I think could tell that it wasn’t made by the car company and it had been copied. It then made it so that the car couldn’t start. We stood around for a while and then she told us that we would change our plans a little and let the men around the car fix it while we went to eat. We went to a nice restaurant and had some good food though it was really expensive. When we got back to the car and found that it wasn’t fixed she tried frantically to find another car. Eventually we left the car and went and got on a bus that she had gotten for us to ride around in. Now, this bus was one of those fifty person tour busses that we had to go on for a few of our excursions and it was kinda amusing because we had it all to ourselves. Four people in this enormous bus. We kept on joking that we might be in someones way. Of course by this time it was an hour before we wanted to be back at the boat so we didn’t get much more touring. We did take a peek at the original modern Olympics stadium, he one that was used when Greece held the first modern Olympic games. Then we went back to the boat and, since I had nothing to do after dinner I caught up on my blog.

Day 23: Ephesus, Turkey

Thu, 24 May 2012 19:24:00 -0600

Sumner

Today’s port of call was kusadasi (koo suh dah see), which is the port where cruise ships dock to get to Ephesus, Turkey (ehf-uh-sis need I tell you how to pronounce the second word?) Anyway we had to get up early to go off the ship, six o’clock or so. When we had eaten some breakfast we proceeded down to the pier and met our guide. We walked through this little “village” that was covered. It was more of a tourist trap than anything else. It was made to have a village type feeling but it was all tourist shops. Our guide said that the shops there were only opened for the high tourist season and then in the winter the were closed, during those times it is like a ghost town. After walking through there we went on to the car and made our way to Ephesus. We decided to try our best to avoid the crowds by going to a temple turned into church. It was originally a temple to the gods and then it was taken over by the Christians and turned into a church. It was so cool to see. In places they had recycled the stone. One such place was in a wall where they had taken a broken capital from a pilar and inserted it into the new wall. The area of this temple is a big religious are because from one point you can see a pagan temple, a church, a mosque, and if you go over a hill there is a synagogue. They haven’t found the synagogue but it is written about in the Bible. The nice thing about this temple was that we didn’t have to deal with anyone else in the ruins because all of the tour busses were elsewhere. After walking around the ruins for a little while we went to a mosque and looked around. And then we got back into the car and went to the main ruins of Ephesus. It was really crowded but it was really cool to see the very places where Paul the Apostle went and preached. We saw two theaters, a library, toilets as well as many other ruins. There I will only tell you about the theaters, the library and, the toilets. Both of the theaters were built into the side of a hill and were pretty big. One was only for plays and the other was mainly for gladiatorial fights. The bigger one was the one in which they had the fights and the smaller was for plays. Both had the half circle shape. We also saw the facade of the library. It has had to be restored but it still looks really grand. We got some pictures by it but unfortunately I think we got more of a picture of the other tourists than the building it was just so crowded :). We also watched some sort of a gladiatorial reenactment on the road that leaded to the sea from the theater. The ancient Ephesus that we were able to see used to be the port, but he river silted up so much that it is now six miles from the sea. It was actually not he first port of Ephesus because it used to be even further inland until they moved it to the place that we went to. After seeing the ruined city we went up a hill to a place where the Catholics believe the Virgin Mary lived for the last years of her life. It was more like a shrine to Mary than anything. We were respectful as we walked through but it really didn’t have any significance to us. There was also this water that was declared holy or something by some pope sometime. We had some and it was supposed to have healing properties. It didn’t do anything but quench my thirst. Then we went to a pottery selling place. They showed us the process that they use to make the pottery and then the guy who showed us opened a door to show us some of their works (aka buy some of these things). We bought some small things and then went back to the van. We also went to this carpet weaving place and were shown how the Turkish carpets are made. He showed us the cocoons and how they were woven into stings. He also showed us some of the weaving techniques that they use to weave the cloth. He then said, after explaining the whole process that he would show us some of the carpets that they make but mom politely said that we just came to see how it was made and not to buy carpets. Now we were expecting it to be any uphill battle to get him to leave us alone but we were pleasantly surprised that he kindly said thank you for coming and let us leave. That was really nice for mom. Anyway we made it back to the boat and I tried to catch up on my blog. I’ve had a lot more time to blog because I don’t have anyone to hand out with at night so that is I guess good considering we have so many sea days.

Day 24: Santorini, Greece

Wed, 23 May 2012 19:25:00 -0600

Sumner

Today started out pretty early because we sailed into the caldera of the Santorini volcano this morning. We were allowed on the bow to see the arrival into the area. Because Santorini doesn’t have any port remotely big enough to take a cruise ship we had to anchor out in the middle of the caldera (cah-ul-dare-uh) and ride the tenders into the port. Mom didn’t like the ride in the tender but it wasn’t too long. We met our guide right as we got off the tender and went together to the cable car. It is much like the ski gondolas a home, just not so sophisticated. It was six of them grouped closely together on either end (top or bottom) one goes on the right side and the other on the left and they alternate places. If that confused you that’s ok because I’ve confused myself trying to describe it for you. Anyway once at the top we walked maybe fifty metres or so, if that and then waited as our guide went for her car. We went first to the village where all of the pictures of Santorini are taken. This village is very pretty and has the best views of anywhere on the island. All of the roofs are blue and the rest all of the buildings are white. These homes used to be the homes of the poor while the rich lived on the top of the hill. They are now the most expensive hotels on Santorini. The reason that these homes started out as homes for the poor is because they were caves to begin with and then expanded out on the side of the cliff. It was so serene. We walked all the way to the end and then went to small castle that is now a tourist lookout where you could see almost the entire caldera (the fog obscured some of it), the cruise ship, the old port as well as many other things. While you admire the view I will pause a moment to tell you some about the history and shape of Santorini. A long time ago, as in like three thousand years, Santorini was a large circular volcanic island. Then it blew up so that it went from being a large mountain to three islands in a few seconds. It blew volcanic material up something like twenty six kilometers or something (16 miles). Regardless it was in the twenties of kilometers which is really high. Santorini is the biggest of the islands and is shaped like the letter C. There is another island in between the ends of the c and one in the center that has come up recently… Only in the last thousand years or so. This middle island is the new vent for the volcanic activity. Kinda like Mt. Saint Hellens has a new small pile of material in the center of the crater Santorini has a new one in he middle of the caldera. Aft driving around seeing all of the other main sites we stopped at a place called Akrotiri (ak-row-tear-ee). Akrotiri is considered the best preserved prehistoric city in the world. It dates back to two thousand BC and some parts are believed to be from three thousand BC. That’s four to five thousand years old!!! It was kinda funny because some of the people from our boat, Mrs. Irene and Mr. NAME, and another couple who they had met who were also from Denver (Mrs. Irene and Mr. NAME are from Denver) joined our tour for Akrotiri. Of course they tipped nicely and it wasn’t much trouble for Georgia (that was the name of our guide) so we let them come along. Throughout the whole tour we at times had people try to tag along with us because they wanted to hear what Georgia was saying. It must mean that she is a good guide. The city that was uncovered by the archeologists is pretty large. It was probably about one hundred metres by ninety metres (110 yards by 100yards). And all of it was very well preserved considering that it is at least four thousand years old. The walls were intact and still standing, of course they were not complete but you could tell that they were once walls. There was a sewage system and the homes had running water and toilets. Very advanced for the time. We were able to see tubs as well as pots in which they stored goods. All of which were extremely well preserved surprisingly. I can’t describe everything that we saw but I will tell you that it was very neat to see such well preserved homes from so long ago. The last thing that we did is go to the black sand beach. This beach has black sand made from the volcanic material. It was like nothing that I have ever seen. Even though it wasn’t very hot today, the sand was *very *hot. I can’t imagine what it would be like if it were something like a hundred degrees Fahrenheit (about 37 degrees centigrade). That was about all that we did today but I will tell you about one of the tricks that Jeff, our waiter at dinner gave us. Ok let me back up just a bit and fill you in. We have open seating at dinner, but we like our table a lot and I think that they like us so they let us reserve the table for the whole cruise. Anyway the waiter for the table that we have is Jeff and his assistant is Weda (mom thinks that there is an e at the end instead of an a; I disagree). We have become friends with them and every night Jeff has show us a trick or little puzzle. Today he had a puzzle involving two glasses and a blueberry. One glass was smaller than the other, this one was set upright. The other one was put upside down and the blueberry was put under it inside the cup. Now this wine glass that was upside down was oddly shaped. The opening was smaller than the rest of the glass. The goal of the puzzle was to get the blueberry from under the big glass to the little glass. You could only touch the big glass and it also had to stay upside down. It took me about two seconds to figure it out. All you do is ***** *** ***** ****** *** *** ************ ***** ** **** ** ** ** *** ****** ** *** ***** **** **** ** **** *** ******* ***** *** *** *** ********* ****. I blotted that out so that you can figure it out yourselves if you want. I’ll show you once we get home. That was basically the day so I will leave you to wonder what the answer to the puzzle is.
~Sumner

Day 23: Olympia,Greece

Tue, 22 May 2012 19:22:00 -0600

Sumner

Today was an early day because we had to get up early because we were to meet in the Vista Lounge at seven fifteen for our shore excursion. This is because we did a shore excursion that the ship offers where we go to Olympia and to a museum. We were on Holland America Line tour six. (as if you really needed to know that) and when we got to the bus we saw one of the leaders for Club HAL, Kate. She was going on the tour also. They have to pay to go but it is greatly discounted. The catch is that you kinda have to help to keep track of everyone in the tour. We had an excellent guide for the tour, her name is Olga. She really knew her stuff and gave a great commentary all of the ride from the port town to Olympia. She had written a book about Olympia and was in the process of getting it published. We were kinda worried because a lot of people had said That Olympia is just a pile of rocks on the ground, it might have been if you didn’t have a guide to take you around and explain what you were seeing but with the guide it was very interesting. He place must have been magnificent in its prime. A true sports complex. We saw a training arena where the athletes were instructed by their coaches. Of course only the foundation and a few columns are left but it was neat to stand on the very spot where athletes were once trained. We then went to a place where the wrestling competition was held. One interesting thing about this building was the flor. It was made of tiles with little channels going longways down the tile in it there was sand which was the indication of how many matches you had lost. He more sand you had on you, the worse you were doing. We then headed on through a hall which had on both sides, columns lining the way. Of course only the ruins of the columns are left but as with all of the buildings of Olympia, they must have been spectacular when they were new. We then passed a memorial that Philip the Great built in the middle of Olympia. When it was built it showed not only political power but also displayed religious power. This is because Olympia was a religious center as well as physical and the Olympics were spiritual as well as physical displays of power. Near this was a fountain this fountain held many different statues that had been removed to a museum for protection. We then went through an arch into the race track. As I was walking through the arch I realized that there is truly not anything new under the sun. It was just like our modern tunnels that the athletes come out of before a game. I am sure that it was much the same then as well. Once out of the archway we were in the running track. There were sixteen or eighteen blocks on the ground probably a yard and a half in width (1.3 or so metres probably). These were the starting blocks for the runners. The way that they made it fair and made sure that no one gets a head start they had a pulley system in which a wooden board was held above the ground so that the runner couldn’t get out. The ropes that held the board were held by someone else behind them and when the signal was given the ropes were dropped and the runners went off. As the boards hit the stone they made a large racket, much like the modern pistol shot. Hannah and I lined up and then had a race, not all of the way but some of the way down the track. I won. We then got back on the bus and went to the museum. We stopped at a shop for a few minutes and had a sandwich and then proceeded to he exhibits of the theater. We went first to a room that had the pre-Olympian artifacts. Statues, clay figures etc. We then kept on going and getting more advanced in time and ended at a place with a large statue of the god Nike. Nike was the god of victory. Here also were two helmets, one of the Persian army and the other of the Greek. This was because in the first Punic war during the Battle of Marathon, The Greeks routed the Persians as they were trying to get organized after they landed. We then went to the second best exhibit; the removed statues from the fountain. I won’t bother describing them all to you because one you’ve looked at them for about ten seconds at the most you are done. More interesting however was the last and best exhibit; the facades from the temple of Zeus, the head of the family of the gods. Before we saw this exhibit we looked at a model of the building that they statue of Zeus was held in. The statue of Zeus must have been almost overwhelming because it looked like if he stood up he would bust the roof. We were able to see the two facades of the building. One side had a battle of men versus centaurs, half man half horse. This was symbolic of the battle between men and barbarians. The centaurs because they were thought to be half beast are represented by the centaurs. The other facade is of the birth of Athena. The myth is that Zeus had a headache and so his son took a two sided axe and opened up his fathers head and out of it came Athena, in full armor and fully grown. She is the god of war, wisdom, and love (I think). After that we went back to the bus. The ride back consisted of black, yes I slept all the way. Tonight was formal night and during dinner Jeff showed us a trick with corks. They are so hard to explain in writing that I won’t even bother, you can ask me when I get home to show them to you.

Day 22: Corfu, Greece

Mon, 21 May 2012 19:21:00 -0600

Sumner

Today we stopped at a Grecian island called Corfu. It is in the middle of the Aegean sea, as most Greek islands are. The first thing that we did is get off the ship. Profound statement, eh. You know I think that I’ve been around Canadians to much… Anywaay we had to tender from the boat to the dock. I was perfectly fine all the way but mom didn’t fare so well, she was very glad when the ride was over. Anyway we got out and our taxi guide was right there at the dock. His name is Spiero (I think). The first thing that we did is drive thought the town of Corfu and then drive up through a mountain village and to a great lookout point. Over this point you could see a large part of the island including Corfu town and the first mountain town that we went through. As well we could see our ship and a few islands off the coast. We then made our way thought the mountains seeing all sorts of nice villages. In one there was a church that was about three metres across at the front (a little more than 3 yards) and maybe ten metres deep (we kept on going and on the way Oma took a lot of pictures of the olive trees. You could tell which ones were and weren’t taken care of. The ones that were small and pruned were the ones at we taken care of. They pruned them because they produce bigger olives that way. The ones that were large and looked almost like a wad of vines were not taken care of and had small olives. It was kinda funny because the ones that weren’t pruned back and that hung over the street would drop heir olives and when the cars went over them it would make the roads very slippery. At home we have snow and ice to make roads slippery but there in Corfu they have olive oil to make their roads slippery. We hen arrived at another lookout from which you could see a beach. There weren’t any people on the beach. It was a great day for sightseeing because there was some cloud cover and it was just right as far as temperature. We drove through a few other villages one of which we got out of the car and walked around in. The streets in this town literally just footpaths. We wandered around for a little while and even had a conversation with an old woman. It was all Greek to us, all English to her. We did have one word in common, salad. Anyway we went in our way and as we drove a few time Oma got out and made some pictures of the olive trees. She made at least forty probably. Anyway we came eventually back down the mountains after going through some other villages and made our way way to the

Day 21: Dubrovnik, Croatia

Sun, 20 May 2012 18:16:00 -0600

Sumner

Today we came into the port of Dubrovnik at around six or seven o’clock. We literally went right next to the shore, not more than one or two hundred yards away, we were able to see the houses and all which was really pretty. They were all close together and so quaint. We saw all of this from our table at breakfast and after we had eaten we got of the boat to meet our guide. Her name was Tanya. The first thing that we did is go up to a lookout point where we could see all of Dubrovnik. On the way to he top of this hill we went up a one way road that was used as a two way road. It felt like we were back in Vietnam driving to Ba Be Lake. At least our driver didn’t play chicken on the road, they would pull over and let the other pass instead of just going for it. Anyway from the lookout point we could see, on the water side, four islands, three of which were inhabited, as well as the old town and most of the rest of Dubrovnik including a Costa ship, it wasn’t crashed, listing on its side. On the other side of the hill was a stretch of about a mile (that is close to two kilometers and because I am just guessing you can use that if you like the metric system. I will try to remember to also use the metric system in my writing because I realize that this is definitely an international audience that is reading this blog. Just a side note; this trip has really made me respect the metric system a lot, it makes so much more since than our “standard” system) wide walking but maybe half a mile (close to a kilometer) as the crow flies. And then Bosnia & Herzegovina started. If you looked down the coast about ten miles (16 kilometers) you come to Montenegro. I know the ten miles stuff because I had read somewhere that Bosnia & Herzegovina has ten miles of coast because of some treaty that said that they had to have that much land on the coast. During the war between Croatia and Bosnia & Herzegovina (I’m going to call it B&H from now on because it is much easier to type) B&H shot missiles from where I told you that B&H started into Dubrovnik. This war occurred in the nineties, a few years before I was born so not in the very distant past. You could tell which of the houses in the town were hit because of the roofs, if they were hit they had very bright new reddish tiles but if they were old the roofs they where brown. Most of the houses were hit by either a direct missile shot or by shrapnel form the missiles. We then made our way down to the old town. On the way we had to stop because someone was pulling out of their parking spot. We backed up just a little to let them out but there was another car behind us that came from behind and hit us!!! No damage was done except in think that mom almost had a hart attack. The drivers got out of the car and started yelling. Obviously they agreed to go down and stop in front of the old town. When we got there the other guy came out and started yelling. I was glad that I don’t know Croatian because it didn’t look pretty our guide was not pleased that he did it in front of guests (us). Anyway we let our driver, the other driver and the police man sort it out. The entire old town was surrounded by a wall that was, I think she said a hundred or more feet (30 metres) tall and, at points, sixteen feet (5 metres) wide. These walls withstood the missiles of the B&H army in the war, it just scratched the walls but it was so well made that it was fine. We walked first across a bridge and a small draw bridge into the town. We walked down the streets and it, except for all of the tourists was very nice we really enjoyed it. There were some nice little churches and shops. They were shops on the bottom but the tops were residences. We came to the main square and then went into the church there. It was baroque in style and it had a modern front altar because it had to be repaired because of an earthquake I think. In the middle of the square was a statue of someone, I think a prince that defended the city from someone sometime but don’t take my word for that. We then walked down the main road. There were all sorts of small alleys in all directions that were so nice and of which we took many photos we then turned and went through another square. In this square the was a market and we stopped and bought a bag of sweets, nuts, dates, and orange peels covered with sugar. Then we turned to a street leading back in the direction that we had come. On this street we stopped and Tanya went into the shop and came out with a traditional sweet. It wasn’t very sweet, typical of most of the world except us Americans. It was kinda like not sweet donut holes. At the end of this street was the old port. This port is now used for private boats as well as for cruise ships that tender from the ship to he dock. We walked around for a few minutes and then we went back to the van to go to one of Tanya’s mom’s friend’s house. One of the options for the tour was to go eat with a local family and so we took up the offer. The family was so nice, there were three generations there, the girl could speak excellent English, her mom could speak pretty well but the dad couldn’t. The grandparents couldn’t speak much at all but we had our guide to translate. The funny thing was that they grandpa spoke German and so he and mono communicated in that language because mom lived in Germany for four years and she knows German. The appetizer consisted of smoked ham and a cheese that tasted like Parmesan but a little stronger. Then we had a homemade noodle soup, the noodles were handmade and they grew the carrots as well. It was very good I had an entire big bowl of it. Then came the main dish. It was really interesting how they prepared it. They used a traditional method of cooking food in which they had a huge cooking instrument that was about two and a half feet wide (70 cm probably; just an estimate on that) and four inches high (10 cm). This vessel was flat on the bottom and in it they put lamb, veal and potatoes then they put this in the area of the fire but not on the actual fire. Then they used this bell shaped thing to cover it and they put coals on top of the bell as well as round it to cook the food. After two or more hours it was ready to eat. It was really good expert it was just too much. For desert we had this thing that was like crém burle and another desert that was [FIGURE OUT]. Then we talked about their lives, what they did for a living besides rent parts of their house and do what they were doing for us today, where they went to school. We told them about ourselves. There was an instrument on the wall and we inquired about it they turned on a traditional song and it used that instrument in it. As we were listening to it all of a sudden the grandma and the dad were up dancing! Mom described it as looking like a traditional Greek dance. After having the windfall meal we made our way back to the ship. Today there was a church service and so went to that before our dinner. Before that though I played a few games of ping-pong with Angus. I actually beat him once (he beat me three times though). In between he service and dinner I talked to Noah and Elijah’s mom about what we had done for the day and then watched put the window as we left the port. After that nothing much of interest happened, the boys were just going to dinner as we were coming out so I have just been trying to write this blog post. I am glad that I have some time in which to do this through because Dubrovnik is such a neat city.

Day 20: At Sea

Sat, 19 May 2012 18:14:00 -0600

Sumner

Today was my first sea day that I didn’t have Colton to hang out with. Luckily however I found some other boys that are nice. It just wasn’t the same t I still had fun. The first thing that I did was go to the meet and greet hosted by the cruise critic people. At the beginning one of the crew members spoke and hen people got up and started to make announcements. Mrs. Irene asked me if I wanted to make an announcement, meaning of course about having an iPad class. I made an impromptu announcement. And I sat back down with an iPad class at three. Then I went to find someone to play with. I found Noah, Elijah, Logan, and Hannah in the Lido Dining Room. We decided to go play chess on this big board with huge pieces we played Noah, Elijah, and me against Logan. We got into a stalemate. Then we played another game “Go-For-It” style. We kept on attacking with our king and we were doing pretty well until we realized that the king was kind in danger without anywhere to go for protection. We lost that game. At that point I had to go and do my iPad class. A lady came to me and said “So what are you going to teach me?” she got out her tablet/computer (she had an Android tablet with a keyboard attached. I had never seen one but like I told Mrs. Irene later I think I looked intelligent enough, anything that I did was more than she knew. That took up the first part of the class and then I helped out Mrs. Irene a little bit. She has three different accounts, and it’s a mess figuring out what has what and which one has anything etc. with no Internet connection. I found the boys again in the Lido Restaurant and we decided to go swimming. Only Elijah Logan and I got in. Then they had to leave and I played a game or two of ping-pong with a boy named Angus. He’s an Australian and he’s good at ping-pong he won. Twice. Anyway then I went back to my room to get ready for formal night. After dinner I saw the boys going to dinner but on the way we stopped to listen to a string quartet. They’re from Russia and played some songs that I think Hannah has played before. Anyway, after that I went to the Loft to see if anyone would come. No one came but I played games with the leader until bedtime.

Day 19: City that Starts with a "C" (Civiteveccia); Start of Second Part of Cruise

Fri, 18 May 2012 18:13:00 -0600

Sumner

So today we were docked at a port which I won’t tell you the name of because I can’t even spell it let alone say, or pronounce it. I will tell you however that it is close to Rome so I will just call this port Rome for simplicity sake. In this port one cruise starts and another starts, like I told you about in the last post. Therefore we had to get up early to get packed up to move cabins (if you recall, we are upgrading to a room with a balcony/verandah). I wnet looking for colton to say goodby to them, I couldn’t find them for a while but then I found them and was able to say goodbye. It has been nice for the past few weeks to have someone to hand out with on the ship and so I was pretty sad to see them go. Luckily I have their email so we can stay in touch. It will be hard to find someone to take their place as boat-friends but it doesn’t matter so much for this part because there are a lot of ports and not so much time on the ship. Then we had to wait a while they got our room ready. After our room was ready and they had already moved our luggage in we came in and out our stuff down. Next we went up to the Lido Deck for lunch. As we were eating we looked out the window and watched all of the people come in. At one point a family with two boys, Noah and Elijah, we assume that they were Christians because before they ate they prayed, I never got to really ask them. Anyway, Noah is fifteen and Elijah is thirteen. Another family also came in with kids, one is named Hannah (I don’t know if she spells it with an “h” at the end or not). She is eleven. Her brother name is Logan. He is fourteen and looks about sixteen or seventeen or so. The girl as well looks older than she really is, she looks to be about fourteen or so but as I said she is only eleven. After lunch mom and I went to go see a talk about some of the ports that we are going to in the Vista Lounge. It was by the official travel guide along with another lady and all that they did is advertise the ships shore excursions. We were a little surprised because the other talks that he had done were actually interesting, not just “Oo ah, buy our shore excursions, yay”. Anyway at right I went up to The Loft to see if any others would come. It was just me and her leader for most of the time, one girl, from the Philippines came for half an hour, maybe fourty-five minutes, somewhere around that. We just played some games and then when Hannah was done with her stuff we went back to the room and got ready for bed.

Day 18: At Sea

Thu, 17 May 2012 18:12:00 -0600

Sumner

Today was an at sea day. Nothing much happened of too much interest so I will describe our plans for the rest of the trip. Our next port is C-something (I can’t remember the actual name). Here one cruise starts and another ends. This is because there are actually two cruises that we are going on, a sixteen day one and then a ten day one. So far we have completed the sixteen day one and will continue on the ten day one. Unfortunately the Baldersons are not coming on the next part of the cruise so I will not have much to do each day, not that that matters too much because there are a lot of ports that we are going to in the next part of the cruise. I will still miss them though to have something to do in the spare time that we do have on the ship. So I told you guys earlier that I have been doing some Club HAL activities. I am actually too old to do those activities as it goes up through twelve. There is a teen group, of which I am the only member right now but in the next cruise there will be fourteen other teens. Tomorrow or maybe it is day after that I will go to the meeting and see if I like any of the kids and if they’re jerks or not. I definitely won’t be able to go to any Club HAL activities though. Oh well. Anyway the next cruise ends in Rome and Oma will stay with us there for a few days and then she will fly home and dad will come over to join us. We will stay in Rome for a few more days and then go on to Florence, Venice, and I think another city that slips my mind at this time (I have a lot of times that that has been happening as I have been writing this blog, maybe it is because I am writing this at **:**pm. hey last night I was up ’till *:**pm [dad don’t read the part that you just read]). Anyway eventually we we will reach Germany and dad will fly home, the rest of us will go and visit the town that mom and dad lived in for four years in Germany back before Hannah and I were born. Then we too will fly home to all y’all. Unless of course you live somewhere else besides Denver, Colorado. Well I about to have some nice views of the back of my eyelids so see ya!

Day 17: Barcelona, Spain

Wed, 16 May 2012 18:11:00 -0600

Sumner

Today we went to Barcelona (bar-sell-oh-nuh or if you want to say it in the Catalan (cat-uh-lin) language you say bar-th-eh-loh-nah). Barcelona is in an area of Spain called Catalan. In this area the Catalonians live (I say that as if Russians live in Catalan). Anyway, Catalan is almost separate to Spain it has it’s own government, flag, language, as well as many other cultural differences. In a way you can compare Spain and Catalan to the relationship between Canada and Quebec just more extreme differences. OK, next subject: The ship came in at ten o’clock to the port of Barcelona and we got off the boat. We were supposed to meet in the Placa Sant Jaune (I think that is Catalan for Saint Jhon Plaza) for a guided bike tour. It was about two or so kilometers to the plaza and we had about twenty minutes to get there. We tried to get a taxi but they didn’t want to take us for such a short distance, they could make more money if they did taxi tours so they directed us to a shuttle bus that took us to the Columbus monument. From here it was about a kilometer to the square. Once at the square we had some trouble finding the correct company that we were doing the tour through. We went to the first company and gave them the papers. They said that we were at the wrong place so we went to another company that had their meeting place in the same square. They looked at the papers but they were not the right company either. I went to go see if the last company was he right one, they weren’t. The second company helped us and called the number on the paper for us and after a while he told us that it was the first company that we went to that was the correct one. Once that was sorted out it was pretty straight forward from there. We were directed down a little street to the shop to get our bikes. Then we went back to the square. There were twenty-four people so they split us up into two groups. We were with the girl, she was from Canada. We learned about the square before we went on our way. The square had two significant buildings, both were, and are, important to the Catalan government. After learning about those buildings we rode down some small streets and got to the palace, the very palace, where Columbus went to ask Isabella and Ferdinand for money to go find a westward route to India, of course we all know what happened then, he found a whole new continent, the Americas. Then we rode down some really nice streets and eventually we got to the Sagrada Familia. This building is the cathedral of Gaudi (g-ow-dee). His finest achievement. It will, when complete, have twelve towers representing the apostles, four for some saints or something like that, one for the Virgin Mary and the last for Jesus Christ himself. Currently there are eight towers and two facades. The best way to describe the towers is how mom described it, that someone took a candle and let the wax melt down the side. It really looks like something that you would see in Disney World. Many architects and artists have taken over some of the work now that Gaudi is dead, he has been dead for almost a century since nineteen twenty-six, they are trying to complete in in two thousand twenty six, the hundredth anniversary of his death. It was supposed to be completed in two hundred years, using the technology of Gaudi’s day. One thing that I though was very neat was that the tallest tower, the one to Jesus, will be exactly two metres shorter than the tallest hill/mountain in Barcelona because he says that he doesn’t want his creation to be bigger than that of God. I thought that was pretty neat. After going to the cathedral we rode down a long street to the beach. Here we stopped at a little beachside restaurant. We didn’t have anything but the view was neat. The beach was manmade for the Olympics that were held in Barcelona in nineteen ninety-two (I think). There was this sculpture of a goldfish which, when hit right by the sun, looked as if it was a goldfish in the water with the light reflecting on parts of it. There are a few buildings in Barcelona that look exactly like a building in Dubai. Of course the architect that designed them claims that he didn’t copy them even though they are the same as the ones in Dubai. After that we went back to the square, dropped of the bikes and then made our way back to the ship. We went down the Las Ramblas (loss rahm-bau-s), the most famous street in Barcelona and then got back to the bus stop to go back to the ship. The rest of the things that we did were not of much note but I will say that there was an Indonesian crew show at eleven tonight. We went to that, there was a lot more people in this one than the Filipino crew show. There was one number that was a dance/play (I like those better than the dances that the people who are professional do). It was about the good king who falls in love with the pretty princess and then goes off to get a golden deer for her. He leaves her in the care of the monkey king and then went off. But while he was away the bad king came and capture the princess and kills all of the monkeys. But one monkey, the king who had been away, survived and wonders why everyone is dead. He tries to do CPR but all that happens is that the monkeys tail flies up. Then he goes to get some highly sophisticated devices to try to revive the monkey the devices were flip-flops! Then he uses a magic spell to resurrect all of the monkeys. Is time it works! Yay! Then the good king tries to go get the princess, he fights with the bad king and then the monkey king gives him a weapon and he wins!!! Well all’s well that ends well and that brings me to the end of this post.

Day 16: Cartagena, Spain

Tue, 15 May 2012 18:10:00 -0600

Sumner

Today our port was Cartagena. Cartagena means little Carthage (I think). Whatever the meaning it was the port for the day. We didn’t have a tour for this city so we went to walk around after we had had our breakfast. We made our way on a pedestrian street and then down a side street to get to a Roman theatre. We couldn’t figure out how to get into the theater area so we satisfied ourselves with just taking pictures from the top. The theater was pretty big, probably fifty to seventy-five metres (and about the same in yards) across. The structure was very incomplete but it was the first Roman theater that we have seen so far on this trip. Even though you can’t see it now it must have been the coolest thing in the time of the Romans. Just the scale of the project must have been awe inspiring. We then made our way to a castle. I was more just walls that used to be something but we did find a neat little playground and stayed there for a long time swinging and see-sawing. It was really nice because it was breezy and cool up there on the hill (the theater was built into the hill and the castle was on top of the hill). From this vantage point we could not only get a good view of the city but see many other sites of where ruins of Roman or even Carthaginian buildings still are. All around almost wherever you look there were ruins. Of course we didn’t have a guide to tell us what the ruins where from but it was just neat to see them. After staying at the castle for a while we went to go find the cathedral. We walked to the place where it showed it on the map but it was not there. We gave up because we won’t have any shortage of cathedrals on our trip. We then made our way back to the ship for lunch and after that we went back off to go to Burger King for free wifi. Unfortunately it didn’t work but we went back up the pedestrian street to see how much a museum that held some ruins of the city. It wasn’t worth the cost so we went back to the Burger King and this time the wifi worked, maybe it had less traffic but regardless we used it because anything is cheaper and faster than on the boat. We decided then to go back to the boat for a swim. I swam for about two hours actually, the last part of that time was with the Balderson boys. After we were finished swimming Colton and I played some ping-pong. We had a lot of fun but then we went back to our rooms to get dressed for formal night. After dinner we came back to the room, Hannah went to Club HAL and mom, Oma, and I watched some of Ben Hur together. We didn’t get very far and I don’t know where it’s going but I do know that it is about chariot riding and that there as been no mention of that activity at all during the first fourty minutes of the movie. I decided to go up to the theater to try to catch Colton as he was coming out and then we nt to go play ping-pong. Of course we were still in suits but hey, a very formal game of ping-pong it was. After that we went to bed.

Day 15: Granada (Malaga), Spain

Mon, 14 May 2012 18:08:00 -0600

Sumner

Today we started in the port of Malaga, Spain. Like yesterday we went with a semi-private tour group with basically the same people as before. Today we went to the Alhambra (al-haw-m-ber-uh; just add a little accent and you are good. The Spanish however do not say he H sound so it is pronounced something like this al-ahm-ber-uh). Anyway we went on her bus to the Alhambra and with us on the bus was a lady from England. She had moved to Spain because she married a Spanish guy and she learned the language and everything. She explained some of the things that we saw on the way. The drive to Granada, the town where he Alhambra is located, was a two hour drive with a ten minute stop with forty-five minutes left to go. By the way, the air conditioning worked, almost too well I actually turned off my vent. I slept a great deal of the way to the Alhambra but I was told that he scenery was beautiful. I’ll just take their word for it. When we arrived at the Alhambra we met our guides at the main meeting place that everyone uses so there were a lot of people. Our guides name was Miguel. (Remember hat there were two groups, we were in group one and the slow complainers were in the other one. I must say though that no one complained today. What a relief!) We were given headsets so that we could hear what he was saying without him having to talk to loud. I felt like a tourist being shoved through the sights en mass. It was kinda go in, explain the stuff, take pictures and get out of the way of he next group. But hey, I’m thankful that I got to just go, not many people have that opportunity. So anyway where was I… Oh so our guides name was Miguel he took us about 600 metres, or at least that’s what he said to a building that was circular on the inside but on the outside it was square. We only peeked at this building for a moment because we had to got to the gates to the Alhambra before our time expired. We made it and then we went to he oldest part of the Alhambra called the Alcazaba (I won’t even bother telling you how to pronounce that because I don’t actually know how you do). There were some really nice views of the city from the walls. We went as well to a watch tower in this area. Then we went to another palace. We went through lots of rooms and courtyards in the palace. I will tell you about them in general and then I will pick the most spectacular ones to describe separately. If I described all of them I would be writing until I get back to the States. The palaces were all built by the moors the Muslims who ruled in Spain from around seven hundred AD to fourteen hundred AD. For their time they were very advanced in mathematics, astronomy, and just learning in general. They had preserved many of he writings of Aristotle and Plato and all of the other great philosophers of the classical age. Their advancement in the architecture of the buiddings of the Alhambra was evident here everything was mathematically correct, there are all sorts of cool little mathematical algorithms that they used to construct the buildings, unfortunately the guide didn’t go over that so even though I know they exist I don’t know the patterns that were used all over the building. The archways were all in a horseshoe shape, not he semicircular or pointy ones characteristic to the renaissance and gothic periods of architecture respectively. They also had stalactite like points on the underside of the arches. Water was also an integral part of he moorish architecture. This was because ha Arabs came from a place where here isn’t much water, the Sahara desert therefore water is rare and if you have lots of it, as needed for pools of water and little fountains, water is a symbol of wealth. The last thing that I will tell you about is the designs on the walls. Everywhere there were Arabic script mainly from the Koran which because Arabic is so pretty in the first place looked really nice. Now I will tell you about some of the individual rooms in the palace. One courtyard had a rectangular reflecting pool of water down the middle with small fountains on either side at the end of the pool. These flowed into the big pool. If you’ve seen anything about the Alhambra you have seen a picture of this. It is a classic photo that looks great, even with an amateurs camera. I probably annoyed some people by sitting down and taking a picture across the pool right behind the little fountain but hey, I got a pretty good shot. Another place which I was looking forward to seeing but unfortunately they were restoring, is the lions courtyard, this courtyard has a fountain with twelve (at least I think there are twelve) lions decorating it this is the second most common picture that you see of the Alhambra. We went through some other rooms of lesser importance but they were still really neat. A little side track. If you read our blog about our trip to Vietnam you probably read about the ruins of a palace in Hue. I thought to myself that if the Vietnamese had preserved the palace that it could be as grand as the Alhambra, unfortunately they probably won’t ever be able to restore it because of lack of funds. After those palaces we walked through some beautiful gardens with some great views of the city. I think that Oma thought that she was in paradise (she likes gardens by the way). The gardens were made by some king during the Rennaisance period as a way to make it more contemporary. Once we walked through the gardens which were extremely beautiful but which I don’t have enough time to describe we went to another palace. This was built by the kings of Granada as a pleasure vacation spot. It was built by a Moorish architect so it had some moorish influences in its design. As we were waiting for the bus to arrive we ate our sandwiches that we had fixed at breakfast this moring and then we we left the Alhambra to go to the center of Granada for a little while. We went down a pedestrian street, much like sixteenth street mall in Denver. And went into an ice cream shop for a little break. Not a word of English was spoken, all of the communication was done in Español. It is really hard when they speak to you at a hundred miles an hour though, I should have though to say speak slowly please because I know how to say that but hindsight is twenty-twenty and unfortunately I didnt ask. Anyway we made our way back to the bus to go back to Malaga. No one complained on the way and I slept for a good chunk of the ride. That was about all, of course we did all of he normal evening and nighttime activities but I will not tell you about those.

Day 14: Sevilla, Spain

Sun, 13 May 2012 12:03:00 -0600

Sumner

Today we started early, went to breakfast and then got out in Cadiz (cad-ese; with an emphasis on the s), our port for the day. We had a simi-private tour to Sevilla (seh-vil is the English pronunciation but if you want to be more proper and use the Spanish version it goes like seh-v-ee-yuh) today and it started in Cadiz. As we drove out of Cadiz the guide, Francisco, talked over the intercom about the city. It is one of the oldest cities in the world and was settled by the phonetians, the Carthaginians, the Romans, the Visigoths (I think), the moors and now the Spanish. Cadiz was the starting point for Columbus’s journey to discover the new world. It used to be an island and Sevilla was on the coast of th sea. It has a long history of being a sea oriented city as well as an aerospace center. It was an hour and fourty-five minutes drive to Sevilla. I slept a good deal of the way. The countryside that I did get to see was beutiful, nothing like anything at I have seen in the States. Anyway when we got to Seville we drove down the main avenue and saw all of the beautiful buildings. Then we stopped at one of the squares in the city. American square I believe was the name. This park was made for the world exhibition that was held in nineteen twenty-nine. In this park was a nice fountain and a lot of pigeons. The pigeons were a gift from someone, maybe the king of Spain or something like that. On one side of the square was a renaissance style building made by Seville’s equivalent to Gaudi. There was also a moorish style building on he opposite side. The next thing that we did is get back on the bus and go to the old Jewish and Muslim quarters. The first quarter that we went to was he Jewish quarter. This area was very nice with lots of small streets and alleys with hole-in-a-wall shops and buildings that were built in very tight spaces. We went all over going down streets and through small squares. It was nice because the whole area is pedestrian only. So we didn’t have to worry about being run over by cars or motorcycles like we did in Vietnam. We went to a palace called the Alcazar. This palace was built b the moors (the Muslims in Spain) and hen taken over by the Christians in the reconquest of Spain for Christianity. Inside there was much moorish influence in the architecture and in the decoration but in some places the Christians had Christianized the buildings. One such place was a courtyard that was moorish on the bottom but on the top they had put a renaissance style floor. It didn’t look good. It was really hot, 44 degrees centigrade, 112 degrees Fahrenheit and though it was really neat it was always just where’s the next shady spot! I need shade! Etc. After going to the Alcazar we went to a square in between the Alcazar and the cathedral. This square was called Plaza del Something I forgot the name of the square but it had a statue of someone (descriptive, eh?). This was to be our meeting place after a little free time in which we could go and do whatever we wanted. We decided to go walking looking for an ice cream place that we had seen. We didn’t find it but we found a different ice cream shop and we went inside. We used our Español (Spanish) to order our ice cream. You should have seen us trying to communicate, there was lots of pointing and attempts at using the other persons language. The main language that we communicated in was Español though. We made our way winding through the streets back to the square where we were supposed to meet to go to the bus. Like I said it was 112 degrees Fahrenheit (44 degrees centigrade) and some of the peoples tempers were as hot as the weather. I will back up just a little and tell you that there were two groups of people going on the tour with two tour guides. One group had organized themselves through Cruise Critic and the other didn’t we don’t know where they organized themselves. Regardless of where they did, they obviously didn’t get the memo that there was a lot of walking involved. There was one person with a cane and another with a walker in their group which held everything up for them. When we were about a block from he bus the husband of the woman with the walker came up to the guide and had a mild explosion “You have to slow down and wait for the people who can’t keep up!!! La de da de da…” anyway this went on for a while because some other people got involved as well. One of the people from our group said that he was going to go tell the guide that we were going to walk to the bus by ourselves. That made the caravan get moving. When we got on the bus it felt like a sauna it was like a greenhouse! Some people were complaining about how hot it was and it resounded like these seventy and sixty year old people had just gotten out of preschool! On the way back I do not know if the complained any more but I do know that the back of my eyelids are very black.

Day 13: Lisbon (Sintra), Portugal

Sat, 12 May 2012 12:02:00 -0600

Sumner

Today we were again in Lisbon, Portugal. Today though we went out intro the countryside to a town called Sintra (center-uh; without the “r” sound at the end of center). We met Susanna in the same place as yesterday and then got into her van to drive to Sintra. On the way to Sintra we saw suburbs of Lisbon. The suburbs here are nothing like those in the States because all around there are tall apartment buildings. All around you couldn’t see much of anything except for apartment buildings. Unfortunately it did not seem like a good place to live. There was graffiti galore and you just looked at it and knew that you didn’t want to live there. Another thing that we saw on the way was an aqueduct. This aqueduct was built in seventeen or eighteen hundreds. It was made using Gothic arches (the ones that are pointy). One of the arches that makes up the aqueduct is the tallest in the world. It is also I believe the widest. It did not take long to get to Sintra. When we arrived mom commented, “Now we are in Europe.” It really was too. It was the typical small European village with narrow streets that don’t have any pattern whatsoever and quaint shops and hole in the wall restaurants in hidden corners. There was a palace that we were going to go into but because all of the big tours of like fifty people were going to the palace at that time, we decided to walk around before going to the palace. As we were walking mom commented, but not to loud so as not to make Susanna feel bad, that the village looked like a little German village. We walked down the side streets just taking in the beautiful buildings and shops. One of the specialties of Sintra is their quark products. They love to make stuff out of quark. They make everything out of the stuff. There were purses, bracelets, and many other apparel including iPhone and iPad cases! I was thinking that I might buy one just for the sake of doing so but I realized that they aren’t any cheaper there than here. They cost around 30€ which is somewhere between $50 and $60. When we were done with our walk around the town we went over to the palace. It was a grand palace for the Portuguese kings to go and have a nice summer vacation. Even though Sintra is not that far frame Lisbon it has enough difference in temperature that it was a nice vacation spot for the royal families. And of course if the king does it everyone wants to do it so, a town is formed. The scale of the building was immense. Just the stairs leading up to he palace took up a lot of room it was easily fifty to seventy five yards across. This part of the stairs was not covered. It was open and the stairs wee on either side of a platform which was probably thirty to fifty yards across. Then there was a covered part with stairs in either side leading up to the main palace. It had that old grandeur typical of the time which it was built. There were some great view of the city from here and also there were some interesting rooms with glazed tiles all around. It was in interesting mix of materialism of the age of discovery as well as both the Muslim and Christian religions. The chapel that was built in the palace was built by moors (Muslims living in Spain) and had the glazed tiles typical of the age. Oval the style of the building was the Manueline because it was primarily King Manuel that built the palace. There we all sorts of neat little fun facts like magpies that were ordered to be painted on the ceiling of one of he rooms to represent all of the ladies in waiting that we’re present when a secret was leaked an who spread the word about this around through gossip. There was also one room on which was painted the many coats of arms of the rich families in Portugal at the time. King Manuel’s coat of arms was the biggest and the only one the was carved and then painted. It had lots of symbolism but I don’t quite remember them. Regardless whatever the importance of the different symbolic things in the cost of arms it is important because it is the coat of arms of Portugal. After going to the palace we made our way thought the countryside to the furthest western point in continental Europe. I enjoyed all of the scenery along the way, even though part of the scenery was rather black, like the back of my eyelids. I wonder why that is? ;) yes, I went to sleep. I do have the excuse that he roads were very windy and I just was lulled to sleep by the movement. There was a car show going near the monument so we had a hard time parking but we did meet a man who we though was one of the car owners and got into a conversation with him about how some island in the Azores was used as a military base by the allies during WWII. He also said that if you went directly west from that point you would reach NYC. Well in between NYC and New Jersey he said. After getting pictures we got back in the car and drove past many coastal villages or towns. They aren’t very distinct towns because it has molded into one big town along the waterfront but they were still called towns. Most of the way it was beaches with restaurants serving seafood. She to,d us that it was expensive to buy seafood in Portugal compared to the United States she said 50€ per kilo! That’s like almost $75 for a two person meal! The areas that we went through were used first by the royalty as a summer vacation spot. And then the population caught on. We saw lots of people on the beach but Susanna said that only tourists go to those beaches because the water is so dirty but the locals stay away from those beaches. We got back to the boat about thirty minutes before we had to be on the boat at two or so and went up to the Lido deck for some lunch as we were eating we saw the Baldersons coming on and then about twenty minutes later some other people and then even though they were fifteen minutes late to the boat they were just meandering along. Of course they could see that they were raising the gangplank and making the ship ready to leave but they didn’t step up the pace at all. Later Mrs. Angie commented that, and I quote “I would have been bookin’ it!” some people just don’t know when it is right to speed up just a bit. That was about it for the day and I assume by now that you know the drill, make up the rest of the day because it was the same as all the other afternoon/evenings.
~Sumner

Day 12: Lisbon, Portugal

Fri, 11 May 2012 15:05:00 -0600

Sumner

Today started out at ten thirty when we woke up. Mom, Oma and I went to the Vista Lounge to listen to a talk about the architecture of Rome and then I went to the Lido Deck to see if anyone was there to play ping-pong. Nobody was so I started back down to the room. On the way, I saw someone who had just come from the bow, which was opened so that people could watch as we went under a bridge that spans the river that Lisbon was built by. By this time it was about time to go to lunch do I went down to the room to go with the est of my family. They also wanted to go to the bow to get a view of the bridge so we went to the Lido deck for some food. The Baldersons (Colton’s family) came with us and we sat together for our meal. After lunch we went back down to the room and got ready to go into Lisbon. We have a guide for Lisbon for this afternoon and tomorrow. We met this guide outside of the dock station. Her name is Susanna. The first thing that we did is drive up to a place where you could get a good view of the city of Lisbon. At this point there was a monument to the Revolution in which the Portuguese threw off their dictator. There was also, on either side of the monument, a pillar the two together symbolized the treaty/alliance between Great Britain and Portugal. This treaty is the oldest in he world. The view from the monument was very comprehensive of the day. You could see the old Muslim quarter as well as a valley and another hill that was part of the city. Much of the city had been destroyed in the earthquake of 1755, this earthquake was a major event in he history of Lisbon. The next destination was the old Muslim quarter. On the way to that quarter, we stopped at a park with all sorts of nice plants and it was really pretty. Anyway, when we got to the old quarter, we went to a cathedral. Outside, before we went in Susanna told us that we should watch our things. There are lots of pickpockets she said, as she was saying so she said, “See there, they’ve been robbed already.” She said this pointing to a police car that some tourists were getting into. They had obviously not heeded he warnings on every Internet site that knows anything about Lisbon or about most of Europe for that matter. I thought that it was rather iconic that, even though it is a cathedral where things are supposed to be holy, the pickpockets play the part of a tourist and, as they are professionals, you don’t realize that you’ve been robbed until you try to pay for something. Besides the pickpockets there was another interesting thing that you don’t see much of in America. Tram cars. They were all over the place, two of the lines went right in front of the cathedral. We got to saw some go past as we were standing outside of the building. The cathedrals construction was interesting because it was in two styles. Romanesque and Gothic Romanesque churches have the same design as a Roman basilica, or law court. This means that enemy have a large nave in the center and small hallways on either side. It is also characterized by semicircular arches where the height of he arch is half he width, it has to be or else it isn’t be a semicircle. He main body of the church was made in this style but, as the cathedral was built over a few centuries, the old style went out of he fad so they changed styles to the Gothic style for the back of the church behind the part where people go to mass. This area was for people to go pray to the relics and such. To get to this area there’s a Gothic arch it is interesting because you can also see the Romanesque arch which the Gothic arch was built into. Then we walked around the area and saw lots of facades with glazed tiles covering them as well as many other charming sights. As we were walking we went down a street where people were decorating he streets, our guide said that they were preparing for a celebration. It was still a month away but, like us in America preparing for Christmas, they start decorating early. The celebration is because some children had sworn that they had seen visions of the Virgin Mary and in doing so they made this area a big pilgrimage area for he Catholics. Then we kept on walking and we passed a few fadu (fahd-zoo) restaurants. In these restaurants you go and eat while people sing to you. Hen we went through a neighborhood which was really nice but the buildings weren’t in good shape because the owners didn’t have enough capital to restore the buildings. Part of this is that they can’t raise the rent if the owner stays the same and the rent is sometimes less than 50€. One € (Euro) is about 1.4 dollars, the exchange rate though makes it more like 1.5 dollars. Therefore 50€=$75. Sort of there was a nice hotel that was really nice one of the nicest in the city, a five star. It was investing however that nowhere on the building did it say that it was a hotel. In the front of the hotel on the street side was a fountain that used to be a public fountain with water from the aqueducts coming into the city. After that we got back in the ban and went to the monumental area. We were planning to go to the cathedral but as it was closed for a funeral, we walked to a bakery first. We had seen the bakery in a video from Rick Steve’s it was called Pastries de Beliem or something like that. The pastures are very popular and secret. There are only four people who know the secret receipt and, though they try, anywhere else but this restaurant that serves the pastry just can’t do it right. I have no other words to describe the desert other than it was extremely delicious. After we ate our pastries we walked back to the cathedral and went inside. This one, like the one in the old quarter, is in two styles, Manueline and renaissance. Most of he building was in he Manueline style but the front altar is in the renaissance style. Manueline is a style unique to this area and it was named after Manuel, the king of Portugal when this style was popular. The actual structure is much the same as the Gothic style but the major difference between them is the decoration. In the Manueline style there are lots of decorations with a seaward theme. By this I mean ropes, ships, oriental leaves, etc. Because people couldn’t just learn about what their explorers were finding on tv, they carved it into their cathedrals, creating the Manueline style. He renaissance style is much like the Romanesque because the renaissance is characterized by the romantification of the classical Roman arts. After we went to the cathedral we drove to another site where there is a fortress that was used for the defense of he river in the times when pirates would sometimes come to rob the people of Lisbon. It had a tower and then on he side of the tower toward the river there was a platform that was lower down from the tower for cannon possibly. This tower used to be in the middle of the water but when the earthquake of 1755 happened, the water level for the river went down making this tower become the side of the river. After this tower we went to the Explorers monument this monument was to all of the great explorers from Portugal. It was kinda neat because it showed some of the people who where important in the development of world history. After going to this monument we went back to the boat and because we did nothing of note, I will not bother describing the rest of the day because I think that you can piece together the rest of he day from my earlier posts.

Day 11: At Sea

Thu, 10 May 2012 15:04:00 -0600

Sumner

[Continued from Day 9]

Day 10: Ponta Delgada, Azores

Wed, 09 May 2012 15:03:00 -0600

Sumner

Today was our first port day. We stopped at the island of São Miguel in a port town named Ponta Delgada. Before commencing our journey inland we went up to have some breakfast. While there we saw some of the city from the vantage point of the boat. Once we were ready to go into town, we went down to A Deck. Not a deck but A Deck, this is the bottom most level of the ship that the passengers are allowed to be on. They checked our cards as we went out and then we were free to do anything we wanted, we just had to new back at the boat by four thirty in the afternoon. We were planning on walking around the town but we decided to get a taxi tour of he island instead. The tour cost the same as if we had gone with the boat but we were able to stay in any location for as long of a time or as short of a time as we wanted. From Ponta Delgada we rode in the car for a few minutes to get to another town on the island, the name of which escapes me at the moment. He took us to what you might consider the middle/center of the town. There was a small square with little pathways going throughout. The trees had a peculiar plant or something hanging on it. There was a path down to another larger park. This park was near the side of a river, well a river for us Coloradans, maybe not for those of you who consider a ten foot wide flowing body of water a small brook. Anyway the bridge over the river upstream a little bit was the bridge that we went over to get to the town center. The river that was running underneath it was the river that the aforementioned river by which the park was located. His park had some very nice flowers and paths throughout. Some of the water from the river was diverted to form a small channel of water going thought the center of the park. After seeing this park we went to a small church. We guessed that it was baroque or classical in style (Mrs. Duncan if you are reding this) it was our first of what will be many visits to cathedrals around Europe. I think cathedrals are to Europe as temples are to Vietnam. (For those of you who did not followed us on our trip to Vietnam about every other stop on the tours that we went on we stopped at a temple. Or at least it seamed that way). After the church we went for a little walk, about a hundred yards down a street until we got to a place where there was a traffic jam and we deemed that it was necessary to turn around. We circled around and went back to the taxi. The next thing that we went to was an overlook over which you could see the sea all the way to the horizon, or at least until you could no longer see because of the fog. You could also see the cliffs that the water dashed up on from the aforementioned vantage point. Another sight that you could see was a plateau which some horses were grazing on. It was actually more like a ledge but…

Day 9: At Sea

Tue, 08 May 2012 15:01:00 -0600

Sumner

Like I promised I will describe to you the nature of the ship today. Hopefully it isn’t to convoluted for you to understand. I will hopefully before the trip is completed be able to add a link to the website with the plans of the ship and of the rooms. And as a picture tells a thousand words… My posts will only be a helper as you look through the pictures. Maybe I will post that in Lisbon, or… Maybe not. We’ll see. [The rest of this posts will be posted under the title Day 11: At Sea] I admit, I have been staying up watching shows etc. way too late and once I get to the blog it is often eleven o’clock at night. Right now I am writing this while waiting for a show to start. Now you can go to Day 11. See you there!

Day 8: At Sea

Mon, 07 May 2012 15:43:00 -0600

Sumner

Nothing much happened different than the other days at sea therefore I will not spend much time describing the days activities. Basically if you take all the previous posts that I have written, mesh them all together (give or take a few things) and then make a day out of them you will get some idea of what happened today. Colton and I tried to solve a sudoku puzzle (we didn’t succeed I think that we messed up one our logic for one square which screwed up everything else. Oh well, maybe we’ll succeed tomorrow.)

Day 7: At Sea

Sun, 06 May 2012 15:41:00 -0600

Sumner

Today was another day with a late start. About nine o’clock. We were going to go to a church service but because the room doesn’t have any windows we don’t know what time it is by the sun. If we turned off the lights, even at noon it could be midnight for all that we can tell. Anyway going to the church service didn’t work because it was supposed to start at nine. Oops. We decided to go to eat our breakfast. After that Hannah went to Club HAL and I went to the pool to see if anyone wanted to play ping-pong. Colton was there so we played for a while until we went to a talk about Seville. At the beginning though, he went thought the history of architecture. Much of this I already knew. Thank you Mrs. Duncan! After the talk we went to go eat lunch and then I went back to the pool and talked for a little while with Colton and his mom and played a little more ping-pong (we are playing a lot of ping-pong). Then I came down to the room and got my bathing suit on to go swim. A little way through my bathe, Colton and his brother Sebastian came. We played for a little while end then their other brother, Nathan came. We kept on going from the hot tub and then to the regular pool and back to the hot tub again. Then we got ready to go eat. (eat, play, sleep; what a life). After the delicious dinner we went to go to watch people at the karaoke room. There were a few pretty good singers but this one guy, I felt kinda bad for him, just couldn’t carry a tune at all. After that we came back to the room. When we go there though we had some chocolate covered strawberries which we promptly ate. The people that cleaned our rooms must have done it because Oma’s meat was not very good. I must say thought that Oma didn’t complain at a all but they must have sensed that she was not pleased, no wonder that they did, she only ate a tiny portion of the meat. Anyway that was basically it but I must tell you that if any of you have pets you probably should be wary of mom when she gets back because each night the people who clean the room always make a creation with the towels. The past two nights when the have done so mom has murdered the creations before Hannah had come down from club HAL by putting her jacket on it! Pets beware.

Day 6: At Sea

Sat, 05 May 2012 15:40:00 -0600

Sumner

The day started out really late today, ten o’clock for me. We didn’t go to breakfast because we were going to have lunch in just a few hours. I decided to go up to the crows nest but on the way I saw a boy that was bouncing a ping-pong ball on a paddle. He looked like he was just slightly bored. So I asked him if he wanted to play. We played ping-pong for about half an hour and then Colton, that’s the boys name, and I went down to the theater to watch a talk about the history of the cruise boat. I met Oma and mom down there at the talk, which was very interesting. I learned a lot about cruising in the speech. Then we met up with Hannah went to go eat lunch. After lunch, which was really good, mom and Oma went to go watch another talk and I went up to the crows nest to do my class. While I was waiting for the ladies to show up the people that I had done the trivia with yesterday called me over to play with them. I didn’t help much but it was kinda neat just to listen to the questions and think of good answers. Anyway, as the people in my iPad class showed up I asked them if it would be OK if we just met two hours later at four for the class instead of two because the talk that mom and Oma were going to was on that the ladies in my class wanted to go to as well. I decided go go up to Club HAL to see what they were doing it wasn’t anything that I wanted to do at that moment so I went down to the pool and talked with Colton’s brothers and mom. He has two brothers, one is named Sebastian, the other is Nathan. Colton is ten, and the others are seven and eight, I just don’t know which one is which. Anyway, I went back up to Club HAL for a few minutes until I went to go do my iPad class. After class we decided to meet in two days, on Monday, so that they could try out everything that we had gone over. At that point it was about time for dinner so we went to the room and got ready. The food was good and after we had eaten we went to the show. Today it was an Olympic gymnast performing some things. Mainly he used silk things that hung from the ceiling to do some tricks on. One time though he said that he was going to take a break and let the band play but he went over to the piano and started playing with them! He had learned to play because for the last few years he as been doing shows on cruise ships and he had learned from the musicians that he met on the boats. He also did a few juggling routines, one of witch he did in the dark with lighted balls. It was really cool. After the show we went back to the room to go to bed.

Day 5: At Sea

Fri, 04 May 2012 23:14:00 -0600

Sumner

Today we got up earlier than we did yesterday, about seven or a little after. We actually got to go to breakfast today! The food was good and after the meal we had to decide what to do. Hannah and I went with Club HAL to play ping-pong. And after we were done we played UNO for a little while. Then Hannah went with Oma to a cooking demonstration and mom and I went to hear a person talk about one of the ports that we went to. I dosed off during part of it do I’d don’t really remember everything that he said. Oh well. Next was lunch, which was very good, and then we played a little ping-pong before I went to meet with the ladies for our little iPad class. We didn’t have much of a class, only about twenty minutes. This was because there was another talk that all of the ladies wanted to go to so our meting adjourned and the ladies left. I decided to go and find mom and Oma, who themselves were at the talk. I couldn’t find them but we had arranged for everyone to meet in the room at about four to get ready for diner. That was done and we went to eat at the restaurant. I wasn’t feeling great, it was a little rocky. (I’m fine now, it was juts over that one spot for a few hours that was really bad. It wasn’t that bad though I just didn’t enjoy everything to its fullest extent.) After dinner we went to watch the boats sings perform some Broadway songs. I fell asleep for part of it, (I seem to be liking to sleep through things… Oh well it doesn’t matter). We all went down to the trivia show, it was pretty funny. We left a little early because Hannah wanted to go to a room where someone was playing the piano. I came to the room and am writing this blog. Well I should probably start getting ready for bed. I’ll keep you posted!

Day 4: At Sea

Thu, 03 May 2012 13:00:00 -0600

Sumner

We started out really late, nine o’clock or so, because we have such a dark room in the interior of the ship and we don’t have any windows so we were all just thinking that it was three in the morning and went back to bed. Finally I figured out and looked at my watch. Oh well we had some nice rest. We actually didn’t have breakfast because we were so late getting started. Instead we got ready to go to this “Meet and Greet” meeting hosted by this group called “Cruise Critic” (if you ever want to go on a cruise check it out, I actually don’t know what it is but it must be good or else mom wouldn’t have used it). Anyway Hannah and I got ready before mom and Oma so we went up to the Crows Nest to write yesterday’s post. The meeting, by the way was at the Crows Nest on one side. We were sitting on the other side looking out at the ocean in front of us. Mom showed up at the meeting late, really late, so late that she missed the entire meeting. She did show up for the mingling time after the meeting and somehow or another she ended up talking to some ladies about the iPad and how they didn’t know how to use it. Well she volunteered me to teach an iPad class. I had come over just as she was doing so and I was just a little surprised. Well, I walked out of the Crows Nest with an iPad class with four women at two o’clock in the afternoon. We decided to go have some lunch and after we ate we went to play ping-pong until time for me to teach the iPad class. The iPad class went well, our progress: we made it to learning how to mass delete photos! Anyway after an hour of class we decided that we would have another class the next day at the same time two o’clock. Remember this time, it will come in handy near the end of the day. After I was finished with the class I joined club HAL for ice cream an then plagued ping-ping with mom. Then Hannah and I went swimming for a little while. Once we were done we went back to the room to get dressed for the formal dinner. The formal dinner is a very formal occasion. I wore a suit and tie. If you’re reading this Nic, thank you for the suit, it has come in handy. Goodwill also helped out by supplying the shoes and tie. The food was delicious, we had an appetizer, soup, an entree and a desert. All of which were good. After our dinner we went to go see a pianist perform. Before he started though, the guy announced that there would be a time change in the middle of the day tomorrow, at two o’clock. There will be no two o’clock tomorrow. He joked that he was going to work out from two till three. Now remember that time I told you to remember? Well if you remember I had scheduled my iPad class at two o’clock but tomorrow it not exist, oops. Anyway the pianist was really good. I enjoyed the songs. One of the songs was a medley of some of Beethoven songs made modern, it was really interesting. It just goes to show that the melodies are the same just the style, and instruments that the melodies are played on change. After that show as we were going towards our room we saw another thing set up. It was a game show. We decided to watch that, they took some people form the audience that wanted to do it and one of the guys from the staff asked the questions. One of ladies was just not good at all but he staff guy made her feel fine. He asked all of the other people to step back and let her get some questions for only herself. One time when she answered a question “John F. Kennedy!” he said, “Yes, also known as Jimmy Carter but you know he went by a lot of things back then.” Anyway everyone had a good time and it was really funny to watch. After that we came back to our room and got ready for bed. I am currently writing his post and getting tirrrrrrrreeeeeeedddddd oops, I think I held down a key on he keyboard, that probably means I should go to bed.

Day 3: Start of Cruise - At Sea

Wed, 02 May 2012 23:11:00 -0600

Sumner

Today was tiring at best. We started the day out in Ft. Lauderdale and ended it out of site of the shore. We had breakfast in the hotel and then went back up to get ready to check out of the room at ten. Then we went to the port, Port Everglades. There we dropped off our bags and went to the airport to drop off our car. We took the shuttle from the airport back to the port and went through a very extensive security and check in. Eventually we got to the jet-way. Oh wait, it can’t be a jet-way, we weren’t going on a jet. It did look like it though. Anyway when we got onto the boat it was really cool. It was really grand. We were almost attacked with people with hand sanitizer and everyone was very nice. Then we were told where to go to get to our room and there we put down our bags and then we went to lunch. After a delicious buffet lunch we explored the ships for a little while and then went back to the room to get on our bathing suits to go swimming. After that we watched the embarkation at about 6:00. There is a kids club and a teens club on the ship. The kid club (called club HAL; Holland America Line) had a meeting and so Hannah went to that for a few minutes while mom, Oma and I went to go eat. We learned that I was one of two teenagers on the ship and Hannah was one of about ten or so kids. We were going to try to eat at the nice restaurant but the line was so long that it just wasn’t worth it. We went to the buffet instead. After we had eaten we went up to pick up Hannah. One of the leaders of the club informed us that I was actually the only teenager on he ship. The other “teenager” turned out to be 67 not 17. Someone had made a typo. Anyway Hannah came down to have dinner and then we went back to the room to go to bed.

Day 2: Ft. Lauderdale FL

Tue, 01 May 2012 13:13:00 -0600

Hannah

Day 2

Can you believe it? Tomorrow is the BIG day! We are going on our cruise tomorrow around noon. (Maybe before.) Anyway… Today was the last minute shopping time. Such as Target, Walgreens and CVS/Farmacy (that is the southern Walgreens.) Today wasn’t very interesting, but I’ll tell you, in 7-9 days, there will be LOTS of news. Well maybe tomorrow will be interesting. Why? Because I will probably tell everyone about and what’s on the boat. It will be VERY exciting. Well I gotta go to bed now, see ya’ll later!

Day 1: Flight to Ft. Lauderdale FL

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 19:03:00 -0600

Hannah

Day 1

Another Trip!

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 21:44:00 -0600

Hi everyone, in just a few days (starting on April 30th) Basher Academy will be going on another long field trip in which we will be seeing many of the things that we are learning about in World History.

We will be going on a trans-Atlantic cruise to Europe. While in Europe we will be going to many different countries and seeing many interesting things from Portugal to Greece, Rome to Dubrovnik in Croatia, Athens to Corinth. All of these places we will be seeing history right before our eyes. Just going to Rome is a journey through history but going to Athens, Corinth, Barcelona, and other cities will give us a taste of the cultures of many different countries.